I thought I would throw in a couple of other sites that we saw when we were in Leon. The first picture is of San Isidoro, which is an 11th century church that was built on a Roman foundation and is also built into the medieval city wall. We went to Pilgrim's Mass last night in San Isidoro. The priest gave a very nice blessing to all of the pilgrims at the end of the service, and then afterward even personally dated the stamp that was entered on everyone's credencial.
The second picture is of a building that was built by Gaudi. It's not quite as dramatic as some of his buildings in Barcelona, but it was still very striking in the plaza where it resides. The final picture is of San Marcos, which was on the road out of town. This was originally a pilgrim hospital built in the 12th century to honor Saint Mark. It then became the headquarters of the Knights of the Order of Santiago, which was created to help protect the pilgrims along the Camino. It has a lot of pilgrim symbols on it, like the scallop shells, the sword of Santiago, and metal medallions of each of the major cities along the Camino. As you can see, it's very impressive looking. Actually, a large part of this has been turned into a parador, one of the government-owned high-end hotels. And who should we see this morning up on one of the balconies of San Marcos when we were out taking pictures of this fabulous place, but Don and Kim, who were in one of our previous pictures and with whom we have shared several23wesdzx/. dinners. They were actually staying in the room where the parador scene was shot from the movie The Way. Supposedly Francisco Franco (former dictator of Spain in the mid 1900's) also stayed in that room. Anyway, it was great to see them, as they are staying on and they will not arrive in Santiago until after we have left. So it was a chance to share some final goodbyes and email addresses (I'm sure all of the other people around us appreciated us yelling back and forth, as they were up on the 3rd floor).
Today we walked from Leon to Villar de Mazarife. It was 22.2 km. Walking through the suburbs & industrial section of Leon was not nearly as nice as the old inner city. However, after about 5 miles, we got out into the countryside, with wide open spaces and less traffic. At times, the Camino provides two options: one is along some of the more major roads and connects larger towns. The other is through the countryside, with stays in much smaller towns (Villar de Mazarife has a population of around 400 people). Obviously, we are taking the more rural route. The positive is that the walk is much more pleasant. The one drawback is that there are fewer places to choose from when looking for someplace to stay. Tonight we are staying in our first albergue. While many albergues have large rooms that a number of people sleep in all together, the one that we are staying in does have private rooms. However, there are only 2 bathrooms for all 7 rooms to share (and there are probably around 15 people staying in these 7 rooms, so this should be interesting, particularly in the morning :-). Anyway, we are chalking this up as one of those "cultural experience opportunities" when taking part in the Camino.
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