Laundry day!

Today was essentially a rest day, since we walked only 6 miles from Viana to Logrono. On the way to our hotel, we stopped in at the impressive Iglesia de Santiago. It was so ornate and spectacular. They do love their churches here.

We arrived at our hotel at 11:30 ahead of our bags but were able to check into our room. Once the bags arrived, we found a laundromat about 1/2 mile away, so off we went to do some much needed laundry. It was pretty comical trying to read the signs in the laundromat and figure out how to use the machines. They only take 1 Euro coins - and I’m embarrassed to say how long it took us to figure out that there was a coin machine right there on the wall. And the laundry soap is included with the wash, so no need to purchase any (which is good because I don’t know how long that would’ve taken us to procure the soap.) There was a kind older woman in the laundromat who tried to help us as best she could, but she didn’t speak a word of English, and well, I thought my Spanish was passable but apparently it’s only really good for ordering food. (That is one thing I did not adequately prepare for on this trip. I did not brush up on my Spanish skills. But I am trying now!)

In the flurry of laundry, we wound up skipping lunch today, so we were pretty hungry by mid-afternoon. Which is definitely the worst time to go looking for a bite to eat. A couple of blocks from our hotel is a well-known tapas area but they all close down from 5-8pm. We managed to get one quick bite before we were ushered out. We wandered around a bit, but seemed like everything was closed until 8.

In our wandering we were able to find a high-end chocolate shop that we heard about - Jeff de Bruges - and it was open. But when I went in and picked up a small box to purchase, the woman told me not to touch and pointed to the sign (in Spanish). She was kinda rude about it. I mean, how can I buy it if I can’t pick it up? So I left without getting any of her snooty chocolate. Instead we found a churreria food cart, so we had some churros con chocolate instead. Which was essentially our dinner. (Not sorry.)

We are hitting the sack early today, as we have a big day tomorrow: 18 miles. Yikes! We’ll see how it goes.