Thursday, June 10, 2010

Melide! (pulpo y llueve) or the day we sang the "I love mud" song

Today was a shorter day, only 14 k from Palas de Rei to Melide. However it has not stopped raining! Apparently Saint James heard our prayers for agua while we were walking on the other side of the mountain and is, well, he is sending us water.

The rain let up a bit today and we´ve all invested in this amazing garment called a poncho! Not only does it keep you mildly dry and colorful on a grey wet day it can keep your pack dry while making you look like a turtle or a funky cult member! We continue to be a party of poncho wearers.

Walking up to Melide was quite shocking. For the past week and a bit we´ve been walking through cow town, meaning one building aside from the barn and possibly a cobble stone road. If you look on google maps (as I did in preparation for my in-class presentation) you may think to yourself "wow, only two roads such a small town!" Sorry to dissappoint it is in fact a small city, in comparison to the past week. We´re all a little worried about how we´ll react to a "true" city. We got to see the Iglesia de Santi Spiritus, a church built from the stones of the Castle and part of the Convent in town. The castle and the wall were destroyed during the revolts in 1467. We dodged the rain drops to see the Crucero San Roque, which is in the center of town and upon discovering that the romanesque church next to it was closed we dashed to the Pulperia Ezequiel for pulpo!

The reaction to the pulpo, the famous dish of Melide, was mixed, personally it was good, but not for people who dislike seafood. The best part of the restaurant was the large group of locals singing, quite boistrously, and banging the table in a quasi rythmic manner. Very entertaining for the first twenty minutes, they unfortunately left before us but most of them waved goodbye. We also got a couple orders of shrimp and razor clams; one is not supposed to eat the pico peppers that come in the shrimp sauce, which is what Kevin C, Mike, Collen and Reed did do, they had a lovely twenty minutes of breathing fire.

Fortunately we are all doing well physically with slight dismay when we think about walking the 32k in the rain tomorrow. We´re off to tackle our penultimate day of waking, (que triste!) all of us surprised how quickly time has passed since O´cebreiro. With three minutes left I bid you Hasta Luego, stay dry and warm and there will hopefully be pictures added later, as well as information about the lovely museo in town!

-Emilee

1 comment:

  1. "The rain let up a bit today and we´ve all invested in this amazing garment called a poncho!"

    Homer: "Chains for elephant, shots for elephant...oversized decorative poncho?!"

    Bart : "Technically it's for a giraffe, but I think I can let it out a little."

    --Rudy

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