Estella

Rest day. Ahhhh. I woke up in the night and searched in vain for my bedside clock at home, that's how deeply I slept.

A famous painter I never heard of called Estella home about 75 years ago. Our morning was spent meandering through a museum devoted to his works. Gustavo de Maeztu painted, drew, and did lithography (something my maternal grandfather was involved with also). His sumptuous paintings often have a voluptuous, happy, and powerful woman in the foreground with vivid Spanish landscapes in the background using all my favorite colors (ruby, emerald green, deep purples). Clearly he revered women. Something about his style reminds me of my brother Chris's work. I enjoyed this museum more than most because it was the perfect amount of art to digest without getting overwhelmed or saturated. See pic below of an example of Maeztu's work.

When we left for the museum this morning, we stepped out onto the plaza where there was an enormous farmers market going on. The local mushroom varieties, the olives, the borage vegetables (haven't tried this yet), the mountains of artichokes and bacalao (dried salted cod), etc.! A jazz guitarist added to the celebratory ambiance.

After lunch, during siesta, we came out of the same doors but it was as if we were on a different planet. Where hundreds of villagers milled about and rows of vendors shouted the merits of their produce, now only silence and emptiness remained. A lone street cleaner in neon green pants swept the remainder of artichoke leaves into a big pile. It was like we had slipped into an alternate universe. Siesta is a serious institution here.

Scott has been having some evocative moments in the cathedrals, remembering his Catholic upbringing. The Gregorian chants and the lofty spaces are very conducive to meditation and relaxation, that's for sure.

Ha, we have had a few Camino miracles already and I have thanked the powers that be. Scott inadvertently dropped 150 euros in the lobby downstairs when he took out his pilgrim passport to get it stamped and the money was still on the ground when we went back down a short while later. Whew! And when we were looking for a resting place for a couple nights in this town, the owner of this apartment just happened to have returned from the campo (countryside) at the moment we were going to ring the doorbell and he gave us a pilgrim deal without our even asking. I am still amazed that we were the only ones who hadn't been pickpocketed in Madrid. Some good luck so far!

One tiny misadventure today though. While the town had their siesta, we investigated some thousand year old castle ruins high above on a rocky outcrop. So cool! But we took a smaller path on the way down that ended in a step, slippery drainage ditch. We had to grab hemlock plants to arrest our sliding down too quickly. A high wall overlooking the cathedral steps stopped us in our tracks. There was nothing left to do but slide over and jump down. Thank goodness no one was around. Pilgrim mischief!

Red alert! Cowboy is in town! We thought he had gotten well ahead of us, but then we saw the black hat and heard a hearty "Howdy folks!" Time to get out of Dodge and head toward Los Arcos. Actually I found myself wondering what his story is. He seems a bit sad. Hmmm.