What a Difference a Day Makes

We are in much better spirits today, though Dad did just get through telling me he was "a little emotional." By my reckoning, Dad's been a little emotional since the Nixon administration. Nonetheless, a day off the Camino is exactly what we needed. We have relaxed, we have slept, we have eaten (of course!), I have drooled over the new BMW M5, and we have regrouped.

I called over to my folks' room at 7:30 this morning to see what time they wanted to get breakfast. The last thing on my mind was waking them, because both my parents' idea of sleeping in is about 6am. They were both still asleep apparently, which I completely understand. This was the first night in probably a couple of years in which I've slept the whole night uninterrupted. We went down to the Parador buffet, which was even better than usual (those of you who have stayed in Paradores know what I mean), and yes, there was even bacon.

After breakfast, we napped for a bit and then coordinated on the plan going forward. We've decided that we need to be done walking by 2pm at the latest, every day, so Mom recalculated how much ground we could cover given the speed at which we walk, and the time limitation. We have "hard stops" here and there based on our reservations at the Paradores. So, we will walk not more than 12 miles a day, then get on the train to make up the difference at our hard stops. This means that when we leave here, we'll walk to Burgos, and then take the train to Sahagun. We'll walk from Sahagun to Leon, spend an extra day in Leon, (and celebrate my birthday) then take the train to Astorga. We'll poke around Astorga, and from that point, I believe are days are short enough that we'll be able to walk the rest of the way to Santiago. Of the 500 miles of official Camino, we will forego about 100 miles of it.

I think we're all really happy with this arrangement. It will keep us from walking in the hottest part of the day (it was 100+ again today), we will still get to complete the Camino, but we will have more time to rest and actually enjoy sightseeing, and other things besides walking.

We went our to grab lunch this afternoon, and there was some sort of Corpus Christi procession through town. It was quite an event. After lunch, Dad went back to the hotel to sleep some more, and Mom I explored the town - pictures attached.

We're going to head out again in a while for a light dinner, then it's to bed early to get an early start. On the road again in the morning!