It´s Not Swearing Because I Don´t Know Spanish...

First of all, sorry we haven´t posted in what´s all of sudden been a week. As it turns out, it was hard finding internet cafes in rural Spain.
That being said, we have had a lot of fun times, and a few not so fun ones, in the past week.
We left off last time in Santiago. After a fairly short (about 2 hrs) bus ride, we arrived in a small sea-side village called Laxe (pronounced Lashay). We stayed at this hotel that was run by this charming and very talkative man named Manolo. Enter "La Puta Madre." Now, for those of you not wishing to be shocked by what this means, don´t look it up. So we´re at the hotel visiting with Manolo (well, Kristin is) and we´re telling him that we´re there to do a 2 day walk. He gets a lot of people there doing walks and has each one write a little something in this book he has; every one of them makes sure to include "La Puta Madre" somewhere in their ramblings to express just how beautiful the scenery was.
In additon to chatting with Manolo, we experienced our first sampling of Pulpo (octopus). This stuff is not the most appetizing entre in the world and every restaraunt we went to in Gallacia there was an anxious server trying to push the stuff onto us. A similar ritual in the US would be the yearly dumping of zucchini from neighbor to neighbor (or even fruitcake from family to family). Kristin, insisting that we"musn´t say no" because it would be insulting, usually ordered some. I now loathe Pulpo.
We learned a valuable lesson on the walk: never try and walk 40km in two days with heavy packs. Our legs have never been so sore! That being said, we did see lots of beautiful beaches, moumtains, forrests and wildflowers.
At the end our first day (12km) we stayed at an old woman´s house in Camelle. The woman was 83 years old and was taking care of her husband (89) who had demension and couldn´t do anything for himself. That night, we ate at Maria´s (the old woman) daughter´s restaurant and had, you guessed it, more Pulpo. After our meal we were asked if we wanted some licquor or coffe. Kristin had a coffe and I decided to pass on both. Well, a few minutes later the woman came out with a bottle of homemade sugary, lemon booze, set two glasses on the table, and poured us some. Now of course, we can´t say no, so we had some. But she left the bottle...do we finish it? Do we leave it? We thought it best to ask. Kristin asked "to take?" because we weren´t sure if they wanted us to bring home with us. A minute later, we are one full bottle of "Limonsette" richer, and €7 poorer. Kind of a funny story, though.
The second day of our walk (27Km), it misted most of the time, but we trudged on...and on...and on...we wanted to die by the end (check out our pics of the scenary).
We made it to the next town, missed our bus, and had to take a cab for €60 back to Santiago to catch our overnight train to Avilla, just outside of Madrid, we called it our "stupid tax."
The overnight train was terribly uncomfortable, and we subsequently spent the next day sleeping.
Not much funny stuff happened the next few days, except that I managed to ordered "ear-flavored" fanta (oreja insterad of naranja) and refer to the top of our table as "enima" instead of ensima.
We did however, see the Prada and the Reia Sofia (pardon my spellings) in Madridd. For us, the only thing of interest at the Prada was the Piccasso exhibt (it was showing the influenece of Classical works on Picasso). There was also a Picasso exhibit at the Reia Sofia, which housed Guernica, perhaps his most famous work. I could go on and on about how cool this exhibit was, but I´ve already rambled enough. We will hoepfully be posting more frequently, as we are now in Granada, a college town. Take care.

Nick and Kristin