Progress report: Santa Catalina de Somoza, Leon

Hello, everyone! We´re in Santa Catalina de Somoza, just past Astorga.
Since the last post, we have been through the meseta, the plains, of northern Spain. It´s been great! Lots of compressed caliche paths, some horridly rocky ones too, of course, sunny weather, and lots of sights.
A tip to walking on the rockier paths, according to my sweetie: if there are sheep droppings, which there often are, follow them. The sheep have already found the less-rocky part of the path.
We went to the cathedral in Astorga today, and the cathedral museum, and it was lovely. They have an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, on the outside wall of the choir enclosure, and also a Capilla de la Santissima: Adoration Chapel, in our words.
We saw many lovely hand-sewn vestments in the cathedral museum, I took pictures. We also saw some ancient hand-written choir manuscripts (very large letters for the whole choir to share) and illustrated  Books of Hours and Bibles.
We are headed up into the mountains tomorrow, towards Rabanal, hopefully without any snow falling on us, nor any more hail, etc.!
We can see snow on mountain tops, but not the ones we are heading towards.
The day before yesterday we ate gazpacho for the first time here, it was a lovely meal, a Menu del Peregrino in the Albergue de San Antonio de Padua in villarente. The chefs were called into the dining room for all of us to give them a good round of applause and Bravo!! The Aggie group was there, too.
The day before yesterday we were in Leon. We missed the festival, but we toured the cathedral there. It is about the same age as the cathedral in Burgos and it is lovely. In the morning, we stayed around, loafing, over breakfast, so we could go to the post office and ship home about 5 pounds of stuff that we don´t need and shouldn´t have packed. (I love you guys, family, but Spain is not the wild interior of Alaska!)
Yesterday we stayed in Santibanezde Valdeiglesia, about 10 km. before Astorga, in a new albergue. (No Aggies, this time--the came through late and decided to strike for Astorga so they could all stay in the same town.) It was very clean and spacious. And there was a washing machine and a dryer! Y'all would be surprised at how excited I get about such
ordinary things these days.
We will post again when we find another good network to post from. (Many of the rent a box computers have been on the paintballnnavarra network and I can´t get the blog new post page to even open on that one.)
We have many, many photos to upload when we get home. (I am homesick, too, but I keep stomping it down, because our way home goes through Santiago.)
´Til next time!