DAY 16: September 8 REST DAY IN DAY IN SANTO DOMINGO DE LA CALZADA

Once again lulled by the tolling of the church bells, we enjoyed a glorious sleep knowing that this was a non-walking  day:-)
Santo Domingo is named for the patron saint of civil engineers. As a young man he wanted to join a monastery but failed and he became a hermit. A chance encounter with San Gregoire, who was given the task by King Alphonso of encouraging Christians to the area to counter the growing Muslim presence, resulted in Santo Domingo being ordained.
San Gregoire and Santo Domingo together oversaw the construction of roads, bridges and hostels along the way.

Coming into town we passed large storage buildings which according to the signs were full of  potatoes….then we came upon a loading area with the same signage. This seems to be the potato area of Spain?

Right now we are sitting under a tree outside the lavanderia waiting for our laundry. Mutti was delighted she was able to use her very favourite Spanish phrase with the others in the laundromat. “El mundo es un panuelo” – the world is a handkerchief. A young Italian boy asked her to write the phrase in his journal….she tried to tell him that it is one of about only 10 phrases that she knows—all of them equally useless:-) Mutti says her “popularity” in the laundromat had more to do with the fact that we had detergent to share than her fluency in Spanish. We manage to communicate fine with English, Dad’s French, German and Mutti’s “Spanglish” and of course, lots of pantomime:-) Despite the continuing stream of peregrinos we are still finding very few locals speak English. It is interesting that those from South America have difficulty with the Spanish spoken here. Smiles, thumbs up and waving seem to be the international language of the Camino. We are now feeling the rhythm and spirit of our walk. Each day there is something special. Those who have written about walking the Camino note that it is “a place of frequent coincidence and serendipity”. That it is:-)