What goes up must come down!

We went to bed about 10 with about 40 of our new friends! The hostel is strict. You have to be in and quiet by 10PM. This is a good thing and everyone was very respectful of people that were already asleep. We went to our bunk beds and climbed in and hunkered down for the night. About 10 minutes later the snoring started. I had ear plugs in and felt like they did no good. The snoring was coming from all over the room and then the occasional toot would sound off. Here a toot there a toot everywhere a toot toot.......well you get the idea this night was going to be interesting. I feel like I only slept maybe three hours tops. About 6:45 AM all I could here was zippers going back and forth. Some in unison and some not. Everyone was packing up and getting ready to head out. Since we were biking we felt no hurry and just let them do there thing and then we found out we all had to be out by 7:30AM. That was the rules. We put it in high gear and started packing and getting ready to get out. We made it with 5 minutes to spare! It was still a little on the dark side and we still needed to eat breakfast. We went to the same restaurant as the night before. For breakfast they only served toast, jelly, butter and coffee. So we did what everyone else did we had a toast and coffee breakfast. After that we got on our bikes. We headed over to the church one more time. Dad wanted to place a stone for a very special friend and this stone came from a much larger stone that he was unable to bring on the trip. On the Camino people place these stones as homage to another person or some event in their lives. We were looking forward to some down time today. Literally hopping to coast some today. We went down the hill to the Camino and around the corner and guess what?!?!? There was a big hill in front of us! Totally not expected. Anyway after we climbed for awhile my Dad said he needed a break. So we stopped for about 15 minutes. We climbed some more and finally we thought we saw a cafe at the top of the hill. Maybe if we can make it there we thought, then we could rest and have some down hill time. About 3 kilometers short of our destination there was a scenic overlook. Dad decided he needed one more rest before we climbed to the cafe. This time he decided to take off his helmet and lay down with his helmet under his head. With his knees up and his eyes closed. Now don't get me wrong my Dad's a good looking guy but when you take a 78 year old man lay him on the side of a mountain road on his back with his eyes closed this is bound to cause a commotion. We looked like we were waiting for a chopper to air-vac him out. Sure enough within two minutes a mountain biker zoomed up to both of us asking if we were OK. My Dad told him he was fine never opening his eyes once. The guy said he had some power gel and he dug through his bag to find one. Then he handed it to Dad and told him to eat it all right now. Now you might expect my Dad to say thanks about now but you would be wrong. He asked the rider if the gel had any illegal substances in it. The rider said not sure if it was legal here but he was pretty sure it was legal in Portugal where he got it. Ha Ha you cannot make this stuff up! Love it. After eating the gel we rode to the cafe. The cafe was where the Camino trail and the Camino met so there were plenty of Pilgrims there! We went in got a couple of coffees with milk and Dad worked out some Vegetarian soup. Things were looking up. While he rested I went outside and took a few pictures of the place. There were several large dogs probably 20 chickens and a few pilgrims.  Everyone was just happy to be done with the hill that we

all just came up. By the way one thing in Spain is sometimes it is hard to figure out the men's from the woman's bathroom. This cafe had the perfect signs. No mistaking these. (See pics below.) Once Dad had rested we headed out again this time to several long stretches of downhills with a few uphills in between. Finally we had one last downhill stretch into the town of Samos....our final destination for the day! We rode into the edge of town and I decided to let my Dad rest there while I biked around town and looked for a cool place to stay. I biked to the other side of town and decided that we were in the right spot. As I was riding back to my Dad I hear my named being called from a cafe. It was Steven who we previously had breakfast with two days earlier. He quickly asked about Dad and said that some of them were staying at the monastery! I told him that we would stay there and raced back to tell my Dad. When I got back he had already seen the Monastery and was excited about this being an option. So we we walked in and Dad asked if they had any rooms because all we saw were bunk beds and he had decided he really wanted a room to be more comfortable. The woman in charge said that they did have rooms and they were $45 a night. Ok we will take one! Wait a a minute,,,, not so fast the minimum stay was three nights. So my Dad asks what if we pay for three nights and only stay for one night. The lady had to actually call a monk to find out if she was allowed to do that. She came back in about 10 minutes and said sorry but the monk she called had taken a vow of silence and could not give her the answer. But if we could wait she had another monk she could call. Ha Ha we are not going anywhere just let us now what you find out. After about 10 more minutes she found out that the next monk that she called was in the hospital and the monk attending him had also taken a vow of silence. She was so sorry but we could not have a room. My Dad decided that he really wanted to stay there so we said can we have a bunk and do you have a place for our bicycles? The answer was yes to both. As we were unloading our stuff she came up and told us that she forgot to tell us that there was no heat but they did supply one heavy blanket. Sure no problem we will take it. After we settled in we took about an hour tour of the entire Monastery. It was beautiful. This Monk spoke three languages and none of them were English. He found someone in our group that spoke French and English and one of our very own pilgrims translated the entire tour. It was beautiful but very cold and by the time we got back to our room we were freezing. There was a bar across the street that had internet so we went over there and had a few glasses of wine and eventually had dinner. We met plenty of friends that we already knew and a few new ones as well. We have learned that dinner is always served from 8PM onwards so we barely got done when it was time to be in our hostel at 10PM. This night was going to be interesting. Sleeping with all of these people as the temperatures kept dropping. We shall see what the Camino has in store for us tomorrow.  Buen Camino!

Dad's Quote of the Day: "Ben is right it was cold all night long and our bunks were about 60 feet and 40 people from the bathroom. Hard on an old man who needs at least three trips per night!"