Jueves, El Tres de Octubre

On Thursday, October 3rd, when we started out from Pension Restaurante O Retiro, which is on the east side of Arzúa, it was dark, foggy, and cool from rain the night before.

As we started walking through Arzúa, we soon came upon 4 very friendly sisters from Scotland, who asked us to take a photo of them in front of a restaurant where they said they had a great time in a sing-along the night before.  We would run into them a couple more times through the day.

There were lots of people along the trail that day.  In particular, there were many school groups who would greet you with a “buen camino”.

Outside of Arzúa, we briefly passed a lovely couple, Glenn and Louisa from Hampshire, England.  At a later stop, they approached us, and from there began a series of lovely conversations as we walked.  Luckily, we would see Glenn and Louisa again on TBD, and again in Santiago de Compostela.

At A Calzada, we stopped at Casa Calzada, a café with outdoor seating where we stopped during our 2016 Camino.  At this café, we met four ladies from Ottawa, one of whom had read the I’ll Push You book.  These ladies were frequent hikers, and in our conversations, they expressed interest in other trails, so we described our 2018 trip to Canada.

Andi was being pushed by Brenda, from Mexico, who just joined the group to lend a hand that morning.

TBD.

TBD.

 

At Outiero, we all stopped at a quirky little beer garden called Casa Tía Delores Bar Pensión. Here, the main event was to leave a message for the Camino masses.  Luckily, the proprietors assist by giving you something to write your message with (a white Sharpie).  But they leave it up to you to purchase that upon which to write.  Luckily, they happen to sell a form of dark brown crystaline parchment, which also happens to hold liquid refreshment for the parched.  And when your message is ready to post (literally), they provide nails upon which to hang them.  With the historic nature of our group, we made sure that future pilgrims will know that we were there (In some cases, we had to go back for more parchment.).

Climbing the hill leaving the bottle bar, we got a brief chance to lend a hand in pushing Andi.

Out next stop was at Casa de Boavista, a café where we had stopped in 2016.

Just past Casa Tia Theresa Bar-Pencion, we stopped and talked to Andi’s husband Dan.

At Brea, we all stopped and regrouped at Cantina Marela.  Glenn and Louise from Hampshire, England had beaten us there.

This was a very nice café, with great food.  I had pasta and a salad.  The Ginger Limonada’s were delicious.  Patty had a hamburger, and Mary had Chicken Salad.

Afterwards, we moved on and Mary walked with us.

Santa Irene.

I had to press ahead to make sure that we got to our pencion before they closed the check in at 5:00 pm. Along the way I ran into the four sisters from Scotland. We agreed that we would meet at the Cathedral tomorrow.

Our accomodations at O Pedrouzo were at a pención called Una Estrella Dorada.

For dinner, we went across the street to Saborea o Camino (“Taste the Way”), a lovely wine and tapas bar. We invited Dawn, from Florida, to join us. Dawn was walking the Camino as a fund raiser for breast cancer awareness.

Later, we saw Andrew (from New Zealand) and Linda (from Toronto), from the I’ll Push You Group, so we invited them to join us. We had a lovely dinner of Zucchini Soup, Olive tapanse, and Arzua cheese with quince jelly, along with a lovely vino tinto and sangria. As we were finishing, the four ladies from Ottawa came in, and after chatting for a bit, we excused ourselves and let them take our place at the family style table with Linda and Andrew.

We asked Andrew about trails in New Zealand, and he recommended the Milhouse Trail. For him, this is just a hobby.

Linda worked for tutoring company, and said that she shape to make some decisions when she returned.