June 30, Day 11

León to Hospital de Órbigo (31km): Back on track.

After our break yesterday, A and I hit the trail again, aches and pains pretty much gone. Amazingly, the blisters on my toes didn´t hurt at all today - a true miracle, really (sorry, it´s really hard not to bring up the religious references here). Both of us were feeling so great that we ended up killing 23km in a little over 4 hours, even in spite of the fact that we started an hour late from León this morning. Seeing as how it was only 11am when we got to Villadango and we weren´t tired at all, it really didn´t make sense to us to just stop, especially since alburgues open at 1pm. Also, I feel kind of bad saying this, but the town was kind of a dump. So we took lunch at the next town 1.5km further down the road, then pushed on all the way to Hospital de Órbigo, and here we´ll be for the night.

Since arriving here, A and I killed a whole watermelon and I´ve been working on a bottle of rosé all by my lonesome. I´m happy to report this is my cheapest bottle of wine by far - 0.89€! (The 0.79€ wine I found was boxed wine and there´s still enough wine snob in me that I haven´t gone there yet.) The alburgue we´re staying at is a cute little place run by the German confraternity of St. James. It´s a bit rundown, but has a cozy little courtyard with a couch that A and I quickly monopolized for a good part of the afternoon. As for the town itself, jere´s a fun fact: it´s home to one of Spain´s oldest and longest medieval bridges, which itself was the site of a famous jousting tournament that took place in the 1400s. Apparently, a Spanish knight named Don Suero de Quiñones was rejected by a woman and felt the need to prove his manhood by winning at least 300 jousting matches, which of course he did. There´s still a jousting field by the bridge, which I´m assuming gets some use time and again from the odd Renaissance faire that passes through. So that´s that.

I think it´s going to be an early night again - bed by 9:30 so we can try to do another 30-odd km´s tomorrow. I can´t get over that I go to bed before it´s even dark. Whoohoo, pretty crazy vacation, yeah?

Hasta luego for now!