Where Mr. B. B?: Day 9 Camino de Santiago July 14th, Logrono

I give you a Liverpoolian - Kevin. Great guy. Social worker traveling for about six months. Sounds more Irish than what I think English sound. Great stories and storyteller. For example:

People from Liverpool are called Scouces from an old word that means stew which the locals eat. People from Newcastle are called Geordies because the coal miners in Newcastle and only Newcastle use a type of head lamp made by Geordie, but here is the best one- the people from Hartley are called Monkey Hangers because during one of the wars with France a French ship crashed off the coast of Hartlepool and the only survivor was a monkey who the locals hung...as a spy!!

Today was a nice short walk, only 12 k to the town of Logrono, the third biggest on the Trail. It's a city of 150,000 and is extremely clean. Which doesn't explain the Restaurant Bacteria.

Right next to the Restaurant Bacteria was the Bar El Dorado, which is cool, but why have a picture of the Duke from his movie, "The Quiet Man"???

Along the trail, many reminders pop up now and then to remind you that it is a religious Trail, regardless of the other reasons people have for hiking it. This was a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

It was right after this that we saw a guy named Raj, who we had had dinner with the night before, walking toward us, toward Logrono, but without a pack. I figured that he had said, "Bugger this stuff!!!" Thrown his pack away and was off to catch a bus. He had left his wallet in the Auberge and had to walk back two hours and get it!

There is a beautiful lake on the trail, which is odd, because the day before I had just said to Kevin, "Kevin, I haven't seen a lake yet!"

After the lake there was a "famous" pilgrim who was stamping people's credencia and giving away fruit and walking canes....just because he was a nice guy! People do nice things like that on the trail for no reason.

The other day, I saw a guy sitting outside my hotel that I had passed by many times in the last week and he is traveling with 10 other Germans. He saw that I was tired and said, "Sit down and have a drink!" I told him that I would as soon as I got checked in. After checking in and showering, I went outside and he was still there. I got a drink and then after awhile, went to the restroom. When I returned, he was gone and one of the girls said, "Walter paid for your drink." I'm going to have to remember this trick!!

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.