October 10th, 2015

       Yesterday sometime in the wee hours I lay sleeping in my bunk bed dreaming that a male voice was chanting over and over:,
      Buongiorno, Buenos Dias, Señores.....Buongiorno, Buenos Dias, Señores...
     ​The voice was getting closer and louder, and I woke up just a moment before the door to our dorm room opened and a hand reached inside and flipped on the light.  Then the chanting voice, Buongiorno, Buenos Dias, Señores, ​continued down the hall.  It was one of our helpful Italian hospitalieros giving us a friendly 6:10 am wake-up call.  I'm glad he did.  Otherwise I don't know how long I'd have slept in yesterday morning.
      We walked 17 kilometers yesterday from Ponferrada to Cacabelos.

     We saw a new style of Camino marker along the way,

...along with the good old ones.

     The high point of our walk today, something we'd been looking forward to for days now, was a visit to the pastry shop in the village of  Columbrianos.  We happened to discover this wonderful little spot on our last Camino and decided it had the best pastries on the Camino if not in all Spain, or maybe even the whole world, the pastries we had there were that good. Now we were looking forward to reliving the moment.  And we did.

​The pastry shop at Columbrianos.

     It was hard to choose from among all the yummy possibilities, though we settled on cream puffs and a vanilla éclaire - a vanilla ​eclaire, what a concept! - to share.

​     We ate our pastries on a bench in a little square across from the shop.  The Camino passed by our bench, so we told every pilgrim who passed  by about the best pastries on the Camino in the little shop on the square.  We sent that shop at least six pilgrim customers.
    After we finished our first round of  pastries we decided that we needed one more vanilla éclaire to share, so back to the shop I went to procure us another.
​     'Twas a little taste of heaven.

     As we approached the town of Cacabelos we began seeing advertisement signs for a hostel called La Gallega with albergue beds as well for 10€ each, which is on the pricey side for an albergue bed, but then usually albergues tacked on to hostels or hotels have really nice dorm rooms and facilities, plus this place advertised a bar and restaurant as well, so we decided to try La Gallega.
     The reception and restaurant/bar area of the place looked nice, so we paid our 20€ for which we ended up stuck on the top bunks in the smallest, most cramped and squished-in  dorm room, I swear, on the Camino.

      I'd venture to say that this room was built as a single hostel room, with a private bathroom, into which  three bunk beds were later shoe-horned.
     Now, it's hard explain why a common bathroom out int the hall with two shower stalls, two toilet stalls and two sinks works better for 20 people  than one all-in-one bathroom attached to a room works for six, but it does.
     But to give credit where it's due,  the beds were comfy, the food at the restaurant was good,

...and our laundry came out dry.