León

On Tuesday morning, I got up and headed into León. On my way out of the hostel I ran into a group of guys I'd met the night before, and we waved farewell. Then I forgot my poles, and had to go back to pick them up, so I passed them again and we waved again. Then they realized they'd forgotten to say goodbye to their friend, so they passed me again and we waved again. Then I realized I'd taken the wrong fork in the Camino, so I passed them again and we waved again. And at this point we figured the Camino was conspiring to bring us together, so we decided to walk into León together.


We had some nice conversations along the way, but as we were walking along the industrial interstate into the city (hey, it can't all be picturesque countryside), one of them started to get extremely intense pain from a bug he'd caught a few days ago. We waited for him, and eventually the other guy offered to carry his bag, which let him get moving again. (I offered to switch off with him, but he was simply too strong.)


We eventually made it into the city, and they went to check into their hostel. I hadn't booked yet, as the had been talk of sharing an Airbnb with some of my friends, but that fell through and so I booked a place near the cathedral and went to check in. But when I opened the door, you'll never guess who greeted me: The same guys I'd been walking with all morning!

After showering, we picked up their third friend who had had to take a bus due to an injury, and went out for lunch. On the way, a question arose: They had been calling themselves the three amigos, but now there were four people in the group. What to do? After some discussion, it was decided that, at least temporarily, we would be the four horsemen. The one who had been sick, naturally, was pestilence; the one who took the bus was starving and took famine; the man who had carried the bag took death on account of him being older than me; leaving me with war. With this sorted out, we grabbed lunch, then went out separate ways for the afternoon.

I was pretty exhausted from all the long days of walking, so I chilled at the albergue during siesta, then went and met up with Pestilence to check out the cathedral in the afternoon. After that we went to check out a sporting goods store, but unfortunately it didn't have any of what we needed. It did have a gun store across the street though, which was a bit of a surprise.  Then it was time for dinner! I messaged my friends, as we had talked about doing dinner together, but when I didn't hear back, it was time for the four horsemen to go get paella. It was delicious.


After that I found where my friends from my old group were having dinner, and went and joined them for dessert. Two of them were staying for a rest day in León, meaning that the other two of us would be leaving them behind, at least for now. We went out and got ice cream in front of the cathedral, and had one last fun time goofing off before we said our farewells and I went to sleep for the night.

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