Our flights went pretty much exactly as scheduled which is unusual for me.  Even getting to the train station in Madrid was a piece of cake.  The train was a different story.  We’d decided against spending the extra money on a bed since the seat were supposed to extend to be almost flat, complete with foot rests. We knew we’d be exhausted after not sleeping on an overnight flight, waiting at Heathrow, then another 2 hour flight so figured we’d just sleep on the train. Wrong. They lied. None of us got much sleep on the 9 hour trip. Oh well. That makes tonight’s real bed all the more exciting!  Train stops weren’t announced either so we had to count on our stop happening at approximately the time they said it would. Luckily that worked out.

Our hotel was a short walk from the station and we only had to ask directions once. That’s because the man pointed it out and we could practically SEE it from where he was. We were tired, ok?

It was nice of them to have the room ready for us as it was only 8 am so we settled in and decided to go out exploring after finding a place that would serve eggs or some kind of meat for breakfast as we were all starving. Spaniards aren’t big on hearty breakfasts so they’re hard to find.

We backtracked for a bit, as in, going the opposite direction of Santiago de Compostela as we’ll be heading the right way tomorrow. We walked all over Sarria, got lost a couple of times, saw some churches, a cemetery and chatted with nice people. We even saw some kids dressed up for Halloween.

Octopus is a speciality of the Galicia region and after a bit of research we decided on Pulperia Luis, mapped out the directions and headed out. When it didn’t appear to be where we thought, I asked a couple of ladies in my pathetic Spanish. After some back and forth explanations, they pointed across the street…. at Pulperia Luis. We all got a good laugh. They blamed the van sitting in front of us. We blamed the scaffolding blocking the view.

The restaurant had big long tables with benches and wasn’t very busy but it was only 4 pm. No, we’re not that old, just weary and hungry. A young lady came over and asked “pulperia? octopus?”  Yep, we knew that’s all they serve and just one way so she brought us each a heaping wooden dish, a big bowl of bread, wine for Sue and water for Anita and I and we dug in. DELICIOUS! She explained what desert was and I understood cheese and that’s about it. She brought a hunk of cheese and a hunk of a red jelly thing with a couple of knives and again, we dug in. YUM! Good thing we had a bit longer walk back that it was supposed to be (someone got a little lost?) as we were all stuffed.

Today we put in about 15 km which is pretty good for 3 women who have had less than 5 hours sleep total over the last two nights. No naps allowed. We want to sleep tonight! Tomorrow’s a big day and our first official day of our Camino.