Sunshine on my shoulders

Hello, everyone.

We left Viana about 10 or 10:30 in the morning and, shortly after leaving the village, found ourselves walking in sunshine. It was wonderful. And the sun stayed out all the way into Logrono and for some while after we got there.

Bridge at edge of Logrono

Just past this bridge on the way into the city was a tourist information office, which had maps. We told them--they asked where we were from--that we're from Texas and discovered that they had encountered other Texans recently. It wasn't a huge surprise when we discovered ourselves bunking with some of the Aggie group at the albergue.
This albergue had a lovely, below-grade courtyard with lots of chairs to sit in, and a square water feature thingie. (More look-at pond than anything else, only about 4 feet across.) After we put our sleeping bags out on the bunk beds and tucked our packs into the cubby at the end of the row, I went outside and sat with my (ugly, torn-up) feet in the sunshine so the skin could breathe and dry out. Later on, my sweetie persuaded me to go wandering with him, wearing my shower sandals, in search of food and wine.
We discovered that we were wandering the shop streets during the siesta time. The folks in northern Spain take their siesta time very seriously. Almost everything was closed up tight. But we did find a place to have a glass and a snack.
 Logrono has lots of tapas/pintxos bars to eat and drink in. The wine was good, too, like almost all of the wine we drank in Spain. On the way back to the albergue, we stopped at a tiny hole in the wall grocery and bought some tea bags, so the next time we hauled shivering selves into an albergue in the afternoon we could make tea and get some warmth into the body core. Somehow the presence of ready to use tea bags in the pack warded off cold weather for the rest of the trip, too. (Okay, not really, but it felt like it!)

Pilgrims walking through Logrono