Nice 11.8 Mile walk into Grijo

Beautiful tiled church 

                                   Alburgue Grijo

Madeline and John at the table that was set for the entire family.  They fed us tired pilgrims first. 

The grandmother and her son.

The son's wife who took quite the liking to John.  Sure I'll share him. Hahaha 

Son in law who seemed to take a lot of ribbing.  With the son and wife's daughter.  And his little daughter. 

The owners of the house,  Grandma and Grandpa.  I was afraid she was going to choke me! 

The son, who fought in Angola in the 70s.

Some random friend who dropped by.

Guy on left is Pablo who was walking to Fatima and the lady in blue is French woman Madeline. 

We met Canadians Michael and Emily from Calgary this morning at breakfast at our hotel.  We can always recognize pilgrims by their dress. We chatted a bit in the early hours as we stuffed ourselves with the provided sustenance. Bom Caminho!  We caught up with them soon enough and as usually happens we started walking together.  We learned a lot about each other and before you knew it 15k was completed!  We both agreed that as couples walking together,  being with others helps the miles go faster.  We stopped at our albergue in Grijo while they were going to walk on another 5k and then get a taxi to their planned stop in Porto.  It would have been another long leg otherwise. We would have pushed on but it being Saturday night,  once again there was limited accommodation in this touristic city.  So John booked a studio apartment for two nights starting tomorrow.   We said goodbyes and hoped to catch up with each other eventually.

John checked out the alburgue with Pablo,  the Portuguese guy who took it upon himself to show him around since the hospitelero wouldn't be there until 6.  We could have walked on to a pensao 1.3k further off the camino. We decided we could sweat it out and do the alburgue.  This place was very old and rustic.  7€ each. At least our bunk was in a single room.  I put my pareo up over the door less doorway and got my shower over with as quickly as I could.  Pretty bohemian set up. Ate lunch in the kitchen  and turned Pablo down for an offered drink down in the attached bar/café since it was 3 hours before the planned dinner we would be having next door.

Did our laundry, rested and caught up on Internet stuff. Madeline,  a French woman who was 70 something on her 5th Camino checked in. We had heard about her from the Canadians.  She spoke no English but agreed to join us for dinner and a before dinner glass of wine where Pablo had been getting hammered watching futbol all afternoon. She and John used Google translate to communicate.  It was so amazing. The small bar/café was filled with men playing a card game where they would slam down their fists and cards on the table.  Standing room only for us.

Since Pablo was so drunk,  Madeline was grateful that John and I were there as well when we all went to the amazing dinner next door that was arranged for us for 6.50€. WHAT an experience! Traditional and typical pork meat, rice,  potatoes,  tomato salad,  cakes, melon, café, and port wine with the entire extended family. With minimal English spoken! Pablo obviously  wasn't much help even though his first language was Portuguese. This language is way more difficult for me than Spanish but there are similarities.  They would rather speak any other language than Spanish it seems.  Iberian peninsula politics that go way back apparently.  One of the women liked John a little too much and grabbed at his chest laughing and saying something I probably didn't want to understand. Alrighty then! No more port for her!

Warm hugs from Madeline as only you can get from sharing such an incredible experience.  We were glad we took a chance on this alburgue.  As John says,  "the Camino takes,  the Camino gives..."