Samos to Sarria

DAY 33: SATURDAY, MAY 20

Heading for Sarria and the last 8 days of our Camino adventure. It was a beautiful sunny day. We followed the river out of town and came across these pilgrim statues in a park.

We started walking with Gina from England (originally from Maylasia). We wandered into a cabin like restaurant and asked if they could fry us some eggs. They had no problem with our request. Typically, you don’t find eggs on a breakfast menu.

Today we’re at a lower altitude but its still an amazing view.

We followed the highway to Sarria. There was an alternate route through the woods and hills that was about four miles longer. We opted for the highway and it was a difficult route because the path hasn’t been used much and was a bit overgrown. Sometimes we had to walk on the shoulder of the road which felt dangerous.

It took about four hours to reach Sarria. It’s a bigger town so it took awhile to find our hostel.

One of the locals told us this place was “famous” for its Octopus. So we had to check it out.

All they serve is Octopus and they close for the day at 4pm. It’s like a beer hall with long tables. You can get potatoes to go with the Octopus but we just split an order. It was delicious.

They seasoned the octopus with a little oil and paprika. It had a taste that was very similar to lobster.

Dessert consisted of cheese with a fruit jam. There were some hard cheeses and some soft ones. This tasted like ricotta cheese. You put it on bread and then cut a piece of the fruit jam and put that on top. It was actually quite good.

The Octopus is boiled in water in a giant copper kettle. They use a scissors and snip up the pieces. The head is not used for anything. We did notice that a young boy came into the shop a little before 4pm. They filled his container with the heads. We were thinking that maybe it was used for animal feed??

We spent the entire afternoon basking in the sun and blogging. As you may have noticed, I am just about caught up. There are a number of restaurants by the river and it’s such a serene place with a lot of people enjoying the afternoon.

Walking back to the Hostel I noticed this milk machine. I think you insert money, open the smaller silver door and it refills your container. There are a lot of vending machines in Spain.

We finished the night by having donor kebab for dinner. Nice change of pace and we hadn’t had one since Pamplona.