Leon

My long day of travel ended in Leon.  I also joined my fellow hospitalera, Beth Lord from Seattle.  We will take the rest of Thursday and part of Friday to recover from the flight, drink coffee and see the city.

This building is called Casa Botines.  It was designed and built by Antoni Gaudi in 1892-3.  Gaudi is best known for many buildings in Barcelona.  This building is fairly conventional.  He is best known for his whimsical designs in Barcelona.

 This the cathedral in Leon.  The guidebooks about Spain describe the three great Gothic cathedrals in Spain: Sevilla, Burgos and Leon.  This church dominates the city.  It's visible for miles to the east as pilgrims approach.

Friday was adventure day.  Our alburgue is in a small village (150 people) and not on a bus route.  There is a daily bus east from Leon to a small town nearby that arrives at 6:45 pm.  We hopped off the bus and asked a local senora which was the road to Calzadilla.  She replied that we should go to another town to start, we couldn't get there from where we were standing.  I knew that we could so we set off walking and reached here about 8:30 pm.  Saturday, the previous hospitalero gave us the keys and now and now we are "on the job" and so far nine pilgrims have stopped to spend the night.