Strange day -=- got up early to get to the bus station and walked around for 20 minutes looking for a cafe/breakfast. In the end we just went to the station restaurant and had rude service. :) But the cheese sandwich was perfect and exactly what I wanted.
Found our bus "spot" -- #31 -- but there was no bus. However, there WAS a working electronic ticket machine right in front of the stop. Would have saved us 45 minutes yesterday...
The bus too late, lot of frantic people saying "Vielha? Vielha?" to anyone who passed. I watched idly as a woman frantically asked nearly every man in sight. I was a little alarmed when the bus arrived and frantic lady was nowhere in sight... but she did come sprinting up a minute or so before we left.
Pretty empty bus -- we wound our way through Barcelona with 5 passengers. Near the Barca stadium we picked up another. Not sure how they can survive financially... but I guess we're travelling in the off season.
At some point we turned off the big motorway onto a 2-lane road and I saw a sign for a Camino del Santiago -- very exciting! A couple of hundred yards later we passed a small icon/signpost. I realized that, here at least, the pilgrimage route is just staggering along a busy, dirty 2-lane highway. I know pilgrimages are supposed to be physically and emotionally challenging, but still, that looked horrible.
Excited to discover that we were going to go through the (relatively new) Tunnel de Vielha -- 5 km of 3-lane tunnel through a mountain. I kept thinking it would make a really fun 5K race.
Then, suddenly, we were in Vielha. We asked a helpful stranger where the hotel was -- luckily just down the road from the bus stops. Got to the hotel, checked in and went up to our oddly shaped room -- a huge bathroom, smallish bedroom area, and a triangular balcony overlooking the river.
But we had questions to ask, problems to solve before we could rest. So we dropped off our stuff and headed into town. Vielha is larger than I had thought -- lots of condos/vacation rentals all over town, and a medieval, higgeldy-piggeldy layout. But most things were closed between 2-5. So we looked in windows and had lunch. We chose a place with a nice-looking menu, a cool location next to the river and a tiny handwritten "we speak English" sign.
Okay, so the waiter didn't speak English. But he was nice and patient as we struggled to order food. I was trying to figure out what the ingredients of a particular salad was -- was it a bean? A plant? A sausage? But we were stuck. I said "soy... vegetariano?" and his face lit up and he said "Legume!" and smiled and nodded.
We were seated on an outside deck with a glass room, open at the sides, and with a canvas sunscreen stretched under the glass. A water sprinkler sprayed the top of the glass, making "rain" off the sides of the room into the river on one side and the old millrace on the other. It also made gorgeous patterns on the roof between the water and the shadows.
When my food came if was a bit of a surprise -- a big platter of grilled vegetable drenched in amazing olive oil and spiky with salt. Along with a side plate of slabs of toasted bread rubbed with tomato. Wow. Eggplant, tomato, peppers, asparagus, onion, and an entire artichoke. Really tasty, but I'll have to get accustomed to the salt.
Around 5:30 we went back into town, visiting the Carros de Foc office (woo-hoo!) and chatting with the staff. She showed us the towel and bedsheet we would be given and gave us the name and number of a taxi driver. Then more wandering around the various shops -- lots of outdoor shops, none of which sold GPS units. Odd. But perhaps comforting? I mean, they all sold compasses and rucksacks and hiking boots, so they had the essentials.
Also looked for some postcards and got the feeling that this is a tourist town that hates tourists.
Stopped in at the SUPERMERKAT to pick up water, cheese, and bread. Was very impressed by the range of tinned seafood. Wil pointed out that the illustration on the "octopus pieces" can looked like "struggling seamonster" which made us almost buy it, just for a laugh.
We had seen what looked like a nice baker up the road so didn't buy bread -- but after buying the hardest loaf in the world from the surly baker, we actually went back to the merkat for bread. Lesson learned: just because it's from a bakery doesn't mean it's nice.
Spent the evening sorting through our things. Pleasantly surprised by a knock on the door at 7:30, where the bottle of cava (did I mention the "romance package"?) was delivered to our room. So we snacked on bread and cheese to cava for dinner, then went down for a quick visit to the spa to relax before bed. Tomorrow it all starts!
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