Day 25 Camino de Santiago July 30, Villadangos del Paramos

Great sleep last night!  Stayed in a 1 star hotel with my own bathroom.  No one sleeping above me, next to me, below me... Even got to watch the Olympics, if you call watching Spain lose to Honduras in soccer.  As soccer goes, it was a great game... lot's of scoring - 1 to 0!!  The goalie for Honduras had tons of saves and Spainish players could only shake their head.  The announcer kept screaming, "Que Lastima!!!"
       I went to visit the Hotel San Marcos on the way out of Leon this morning after I left my hotel at 8:30.  That sounds early to me, but trust me, these peligrinos are dead serious.  They get up at 4:30, 5:30 to leave.  They get to the same spot I do, just two or three hours earlier.  Go figure.
    The Hotel San Marcos is a truly beautiful building, and if I had someone to share it with, I'd have happily dropped the 100 E a night.  That's why ya work, right!!??!

  I would have walked more today but left leg said, "Nope!"  There was a tunnel to walk through today that made kids of old men...older than me... People were hooting and hollering to hear an echo.  I met the sweetest old man on the trail who had carved a walking cane.  It was much too fragile for the trail, but it would have been a great memento.

 

 Okay, help me with this.... This is a water tower, that the town owners must have decided was unattractive... so they spend thousands of dollars on a metal screen for it.  Made it look like a Titan Missile silo, only above ground.  How did this happen???  Lucky for you, I did some research and have the transcripts from the town hall meeting:
Mayor:  Okay, we have 100,000 Euros left in the budget.  How should we spend it?  I'm opening the floor for suggestions....
Teacher - Well, as you know, our library was built in 1947 and we have only 13 books in it.  Two of the children have already read 12 of them.  What will they do next??
Concerned citizen - Oh for the love of Pedro... how many books do they need?  That's a book a year.  I don't read no books, and ain't I okay?!!
Mayor - Anyone else with an idea?
Nurse - We are almost out of penicillin, bandages, and yellow fever serum.  We could use these things and save tons of lives.
Concerned citizen - What are they doing with all my tax money that they claim is being spent on our Universal Health Care???
Mayor - anyone else?
Concerned citizen - Well, I been looking at that there water tower and I come up with an idear that I seen over in Villa del Rio.  Let's put a metal fencing all the way around it.  Make it look like one of them there Missile silos!!
Mayor - Sounds good to me!  Good suggestion Dad!   When can your metalworks company begin the construction?
Concerned Citizen - You sure gotta love this Deemocracy thang!

Change before you have to.

Jack Welch