CHOCOLATE

This morning I, sadly, left Astorga..the city of chocolate. It was a beautful town with a population of about 12,000 people. I knew it was going to be good because before I even got to the town there was this awesome fruit and snack stand in the middle of nowhere with the most enlightened fella running it. After donating some euros, drinking some juice and getting an awesome stamp in my pilgrimage book, I continued on into Astorga. In Astorga, there were some awesome ancient Roman ruins to check out, lots of good eating, and neat pilgrim shops. To put the ruins into perspective, they were from the 3rd century...A.D! Loco huh? There was also an amazing cathedral... one of many in Spain but I never cease to be in awe of their beauty and sheer size. I hope to post pictures of this ASAP.

I pretty much ate my way through Astorga, one little dessert shop and chocolateria at a time and was only disappointed in the fact that the Museum of Chocolate was closed...sad. The reason it was closed, however, was pretty cool and it is because it was the Fiesta de los Abuelos...or a big festival for all of the grandparents of the city. You could identify those honored in two ways... one: they were old and two: they were wearing a colored scarf/handkerchief thing around their neck. Very cute! Apparently there was a huge tent with dancing and hot chocolate but we were all to tired to walk to the neighboring town to join in and simply watched from afar.

Other than the amazing chocolate... Astorga had a pretty cool Albergue with WARM showers-yay! It was bordered with a beautiful park with archways of roses. The people were super-friendly and my walking buddy,Shauna, and I made a handful of friends--we are especially getting close to a girl from Barcelona named Carolina who is doing the camino SOLA!

I didn´t buy anything notable in Astorgas, minus tons of chocolate and a couple little gifts, but I did take a funny picture with a camino pack that was bigger than I am!
Well, more on what I actually did today in a few!
Nays