Reflecting on the Path

One more day of walking.  The walk is full now of remembering.  Remembering all the people that I've shared a room with in the last months.  First I thought maybe hundreds but after recalling a couple of Albergues with over 200 people

I'm thinking thousands.  I'm remembering all the people who helped me on the way, both on the path and at home.

In O Pedrouzo tonight.  I went to look at the shower before gathering my things to get in. Many of the showers in the last month flashed across my mind.  All the ones that you first had to think about how to keep your things dry because there either was no place past the door to the shower to put clothes, or not enough for the clothes you were going to take off and the clothes you wanted to keep dry to put on.  In gender neutral shower rooms you want to figure out how to get into the shower without being seen.  At the Albergues this can be tricky.  Not tonight, the good size shower came with a glass door and a hand held shower head with more than two feet of changing space and four hooks plus a hanger to hang clothes.

I'm perty sure a lot of the food served in the remote villages along the way came out of the freezer, the food has improved since Sarria too.  Sarria is where a lot of people start, they stay in hotels more than the walkers who start in St Jean, and perhaps because there are a lot more of them restaurants can serve fresher food, be more frequent along the path and they're even opened earlier.  I got an espresso at the Albergue I stayed in last night before 7am instead of boiling water in the microwave adding instant coffee and eating prepackaged donuts because I want an early start.

Thinking about all the bad coffee.  I knew it was bad when I hoped for a coffee machine in the Albergue for morning coffee.  The thing is I needed coffee and a little something to eat before walking.  Since not all Albergues are the same, some locked their kitchens until 7 or 7:30 am some didn't even offer any kind of kitchen facilities.  So I bought instant coffee, kept donuts on hand for all occasions.  A couple of times I was so desperate I filled a water ball I'd saved got hot water out of the tap added the instant coffee shaking it real well before I drank it.  Looking back this must have been one of the low points.

Along the path I did a lot of forward thinking. I thought about my morning granola with fruit, sleeping in my own bed, sitting in the living room talking to Laura.  Wearing different clothes.  Yes I'm homesick.

Tomorrow night I'll be in a hotel in Santiago to hide out, rest and chill before I head to Madrid for a couple of days before heading home.