September 13, 2015:  The Camino trail picked up just a block from Hotel Victoria and wound around the far side of the monastery.

As we headed west out of town, we passed a bar and, to our delight, were greeted by Thiago, our friend from Brazil.  We were happy to see him and find that he was still walking, albeit with some difficulty.  We snapped a picture with him and traded email addresses.  Since he was still eating breakfast, we left him there with the hope of seeing him sometime down the road.

Before long, the rain started coming down and we had to get out our ponchos as we made our way on the roadside path along the river.  During this stretch, we passed an old pilgrim.

As we headed northwest to meet up with the standard route to Sarria from Triacastela via San Xil, we passed through several small hamlets and farms for 8 km or more, all dotted with old stone structures and inhabited with local livestock.  One old roman bridge was guarded by a stone angel.

Just after Perros we spotted a beautiful railing on a balcony, reminiscent of what we had seen in Samos.

Then we ducked through a tunnel and met up with the other Camino track at Aguiada.  It was raining pretty heavily by this time, but we were encouraged by the fact that it would not be too much longer before we reached Sarria.

Our calculations were correct.  Albergue A Pedra was at the easternmost side of Sarria, and we found it quite easily.  We were shown our room in the pension section by a very friendly host who told us that there were restaurants just a few hundred meters down the road to the west where we could eat as early as we wanted.  There was no food served at the albergue unless one wished to use kitchen facilities at the albergue which were minimal. Looked as if there were a really nice picnic area and BBQ out back, but of course the heavy rain made that unusable at the moment. We gathered some of our dirty laundry, and I went to the albergue section and used the washing machine there.  I couldn’t figure out the dryer settings, however, and our clothes did not get completely dry.  So I brought them back to the room and Heather strung up our clothesline and we made do  with that, hoping that everything would be dry enough by morning.

After showers and a brief nap, we set out to find the nearest restaurant.  There, in this modern cafe with Spanish MTV blaring, we had an Ensalada Mixta and a pizza, and finished it off with a big ice cream popsicle.  Then it was back to our room, do some Facebook posting and sleep.