Feets Do Yo Stuff: Camino Day 22. June 26: Hospital de Orbigo to Astorga

Camino Day 22. June 26: Hospital de Orbigo to Astorga

Numbers: Per Garmin GPS 9.91 miles; Per Fitbit: 24,502 steps, 42 floors, and 213 active minutes.

Let's take a look. We are in Astorga today. When I prepared the map on the blog, the way points were exactly where we planned to stop each day. The only error is the one from yesterday which is actually closer to Astorga rather than the scheduled stop in Brierley's book. So, Astorga is day number 22, and we are 2/3 of the way done! Yay, the bad news will probably be described by Dave, but his foot began bothering him today - the top of his right foot. I'm thinking overuse or tendon, but we're hoping rest and NAISDs will help.

Per my Garmin GPS which I use when we are on The Camino, we have walked 330.73 miles. Miles/steps walking around town and other places are not in that total. My original calculations had us walking 490 miles in total, so 67 percent of the way......almost right on that 2/3 mark.

Dave's voice

Ah, the joys of an air-conditioned night spent in slumber to the gentle lullaby of water dripping onto the floor from the wall unit. Heaven!

We awaken to the grim reality of carrying our packs again. Ah well, it’s a short day and we’ll reach Astorga before the heat becomes hellish (around 5:00 PM). So, no sweat. Right?

Remember injuries? How unattractive they are and how uninteresting reading about them is? Dave, never one to complain (ahem), begins complaining fairly soon about a mystery pain in the top of his foot. It changes a little on uphills/downhills, but, unlike a lot of mystery pains that last a short while, it doesn’t go away. Thus endeth the easy day.

Astorga is another small (population 12,000) town where virtually everyone (even the tourists) – is walking on the streets at all times except between 2:00 and 5:00 PM. Our first stop is a church where excavation is being done underneath, which seems to reveal Islamic tile work. Best place to build? On top of something else that was pretty much the same. Charlemagne and the Song of Roland guy (remember English Lit and why you hated it?) traipsed through here, sometimes on the very roads that we and Marcus Aurelius used. Of course, they were on horses and had servants to carry their back packs, but the parallels are many.

A little further up into the town is the Jardin Sinagoga, a memorial of sorts to the city’s Jews back in the days (I.e., when the Moors were in charge) when Astorga had a sizeable "Jewish Quarter." The Jardin (Spanish for Garden) is shady and had a great view over old city walls. No marker though, and how to explain the tiny statue of Howdy Doody? (Scout has a photo.) We don’t try.

Instead, we stroll into one of the city plazas for our thousandth "Pilgrim" menu meal. These are so endemic to the towns along the Camino that they have their own shorthand. "Menu" means a Pilgrim menu, usually offering three or four "first plate" options followed by a like number of second plate meat options. The pollo’s usually the safe way to go. A foolish traveler might, however, opt for the "arroz a la Cubana." After all, who knows Cuba better than the Spanish? Well, let’s not jump to conclusions. Cuban style here means white rice in tomato sauce with an egg sunny side up on to top. Rumor has it, this dish is what killed Che Guevara.

The salad was good, as was the wine and Spanish plazas are always a great place to people watch. Some Spanish women have a sense of style, not always to their advantage. As for Spanish men, you can judge their age by how high they wear their pants; at some point the pants are over the man’s head and he has to look out through the fly.

We chill for a few hours before hoofing it to the "sensational" Gaudi-designed Bishop’s Palace. This, built in 1890-1913, predates the Disneyland Castle by a bunch, but has the same pre-fab, "don’t-look-too-close" charm. Although the structure looks like it might be from 1700 or so, it appears to have been made of concrete and shows no signs of wear. The local cathedral, right next door, is the real article with all the carvings on the outside walls worn down in varying degrees by years and weather. The inside of the Gaudi (we all know him from the still-unfinished cathedral in Barcelona, right?) has moorish touches, an extensive museum of Camino artifacts and, like most modern buildings, the roof is supported by the external walls and by cleverly hidden internal pillars. The old cathedral sits on the remnants of a Gothic church from the eleventh century and was "built" between the fifteenth and the eighteenth centuries, resulting in changes in style. Inside are massive pillars right out in the open as was then thought necessary to support the old stone roof. The modern world is represented by closed circuit TVs which send the service from the from of the church to parishioners at the far back. As in a lot of old, old churches, the space that should have been the dead center of the seating area was enclosed, perhaps to create a quasi second altar near the back for marriages, confirmations and, during the Inquisition, torture. (Just kidding: all the bloody stuff went on in the basement.)

The old church is also a museum loaded with the usual early portraits and sculptures of Madonna and Child, both of them with heads badly out of proportion to their bodies and, usually, without any attempt made to depict Jesus as an infant; rather he’s a small, but big-headed adult. Lots of crucifixions, of course, many of these with blood running down the arms and torso. This is European Christianity. By the time it got to the U.S., all the blood was tidied up and Jesus was a blond.

Anyway, lots of creepy, torture-porn stuff. Nothing about mercy, forgiveness or God’s love for man or the possibility of a joyful eternity. Seems like the Marketing Department might have missed the big picture here. Or was suffering the Big Picture? Maybe thinking about stuff like this is why the pilgrims needed time spent in contemplation on the road to Santiago. (Oh, among the artistic depictions are ones of Saint James (I.e., Santiago) as "Matamoros," the Moor-killer, somehow involved in pushing the Moors/Muslims out of Spain. Tough work for a guy who’d been dead a thousand years.

As always, religion just confuses me.

Photo time

Sites of Astorga:

Episcopal Palace: by Gaudi. One of only three of his buildings outside of Catalonia. I (Deb/Scout) only saw the the Sagrada Familia from a bus in Barcelona, so it was a treat to see this and go inside (museum). I took a lot of photos but here are a few, both inside and out. Despite not as cool as the cathedral (see Dave's comments), I liked it, but am a bit suspicious anout the the idea for Disneyland's castle, although I'm sure Anton Gaudi stole a lot of his ideas also.

Outside

Deb outside

And Dave

Inside walls/ceilings..Moorish influence

Dave in front of stained glass

More stained glass

Museum piece: Roman mosaic

More Roman artifacts

This is Saint Agueda (Agatha). Can someone tell me whether she's holding baked goods or something else? Katie C or Flaco, do you know?

And, here are some photos of the Cathedral and museum next door. The 5€ for admission to both the Gaudi, its museum, and the Cathedral and its museum was a bargain.

Outside view

Inside

More inside

Perspective: large songbook

St. Anthony's Temptation

Aforementioned TV monitor

We also visited the former Jewish section of the city. We do this in many cities we visit and there were many in our trip to Southern Spain a few years ago. Although this one was mentioned in Brierley's book, it was a bit of a disappointment. It was a pretty park, but we couldn't find any plaques or anything describing the history. We knew we were in the right place: Jardin de la SInagoga - after looking at our map and conforming it with two people. We saw two statues and a gazebo, but I don't think Howdy Doody was a prominent Jewish figure.

And, besides seeing old Roman ruins, we had a nice lunch in the plaza.

Ruins: Islamic or Roman?

Dave's Arroz Cubano ended up being rice with a fried egg with tomato sauce. He said it was tasty despite the misnomer and how yucky it looks.

The wine wasn't really that gigantic

And, on the way to Astorga:

Old sign on left. The one on the right, the yellow arrow is the most common sign we see; sometimes on buildings, sometimes on the ground, sometimes on buildings, trees, and other places, so we need to be alert!