Day 21 - Thursday November 23 - walking from Mansilla de las Mullas to Leon ( 20km)

It was a short walk into Leon today which gave us a bit of a chance to visit the city. There is another beautiful gothic cathedral here and what struck me the most was the intricacy of the stained glass windows. Next we went to Saint Isidoro church and it was a bit of a strange cultural experience. First when I got there I didn´t exactly know what I was visiting. I had been told something about an old version of the bible and from the postcards in the souvenir shop the roman paintings also seemed significant. The man selling tickets in the shop explained that today it was free entrance and that we could enter in about 4-5 minutes. We were ushered into a room with traces of roman frescoes on the ceiling. I recognized the scene of the last supper, but not much else after that. Next it seemed we could walk around a courtyard so we did and it seemed that was all there was to see so we went to leave and were told that we could now go upstairs. We were let into a room with what I was told were treasures of the church. There was a series of objects and statues under glass cases with small white labels. After walking around a bit we went to the door to leave and the woman told us we had to wait for the other people coming up the stairs. It seemed we always had to be accompanied, but it also made for a lot of standing around for tired pilgrims who had already walked 20km that day. At that point things became a little surreal because a large group of about 30 well-dressed people came into the room. Everyone seemed to know each other and stood around chatting. The japanese man said ´fiesta´ and it was almost as if we had suddenly become a part of a wedding party. The other catch was that we still couldn´t leave the room. Then after a moment in walked a woman who announced the guided tour was now going to start. I like tours... unfortunately I always have a tendency to evaluate them. The guide leaned on the glass cases, chewed gum and had very little control of the group. The next stop on the tour was the biblioteca which was the most interesting part of the tour. From what I understood was that there was a bible from the 10th century, a 12th century copy of it and some very large choir books. The choir books could have reached my waist and they were made giant size so the whole choir could read from them. I also understood them to be quite heavy, up to 40 kgs but sometimes details are lost in translation.
Shortly after that we were allowed to leave and it seems we got mixed up in some sort of organized bus tour.

That night we went out for ´tapas´ or ´pinchos´ which in Spain are small plates of food that you are served with drinks when you go out to a bar. Our selection was limited to fried potatoes with a cheese and garlic sauce and then samplings of different meats on bread. Spaniards seem to be big meat eaters and people often think I am vegetarian because I try to eat fruit or vegetables with every meal.