Hospital de Órbigo → Astorga
Distance: 10.45 miles / 17.6km
Elevation: +701ft, -640ft
I woke up at 6am this morning to my alarm, and didn’t get out of bed until around 15 minutes after the hour. I was thankful that I didn’t have to wake up to anyone else is snoring or other alarms. I got dressed and ready for the day, then left at around 7am. It was drizzling a bit, so before I left, I had to put my rain cover on my pack, and my poncho on myself. It was dark for quite a while while I was walking this morning, and I was grateful to have the headlamp that Tovin brought for me when he visited (he insisted that I kept it).
I went through two towns in 5km, and stopped about 3 miles in to get breakfast for the day at a small cafe, where I ran into a friend, Liz, who I hadn't seen in quite a while! We exchanged contact information, and agreed to get dinner tonight. After visiting for a bit, I kept on walking. For most of the day, I enjoyed listening to some audiobooks I had downloaded, and walked alone most of the day. It was nice to have alone time, but also the walk felt much longer (even though it was about half the distance of yesterday). Having other people to walk with really does make a huge difference.
Today was a beautiful walk though, and there were a lot of nice views. It was a bit hilly and still drizzling a bit on and off, but nothing too bad. At about 6km from Astorga, I came across a place called El Jardín del Alma. It was a beautiful little refuge that is a donativo at night I believe, but it’s more or less a big shack where they have a lot of food and drinks available for people to take (paid by donation). They had fresh fruit, peaches, a bunch of cookies and desserts they even had a juicer so you could juice your own oranges, which I didn’t do but looking back now I wish I would have. They also had two cats that were cuddling!! They were so cute and reminded me of Phoebe and Pippin, and they even had a dog running around. It was just a beautiful spot that really encapsulated the spirit of the Camino to me, and I took a long nice rest there.
Before long I was walking into Astorga, making it there by around 11:30am. I planned on staying at the municipal albergue tonight, but I almost decided to keep walking and go to a different one because it was a big hill. It was a difficult climb, but I got there. It was 7 euros for the bed, and it was a smaller cozy room, with only two sets of bunkbeds. In the photo, my bed is the bottom bunk next to the window.
After getting all my things unpacked and settling for a bit, I went for a short walk to explore the town. Astorga isn’t a huge city, and I did a lap around it under an hour. After exploring, I went to a kebab shop to grab lunch at around 2pm, bringing it back to the albergue to eat. I showered, did my laundry, and then spent some time laying in bed and relaxing. I also I’m doing some traveling after finishing the Camino, and so I started figuring out my lodging in Santiago, as well as booking the transportation between Porto and Santiago. I plan on being in Europe for 7 weeks after finishing the Camino, about 4 of which Tovin is joining me for. I’m really excited looking at plane and bus tickets, and it helped me realize how many more exciting things are in the future before going home!
I had texted with Liz, and we agreed to get drinks together at 6:30pm - at around 5:30pm though, I decided to go early walked around the town, exploring a little more now that the sun was down a bit and not as strong. I went to Plaza de España where Liz and I said we would meet, and got a red wine which came with some potato chips and a little bread roll with chorizo inside - it was very good. Liz met me there, and we had a drink and chatted for a while. I hadn’t seen her in about two weeks, so it was nice to catch up.
We got dinner together after drinks, and I got a burrito which was really interesting - instead of one big burrito, it was little taquitos (almost too many) with the stuffing of a burrito inside. Liz got a quesadilla. When the food came out, we were both felt like we got scammed a little with the amount of food, but after we were done eating, we agreed it was actually a very good amount of food, and we both felt full.
After dinner, I went on a little quest to find churros with chocolate, since Astorga is known for its chocolate and that’s a specialty this year. But I quickly realized it’s more of a breakfast or afternoon snack than an evening dessert. I wandered into a few different places and saw plenty of chocolate, but no churros. So I decided I’ll just try again tomorrow morning before I leave town. On the way back, I stopped at an ATM to grab some more cash.
I headed back to the albergue and got ready for bed. I was still trying to figure out what tomorrow is going to look like, and whether I’m going to do a longer or shorter day tomorrow. Either way, it will be a pretty big elevation day, which will really be a change after that past week and a half of the meseta. I definitely feel much better prepared though than I did starting in Saint-Jean, and the elevation isn’t as tough as it used to be. It’s nice to see my body adapting.
When I got back, everyone else was already in bed with the lights off - it seems like people who stay at the municipal albergues go to sleep a lot sooner than others. I got ready for bed, which took way longer than usual as I hadn’t grabbed my laundry yet, and the albergue is kind of massive. I had to go down 3 sets of stairs and down a bunch of hallways to get my clothes. Additionally, there’s also only four toilets in this whole albergue for roughly 120 people, which isn't wonderful. I wasn't feeling super great, and was tired from the day, so I took some benadryl and tried to go to sleep early.
