It's My Lazy Day(Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson) - A day to be lazy in Santiago De Compostela

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What can you do when it is raining and you are on holiday? Today we are going to find out.

We have been blessed with great, dry weather for the three BBA’s so far and it has always seemed disappointing when one morning we wake up and it’s raining and the forecast says 90% chance of rain for most of the day. At home we would stay in bed longer, as long as it wasn’t a work day, and read the newspaper more extensively than we usually have time for. But we haven’t found an English newspaper on this journey so far.

Rain always means though that it is a good time to catch up on the administrative chores and the washing bag was full of clothes to be given the once over in the washing machine that comes with this Air BnB apartment.

One thing we find hard to get used to is the front loading washing machines. It’s not that we don’t have them in New Zealand it is just that we have always had a top loading machine which we have always favoured as your wash is done in 20 to 30 minutes and if you want to you can add or take clothes out during the wash cycle. This is not something you can do with the front loader and the damn thing can take up to 3 hours to do a wash!

With this machine Gretchen did find a cycle that took just under an hour so the timer was set and we got on with other things as the rain continued to fall outside.

Drying the clothes is usually a challenge and although the website for the apartment mentioned a dryer we couldn’t find one anywhere although there was a drying rack or in our parlance a clothes horse.

This was moved upstairs to the heater in the bedroom that seemed to produce the best heat and the clothes horse erected and clothes added. We have 2 more nights here and 2 full days so that should be enough time to have the washing dry.

Eventually the rain did stop just before midday and the sky partially cleared of the dark clouds.

Time for some shopping for supplies including a couple of nights dinners.Mr Google supplied us with the information we needed for the direction to the nearest supermarket in the old town that was the closest to us and so donned in raincoats just in case the rain returned while we were out.

We set off on the concrete path across the open rough field of the barrio(subdivision of the city or what we might refer to as a suburb).The impression we had of the barrio we were staying in was that it may have had older housing that has since been demolished with a couple of larger apartment blocks built to replace single dwellings that had past their use by date while the building our apartment was in may have been around for perhaps 80 to 100 years although the interior had only recently been completely modernised.

As we headed to the city we saw the reason for the police visit last night as we arrived.

Hidden from our sight initially was a group of tent like structures in which transients or perhaps just people who couldn’t afford the rent for an apartment were living. They looked like they had been there for quite some time and we did recall one of the comments on the Air BnB website had mentioned that the guest person didn’t like walking past the tents.

There was no sign of any power or water to the collection of structures and there just seemed to be an open camp fire over which to boil water and cook food.

It did give us some concern for the safety of Peggy parked on the open ground but there were the other cars of the Barrio residents parked there also and they didn’t seem to be damaged in any way and there were some high value cars amongst them.

The supermarket aisles were very much like the streets in the Barrio, desparately narrow and hardly enough room to pass anyone coming in the other direction let alone lean over and get something from the shelf that you wanted without getting in the way of other shoppers.

Surprisingly for such a small shop it was very well stocked and we got all we needed to restock our supplies plus our dinners.

As we emerged from the shop the rain came back and we picked up our pace for the return journey back to the apartment so as not to get too wet.

The air temperature was struggling to get into double figures so the soup and fresh baguette for lunch was just perfect.

We whiled away the afternoon reading and snoozing until the rain stopped again and rather than getting ‘cabin fever ‘from being inside too long we decided on a brisk walk up to the old town.

As we left the apartment we caught view of a cat, sitting and watching us from the window of a neighbour’s upper floor window. Most cats would move if you stare long enough at them but this one just sat and watched us. Hereafter we will call him/her as ‘The Barrio Cat’!

The city was founded around 800AD and the layout of the narrow streets in the original part of the old city had very much a Roman influence. Not that there are any buildings left remaining from those days but many of the ones still standing do date back to the 1400’s and onwards.

The city had been governed by a range of invaders over history including the Romans, to the Muslims and finally taken back by Spaniards.

Our walk took us up and down a number of the streets which are now almost given over totally to pedestrians which makes strolling at a leisurely pace and checking out the shop windows all that much more pleasant.

With the prospect of better weather tomorrow we held off getting amongst the many buildings that surround the cathedral which was one of the principal reasons as to why we came to the city.

We checked Peggy as we walked past her to the apartment just to make sure she still had all four wheels attached.

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Comments

[KJ]

Another coincidence
The eeriness of coincidence hearing that Merle Haggert had passed away and seeing his name in your song title today!

[Whiskers]

I know ! Yet at the time I was typing the title I didn't know he had died and on his birthday too.What a coincidence !