Day 18 - Mansilla de las Mulas to León
After much discussion with Camino veterans and consulting the Brierley Bible, I decided not to walk the 18.1km from Mansilla to León and opted instead for the bus. The reasons for this are that the walk is entirely through depressing industrial areas and by catching the bus I get to take a well-earned rest day in León before tackling the last half of the Camino. I jumped the first bus and arrived at the magnificent León Cathedral as it opened. This is easily in my top three favourite cathedrals, right up there with St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City and St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta. It’s simply stunning and a must-see. Not a must-see however is the Gaudi museum at Casa Botines. The building itself is beautiful but the museum on the other hand is not worth the 3€ entry fee. Half of the museum is the gift shop and the other half is the same information reworded four or five times over and then a collection of fairly uninteresting old crap like a typewriter, a radio, and whatever else they managed to scrape together from the basement belonging to the curator’s grandmother. After that craptastic interlude, we grabbed lunch and farewelled our compañera, Sarah from NZ. From Whakatane to be precise. That’s not important to the story, I just love saying Whakatane. WHAKatane! Anyway, once the teary goodbye was complete I checked into a hotel, pampered myself, threw some shit out of my pack, bought more shit to replace whatever pack-weight I may have just lost, and now its time for pizza, a bar dedicated to the Beatles, a brewery and Eurovision. In that order. Hell. Yes.
Distance - 18.1km
Difficulty- Zero stars/5
Camin-Oh no! - Saying farewell to a much-loved member of our Camino clique.
Camin-Oh hell yeah! - Taking a well-earned rest day.
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