iggirice Camino: Day 33 - Hospital da Cruz to Melide

Day 33 - Hospital da Cruz to Melide

Cloudy with drizzles

We are so close we can smell it. No. It is not Santiago. That is still more than 50 km away. The guidebook says that the province of Galicia is famous for the smell of cow dung. We now have first hand experience of that. Actually we are so close we have to make sure we don't step into one. That may be the reason why the Camino doesn't always go into town anymore in Galicia. The albergues and the bars tend to be at the edge of town or near the roadside. There is nothing in the middle of town anyway.

After having a hard time taking it easy for the last two days, we have a change of tactic and went 28 km today, the longest distance we have done in one day. Our researcher, Gigi, is very good at pointing out all the bad things about my choices. It seemed that I picked a dud for today again that needed to be remedied (turned out to be not as bad when we saw it as we walked by, but she is right that Melide is much more exciting). So we decided to go big for a couple of days that will leave us a short walk into Santiago in the last day. Hopefully we will avoid a huge lineup for the certificate at the pilgrim's office in Santiago. And we picked an almost perfect day to go big as the whole day is cloudy with cooler temperatures. It would have been perfect if not for the drizzles near the end.

The albergue today is at the far side of town and as we walked through just after 1 pm, Melide was a bustling city with people everywhere. Shops are open although it is Sunday. There are a garment market and a wet market. By the time we went for lunch after registering, the shops are closing and the markets are clearing out. After lunch, the city is dead with everything closed and only few people around. Unfortunately for us, because it is Sunday, most shops won't even reopen later in the evening.

Lunch was great. We knew that this region is famous for the octopus dish. One place has a huge lineup at the door. That is a good sign. And you have to lineup to get the octopus before you can go into the restaurant. We decided not to wait and went to another one also with a lineup but we can walk straight in to order from inside. We actually think that the same dish we had yesterday at the bar beside the albergue was actually better. Well, you won't know until you try.

Went back out in the evening to search for any store that is open. No luck. Had a decidedly un-Spanish supper for a change.