October 14, 2001
Reliegos- Leon (cloudy/rain at night)
15.3m/24.5km - 272.0m/446.3km

This day is a blur of walking for me until we are 6.2m/10.0km from Leon. We are walking on a path close to the main highway into Leon when I see a large billboard that says "Leon! Ten minutes ahead." Yeah, by car. We have at least a two to three hour walk left.

B and J are not in sight when I reach the village of Archueja so I start looking around for a bar knowing they will be inside waiting for me. I walk up the main street glancing down any side street I cross until I see a bar sign up one street and there I turn. When I get to the bar I try the door but it is locked. B and J must have tried here too and when they found it locked kept on going. I turn around and walk back to main street. When I get there I hear someone yell behind me and I turn to see J holding the door to the bar open and waving at me. It seems the door sticks and I did not pull hard enough to open it. We eat lunch and then continue on our way.

When we reach Leon we check into the La Posada Regia hotel, which is close to Leon Cathedral. We have decided to stay two nights. My room is on the top floor right under the rafters. It has a TV, a bathroom, and no window, just a sky light. When I open the skylight I can hear the sounds of traffic on the street. The first thing I do is take a shower and the second thing I do is take a long hot bath. After my bath I turn on the TV and watch a rerun of the old TV series Charlie's Angels where I learn something very interesting. You can watch an episode of Charlie's Angels that has been dubbed into another language and still follow the story completely. While I am watching, I get two phone calls, one from B and one from J. Each asks if I want to go walk around the city. I pass on both offers because both times they call I am lying on the bed with my feet propped up on the wall hoping this will make them hurt less. I do tell them I will meet them for dinner.

When we meet downstairs for dinner T is there. J ran into her at the Cathedral. She tells us she is either going home or jumping ahead because she just heard Swiss Air may be going under and, unfortunately, she has tickets home on them. She has also heard that the other airlines will honor Swiss Air tickets if the airline does go under, so maybe she will just jump ahead. I tell her ,as a former airline employee, I would not trust anything that is being said right now. My experience had been that once an airline stops operating the other airlines will not accept their tickets. If she does not use the ticket now she has to be able to afford the price of a new ticket if Swiss Air does go under before she finishes the walk. T says she will think about it and decide what to do tomorrow. We ask her if she wants to eat dinner with us but she has other plans and so we say goodnight.

We find a small local restaurant and J orders frogs legs, something he has never eaten before. While we are waiting for our food J gets very nervous, he is not sure he made the right dinning choice. When his food arrives it turns out to be a plate full of what looks like small pond frogs. J looks at them and says he can't eat them because they look like the lower half of Pinocchio. He is also unsure how to eat them so the waitress comes over and picks one up and eats it to show him how it is done. Finally he works up the courage to try one and then finishes the whole plate.

As we walk back to the hotel I think about how glad I am that we are staying in Leon two nights. I need this break badly.