It’s a month today that I walked into Santiago de Compostella. After some celebrations Much has happened. Briefly, Rafe and I headed to Malaga and rested up for a few days at a friend’s place. Hired a car and explored the south of Spain, including Gibraltar. Then we drove to some mountains. The road was a bit scary. Very narrow, hundreds of bends and about a kilometre drop or more on one side. The car we hired was a little fart, I mean fiat. A motor about as big as a victa lawn mower. Six gears helped. Going up hills,like a rolls canardly. Canardly go up, flies going down. On the freeway,cars fly past at about 160ks an hour. On the down hill slope, my little fart got up to 135. Imagine mowing the grass at that speed. The following day I drove to Granada and spent a few days there checking out that part of the country. Unfortunately, it can take a bit of getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road, and in a little car, you have to be careful pulling into the kerb. I pulled in and thought I scraped the tyre. The kerb was pretty high and actually took a fair chunk of paint off the bottom of the guard. Not wanting to lose my 700 euro bond, I went to a panel beater and asked him to repaint that area. He wanted to pull the car apart and respray it. So I then found a paint shop who mixed up the colour paint I wanted and cleaned the area, sanded it and painted the area myself. Looked pretty good, so to make it a bit less inconspicuous, I threw some mud on the affected area, passed the test and got my bond back. We then flew to Lisbon for a few days, train to Cintra and then on to Porto. Flew Porto to Madrid and on to Rome. A few days in Rome, train to Milan for a few days, then train tomorrow through the last of northern Italy and go through the Swiss Alps. Funny thing happened yesterday in Milan. Walking through the ritzy area, where you pay six euro for a tiny coffee, and you mortgage your house for a meal,I saw a sandwich board advertising, sptritz and pizza 🍕 five euro. I thought nice. Sat down and we both ordered. A minute later,the cocktail came out with a small dish of olives and a small dish of potato crisps. Ate the olives and the chips, still no pizza. Then, a small plate arrived with a small bun on it cut in half. Ok lets eat it. It was ok, but no bigger than a donut. After people watching for about twenty minutes, I asked the waitress about our pizza. Another five minutes go by, and I called the waiter over and again enquired about the long overdue pizza. He insisted we had already eaten it. When I argued the point, and showed him the picture on the sandwich board, he explained that was just there for an example and the donut size bit of a bun was what we were paying for. With that I told him to shove his drink where ever italians put them and told him I was not paying till my pizza arrived. He pulled out his phone, and I told him he could ring the mafia as I am now leaving. Rafe was a bit slow on the uptake and had a startled look on his face when the waiter grabbed the sunglasses he had only purchased an hour earlier, from the table. I told the waiter, not mine, don’t care,you’re not ripping me off. As I walked off the waiter came racing back, not only with Rafe’s sunglasses, but also one whole big lovely pizza demanding five euro. I obliged, sat down, drank my sprytz,ate my pizza and put the chair back against the table and left quite satisfied
caminohank2016 