Day 9 Portomarin to Palas de Rei

June 19th

We had breakfast at the hotel and were out of town by 7:10am. The sun was just coming up over the hills and it was cool and fresh. The hike was to be again through a number of very small villages, in a landscape of rolling hills, cow pastures and corn fields.

During breakfast we all decided to put our small rounds of bread into our lunch bag to eat during our morning stop. Good bread seems hard to find since we left our first stop on the Camino. Just before stopping, we forgot we had saved the bread rounds and we bought some great fresh bread. After eating the empanada from Portomarin and several pieces of cheese with the fresh bread, we left the rounds from the hotel on a picnic table at a rest area with a ½ bottle of wine we couldn’t finish. The fact is that the wine we had purchased at the grocery store in Portomarin wasn’t very good. I figured leaving the bread and wine on the picnic table was our good deed for the day. (Better cheap wine and bread, than going hungry on the Camino.)

We arrived in Palas de Rei “sin pena ni gloria” (without pain or glory). It is a small sad town. Even though it was bigger than Portomarin, it didn’t seem to have much to do/see, or much life in it. The hotel Casa Benilde was great! The hotel was updated. The staff was absolutely the most helpful we’ve run into yet. The rooms weren’t big, but everything worked, the street was quiet and bed really comfortable.

We ate the Menu del Dia at the closest meson and it wasn’t very good. Afterwards, we walked around the downtown, which is smaller than downtown Davis or Woodland. There were some people out in the evening, but considering it was Saturday, there was not much going on. We ducked into a café and Tony and Dave watched a Mundial game and we had “refrescos.” We ran into several young pilgrims we had been “walking” with. There was a mix of Europeans and American college students and they were all eating hamburgers. I don’t get it.

We went to a grocery store that was open and ran into “Happy”, the older Vietnamese man who was walking the Camion from Paris. We bought fruit, cheese and bread. After that, I went up to the room while the guys watched the game.

I wish there was something interesting to tell about Palas de Rei, but there isn’t. On to the next stage…