Long day, lots of breaks

 Today was a beautiful day - big blue sky, breezy, great vistas. This was the last long(ish) day of the trip. We have four more days walking after this before Santiago. We left Portomarín at our usual 8:20 and started walking. After 8.2 miles, we met up at a cafe for coffee and croissants figuring that to be about half way. My right foot (this is Bob) has been sore for several days and today was  particularly sore. Mitch and I normally walk together but we were not sharing nicely today because I was in pain. When Kim and Phil arrived a few minutes after we got there, Kim's boot soles were delaminating. Everything that has been stable and good on the road was breaking!

Mitch and Bob split which allowed Mitch to really go fa st, and Bob to set his own pace. Kim taped his shoes on and prepared to walk into his destination. Phil just kept on keepin' on. we were beset by the Italian bike team - 30 hotshot bikers insisted on passing hundreds of pilgrims on the trail - instead of riding on the road immediately adjacent where no pilgrims walk (but cars and farm equipment do pass.

Farming is in full flush in Galicia - the farmers are cutting hay, drying hay, baling hay and feeding cattle.

It seems that there are every new piece of farm equipment that any farmer could want, but they are still farming relatively small fields, so everything gets done quickly and the equipment spends a lot of time on the road between fields.

When we finally arrived in Palas de Rei, there was two miles (by my GPS) of athletic fields for a town of 3.4k inhabitants. It seemed a bit of overkill, but the Camino runs through all of it, so it is a great showpiece. Since it is on this final stretch of the Camino, it serves about 4-6000 pilgrims per day with dinner, breakfast and a bed. This happens 9 months out of the year, so they have the infrastructure for it. We found a little restaurant aptly named Pasta! A British expat couple opened it a year ago. It can seat 12 people, and we waited 45 minutes for a table, but the food was excellent and the four of us had a lovely dinner with wine for $80.

Life here on the Camino has its ups and downs, but it is pretty good compared to the other options.