Day 9 - Guemes (579) to Santander (560)
So far the only constant in this camino has been meeting Wolfgang every couple of hours :D
We woke up in a super beautiful and misty Gumes and enjoyed breakfast with hundreds of Oro Saiwa simil biscuits and some couch philosophy. “Careful for what you learn cause you cannot unlearn it!”
We started walking on a cool morning and today it was totally amazing, besides the first part on the road, we took the coastal way to Santander and enjoyed amazing landscapes walking in the fields and next to the cliffs.
After the usual second breakfast at a cafe - people say they lose weight during the camino and I don’t understand how it is possible - we met Pietro and Marco (o Matteo? I am ashamed to say that I cannot remember). I walked a bit with them while Spencer met and joined an Australian couple! It was quite fun to talk to them and discuss about boomers’ pre concepts :D
I soon rejoined Spencer and once at the beach, we decided to stop for a quick swim.
The city was not so far and we walked on the super long beach to the town of Somo, where we shopped for some lunch. Today I went for some precooked rice condito with pickles, not so bad and a good change to the usual panino!
We then got to the ferry terminal and took the ferry to Santander where we checked in our pensione! While waiting for the day with share or fisrt cana of the day, I don’t know yet how beer can be so good and refreshing here!
If yesterday was a Camino burnout day, today was definitely camino hype for the both of us!
Today had been so chill that I arrived in Santander still full of energy so after a shower and some laundry (shower with clothes on) we went first to get our stamps at the cathedral and then to the prehistoric museum which was quite interesting!
This morning I got Pietro’s number since they were also getting to Santander today before ending their camino tomorrow and so we met for dinner!!
It was a very pleasant dinner, Spencer has gotten so much better surviving Italians-only dinners and we had a lot of interesting conversations, Pietro has definitely a lot of stories to share. He made me think how important it is to record memory otherwise they just slip your mind so I added something here that I forgot to write before
In Bilbao, Pieter told us how stange it felt when it got to the city and everyone had their mask on again. As a good pilgrim, he continued greeting people on the street but as he got to the town people stopped answering and instead looked at him weirdly
I had 1 and a half beers too much for dinner and I started craving a smoke. I ended up buying the first pack of sigarets since forever and only smoking 3 puffs before being disgusted :D Spencer judged me, not proud of myself either.
Spence just fell asleep next to me with his book in his hand, I hope his sore throat will be better tomorrow!