Day six on the Camino Mozarabe Friday May 22

We again had a great breakfast, followed by a leisurely morning.  We walked around the grounds of Casa da Botica and enjoyed the sunshine of another nice day.  We spent time reading and relaxing in the sun.  Around 1:00, our "taxi" arrived and drove us the final leg to Santiago.  Our hotel was the Hospederia San Martin Pinario.  This is part of the monastery that has been converted to a hotel.  The view from our room was limited to roof tops of other parts of the building which is still being used as a monastery.

Our room is quite nice, with all of the modern conveniences - but it was only half the size of the rooms we had at the three guesthouses.  The walls were about four feet think and made of stone and I am guessing that our room probably housed four or more monks when it was still completely a monastery.

After getting settled in, we met up with my friend Adrian at 3:00 - he had been at Vaughan Town with me in August of 2013 at El Rancho in Torrecaballeros (just outside of Segovia, home of the large Roman aqueduct still intact from the first century A.D.).   We had a nice lunch and visit together even though he was still dealing with grief and remorse for not taking more time off from work.  His 58 year old mother had been diagnosed with colon cancer and died more quickly than expected in February.  He had plenty of vacation time that he could have used, but did not - thus causing remorse over not spending more time with his mom before her sudden death.  His sister had been pregnant at the time through in vitro fertilization; unfortunately, one child died in utero but fortunately one child survived making him Tio Adrian.  The birth was only six days after Adrian's mother's death and was seen as a real blessing for Adrian's dad - his first grandchild helps to keep him busy and occupied, rather than dwelling on the death of his wife of 40 years.  The good news is that Adrian has been getting back into running, swimming and biking, and signed up for a half iron man triathalon this summer.  We wished him well as he left around 5:00 to catch a train back to A Coruña.

We wondered around some and ran into Mary who we had met on the train the prior Friday, and confirmed our arrangements for dinner.  Around 8:45 we met up with Paul and Mary, and the four of us wandered through one of the restaurant districts and finally found a place to eat: O Celme do Caracol.  This was a nice little cafe.  One of the interesting aspects was that even though they had some tourists, it seemed like there were more locals - while we were early by Spanish standards (starting at 9:00), by the time we left, the place was completely full.  They did not have menus in English, nor in Spanish - only in Gallegos.  Amazingly, I was able to translate most of the items and did the selections for all of us.  Rather than having individual dinners, we ordered different appetizers and other small dishes, and then shared them.  We went through eight or nine dishes over two hours with some fun conversation.  A fine evening was had by all.