06/25/06 TARDAJOS

On the 21st I made it to Santo Domingo de la Calzada and But, came by the partial ruins of an 8th century monostary which was really interesting. It seems that these really old churches etc. in this area looked more like Greek/Roman temples than what we think of as a church. Or, from what little I have seen it seems that way to me. The next day was Belorado where I had a really nice place to stay. I ran into the French couple that I had had dinner with a couple of times before and we ate together again. There was also a Swiss guy from Geneva who could speak a little English and another French speaker who could speak virtually no English. How I believe a myth was born. The French speaker with virtually no English asked me if I had met the man from USA, San Francisco who was 82 years old? I thought about it and asked him if the guy had a bad limp on the left side. Well, yes. Then I asked him if his name was Gordon? Well he thought maybe so. This sure sounded like Gordon who I had met just this side of the Pyrenees and who is 72 years old. I know this because we did a little age comparison stuff when we stayed at the same hotel. When one doesn't speak the languages to well, those mistakes happen.
Eighty two--- Seventy two it is only a 1 and a 0 different.
The next day on to Villafranca Montes de Oca where I stayed in one of the worst places I have had the bad luck to encounter. It was just so drab and down trodden looking along with the fact that the owner's children worked there and they were just as badly behaved and surley as any teen ager who didn't want to do the job can be. Very depressing place. Basically it was a truck stop and had big trucks coming in and going out until very late at night. Gointg out fo there the following morning it was up hill, down hill, up hill, d... until San Juan de Ortega where a bunch of Germans and Austrians were drinking coffee at a restaurant. They were not walking together but just all ended up there and had stayed at the same places much of the time. Then a South Korean showed up walking alone along with the rest of us. Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to ask her 'WHY'? That night I stayed at Atapuerca in a lovely little Hostel attached to an Albergue. On the 25th I got starterd by 6 am as there was a long ways to Burgos and I wanted to be there before 1pm so that I could get a stamp for my pilgrim's passport at the cathedral before 1pm. I made it in time as I had a map of Burgos and realized that I could take a bus from the outskirts to the center of town and did just that with a couple from Italy. On the way out fo town I ran into a German speaker with a dog who was having trouble because his dog was lame and he was trying to go on a train. I have just been kicked off the computer.