Distance traveled: 28.3 km

My day began early in anticipation of rain. For the first time since the very first day, I put the rain cover on my backpack. I started walking in the dark and had a semi-creepy 30 minutes of walking through corn fields with only my phone to light the way.

The next town was Hospital de Orbigo, home to a medieval jousting tournament on its main bridge, which as you can see below is very long (it’s not just over the water):

I stopped here for breakfast and then ran into a guy named Raúl whom I’d met briefly in León. He’s originally from Colombia but now lives in the US, and he was clearly a popular guy on the Camino – he seemed to be friends with everyone he encountered, and for good reason: he’s incredibly nice. He and I started walking together and stayed together the rest of the day and for much of the next several days. While we were never more than friends, we started to joke that he was my “Camino boyfriend” and I was his “Camino girlfriend”.

The walk was much more pleasant today compared to the day before. We passed through fields and forests, and we could see signs that autumn was arriving – the trees were finally starting to change color.

Around noon, we reached a summit overlooking the town just before Astorga. It was a great view, and someone at the top was playing guitar and singing amusing songs for the passing pilgrims.

At the bottom of the hill, we encountered yet another statue of a pilgrim, and Raúl introduced me to his practice of taking a picture of himself imitating the statues. It was a little hard for me to achieve the exact look of this one because my water bottle was a bag that needed to be held with two hands, but close enough:

There was a pretty steep climb right when we arrived in Astorga, so we were delighted to find that the municipal albergue was the first building on our left. This albergue reminded me a lot of the one in Roncesvalles on my first night. It was quite large and staffed entirely by volunteers. Raúl and I lucked out and somehow got assigned to a four-person room rather than to one of the larger dorms. To my delight, a retired Brazilian couple took the other two beds, and I got to listen to them speaking Portuguese with Raúl. (Portuguese is my favorite of the languages I’ve studied, and while I can’t speak much of it anymore, I can still understand a decent amount!)

Astorga has a few claims to fame, including a chocolate museum (which I had originally wanted to go to but then found myself without the energy to walk to, given that it wasn’t in the center of town), a house designed by Gaudi, and a cathedral. Raúl and I managed to get in a cathedral visit while our clothes went through a wash cycle at a nearby laundromat. I liked the cathedral a lot and finally have some pictures to show!

Back at the laundromat, we encountered a retired couple who turned out to be from Virginia. The husband had walked the Camino a few years before and, upon arriving in Astorga, had suddenly been seized with the feeling that he and his wife were meant to live there. He returned to the US and convinced her to make the move. They don’t speak Spanish but are very happy in their new life there! We asked them for a recommendation for where to get some good hot chocolate, since this is the chocolate town, and we got two names. We decided to get a snack at the first place and then try to get hot chocolate for breakfast at the second place the next morning.

It did not disappoint!

That evening before dinner Raúl and I joined a handful of other pilgrims in the little chapel of the albergue for a prayer service led by a very old and nearly toothless priest. It turned out to be one of the most moving moments of the Camino for me. The priest read the story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus: after Jesus’ resurrection, he joins some of his disciples who are walking to Emmaus, but they do not recognize him. He walks all day with them, and finally in the evening they see who he really is. The priest reminded us that the same is true on the Camino: Jesus walks beside every pilgrim; we see evidence of this in the many forms of kindness and generosity that we encounter in others. That rang so true for me, and for the others at the prayer service. I think everyone cried.

Raúl and I joined Mark and Adam (who had reappeared as expected) for dinner and brought along someone else who’d been at the prayer service, a British minister who’d recently had some sort of powerful religious experience while walking – I can’t remember now what the story was. It was a nice way to end a very good day.