Thursday, September 27. As always we are up and out, today to Padron and Hostal Flavia, just at the south edge of town, a block before a huge fresh market with the smell of fish everywhere. Even fresh fish has a smell that’s hard to take in large quantities and all day.

I wonder how the fishermen’s wives deal with that when their husbands come home after a long day in the boat or at the market. I’m not sure I could deal . . . but we get used to whatever is going on in our own homes, don’t we?

This is also the Padron of Padron peppers, the source itself!

I check in to the room, wherever we land, and try to catch up with this writing, hoping for decent wifi. See how far behind I am now? Our room at the Hostal Flavia is typical, and there IS an elevator, which is wonderful. The young woman who works in the bar/restaurant is a doll, easily juggling the people like Ria and me, who have a reservation in the Hostal part of the building, as well as the groups of two or four or six walkers who pour into the bar, needing beds for the night, happy to sleep in the Albergue half of the place.

And she cheerily serves drinks and food to everyone inside and at the street tables. When we come back the next day, she is smiling at 8:00 a.m. I ask her if she never sleeps! I feel as though I don’t get much sleep, though I am sleeping fairly well. But never feel really rested when I get up in the morning.

Before I left on this trip, Neil had suggested, bless his heart, that I might be less tired if I got more regular exercise, but I’ve certainly been doing that for the past two weeks, and I still don’t feel any fresher in the morning. As if we haven’t done enough walking, Ria and I take a stroll down to the tree-lined park, near the Church of, what else, St. James of Padron.

Placa near the Church of St. James of Padron, with Ria in the red shirt

The Church itself, a beautiful, simple one, despite the gold starburst above the altar.

We found the restaurant at which she had eaten two years ago, so we had dinner there, but this time she wasn’t impressed.  Neither was I, BUT for the padron peppers.  You’ve seen photos of them several times now, so no need to post again.

Tomorrow we head for a funky little place near Teo,

between Padron and Santiago de Compostela.  I’m not walking all of it in one day, because here is what it looks like:

The last stage . . . and I’ll do half of it tomorrow. Two steep climbs to Santiago!

Views over the stone wall into the mist