June 4 Wednesday - Zamora

June 4 Wednesday - Zamora

Today I found the Mercado de Abastos. These are markets where there sell meat, poultry, fish, vegetables, cheeses, sausages, nuts, spices and fruit from stalls inside the market place. They are kind of like our Farmer's Market, but inside, under a roof and often with two floors. I love these places. And I like to buy my food there because it is fresh. It's also a good place to find romaine lettuce for salads. In the poultry stalls, they have all parts of they chickens for sale, including their feet. The fish are most often whole. It's a trip. The meat stalls actually slice your steak off a slab of beef. I get so used to buying meat wrapped in plastic resting on a styrofoam tray. This connects what I'm eating to an animal. It could turn me back to vegetarianism. 

Instead of going to huge supermarkets like Von's or giant stores like Target, I just walk along the street and stop in little shops. There's a ferretería where I look for a coffee pot, a basket shop where I buy a trash basket for the albergue because one mysteriously disappeared last night. A papelería where I look for a marker. A panadería where I but some bread. And it goes on. It adds a whole other dimension to shopping, especially since it was a warm sunny morning and great to be walking outside. 

We have only five pilgrims tonight. One is a young German woman who stayed a second night because she has tendonitis. She speaks English and helped us with the cleaning. This was great because we were full last night with 32 pilgrims. And there's a couple with a story. She is German and he is English. They met on the Camino several years ago and fell in love. They lived in Liverpool for a few years because he had medical problems. Last year they walked the Camino Frances to Santiago and got married in the Cathedral on June 29. This year the are walking the Via de la Plata and want to be in Santiago for their anniversary. Isn't that a great story? They both speak English and are very nice. 

We also have a young man staying here. He is Bolivian, has lived in Maryland most of his life and is currently living in Salamanca. He speaks English and Spanish and a number of other languages. He is a very interesting young man. 

And I spoke on the phone today. I usually let José Luis answer it because I'm not real confident in my phone Spanish. But he wasn't here so I answered it and talked to a bicyclist answering all his questions. I was shocked when I hung up. I understood what he was asking and he understood my answers. 

Well, that's it for today.