Day 9: Nájera - Grañón

At the beginning of our day it seemed we were in a western, surrounded by miniature red canyons. In the highest walls, man-made caves dated to many centuries ago crowned Nájera. Unfortunately it was still to dark at that hour to capture it in a photo. As the day went by we crossed kilometres of non-stop vineyards. No doubt we were in wine country.



The weather was fine all day, it made for a good walk. We crossed Santo Domingo de la Calzada, where we looked for the chicken coop next to the cathedral, symbolizing the Miracle of the Cock (to summarize it, a roast chicken stood up and singed in order to establish a man's innocence, cool story), but we couldn't find it.


Next we got to Grañón, right in time to escape the first raindrops of the day. We had seen in Nájera some advertisement to a new albergue and decided to look it up. At the entrance we saw "WI-FI" and we were convinced. But nothing could have prepared for what we discovered inside..







We had discovered a little gem of the Camino. An albergue made for pilgrims and built by pilgrims. To sum it up, Ernesto has bought the place with all he had, an old house with not much to show for. Then he called it Casa de las Sonrisas and opened its doors to anyone. Seriously, anyone can stay and give as much as he can (it's based on donations), knowing that there'll always be a bed and food on the table. If you wanna stay more than a day, all it is asked is that you help out where you can: building furniture, painting the walls, etc. And everyone can join in where it comes to the decoration.. As someone else said, it's like sleeping in a art gallery.

Looks a little messy at first, but words and photos can't make you experience the energy of that place. And like I said, there's always food on the table: our communal dinner was not so communal after all because the hospitaleros had lunched pretty late, so basically they made food for us two! It sounds as awkward and uncomfortable has it was for us to find out that we would be eating their food on our own, but it showed us the true Camino hospitality..



PS: we had bought some Rioja wine to share over dinner, so we had just a taste and left the rest for them to enjoy later on. And let me tell you.. That was great wine!