Day 22. Friday

Late start today ... 8am. Walk today is said to be the most beautiful and all downhill. Sounds good but it is actually more difficult than up! We are in Galicia the final region of he camino. The landscape is peaceful and quite green - a lot like some parts of Canada. We ran into some pilgrims we met yesterday at our first coffee stop. We ordered a kind of Pastry potato pie for the 4 of us to share-the shoPkeeper saying his mama made it . It was ok then we discovered he washed his dishes in the small bathroom at the back of his shop! Ick !!!the town itself was quite beautiful- Molinaria. We walked for quite a lot of Km on pavement, passing an albergue that had all their bunk beds outside under a canopy. We also passed a few small vineyards that were very Raggy looking. Later we ran into a pilgrim who had stayed in the albergue across the road from us last night and heard someone there had a terrible case of bed bugs - ick - we had almost stayed there ourselves! We arrived in Ponferrada about 2pm, checked into our hotel & showered. There is a fairytale castle in the centre of town complete with a moat - without water. There are quite a few churches also. We had lunch, sharing pizza, salad & vino blanco. Later in we had huge jugs of beer and complimentary potato served on chunks of bread! Very strange, but when in Spain...
Joanie retired to elevate her foot while the 3 of us went to find an Internet cafe- not easy but we did find it - persistence pays! The room was full of junk and dark! We spent an hour sending emails and then it Was out to tour the castle- not particularly interesting and we had to race around it as it was closing It was still to early to retire so we thought we could eat again. We sat at an outside pizza place - 2nd of the day. Soon the empty squares and streets were teeming with people including children- the Spanish have had their siesta and are now out for the evening. We are ready for bed and another early wake up tomorrow.