Saturday May 18, 2019

Rates to Barcelos, Portugal; 32,320 steps

Proverbs 3 

v. 24  When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.  You never know who you’re going to lie down next to in an albergue.  Friday night it was the brokenhearted but talkative Slovenian.  Tonight my top bunk was pushed snuggly against the one next to me, mattresses separated only by a metal rail.  The other bunk’s occupant was a handsome blond-haired blue-eyed Nordic-speaking lad with a friend the next bunk over.  I called them the Norwegians, and they were sleeping peacefully when we came back from dinner.  On the other side of me, though a little apart because of the narrow aisle, was a young German who climbed down the ladder bottom out, clad only in his underwear.  I decided to sleep facing the opposite way of the young gentlemen.  But it’s all good.  Everyone in the albergues has been polite, and three young men in the corner of the room who had claimed lower bunks willingly moved up top to give their space to people who apparently looked even older than us.  The albergues are very interesting, and I am not afraid.  I kiss Maurice good night, climb up to my bunk, stretch out on my thin flowered cotton sheet whose edges I saturated before we left home with cinnamon oil, a purported natural bedbug repellent (just in case), snuggle into my new chartreuse Aegismax sleeping bag, and my sleep is sweet with the Lord.

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Actually Friday night I couldn’t fall asleep.  I lay there in the dark and heard everyone else come in, including the tall silent German and the German girls who seemed to break into giggles at every one of Maurice’s gentle snores, and the arrogant brokenhearted Slovenian who is walking 70 kilometers a day, and I heard them fall asleep.  I didn’t want to put my shorts on and try to climb down the ladder without falling and rummage through my pack in the dark for my magic sleep aid…but I must have slept because at 6:40 Maurice was telling me to get up.

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Too tired to write anyway.

And too much dancing at Fernanda’s house….

Check back in a few days.