The people you meet

Dinner in the old town last night, at Café Moderno. This is a lovely old brasserie style place with attentive young waiters who know their stuff and are good at chatting up the customers. Cleverly the restaurant has positioned itself as a Pilgrim destination: they have a dinner service from 19:00, ridiculously early by Spanish standards, in time for the Pilgrims to be back at their hostels before the doors close at 22:00. Then around 21:00 the normal dinner service for the locals can begin.

We were seven for dinner: Sarah and Noah from Georgia. Georgia USA Noah took care to clarify somewhat redundantly. I thought they had rather appropriate names for the pilgrimage. Sarah is nineteen and was thrilled to be able to drink wine with the meal. Jessica from California (but I'm not from there originally) had dyed blonde hair and a tan that looked like it took a lot of maintenance. The Spanish waiter made considerable effort to charm her (he's hitting on her said Tabatha). At one point he said to me: "She's your daughter? I want to marry her."

Erica looked like she would be perfect for a role in a 1930's period show.  She was bubbly and definitely not shy. She had spent a year working in China as a teacher 'I had no qualifications' and was now taking a year off to spend the money she'd earned. Tonight was a splurge for her, which took me a few minutes to digest. After all we were having the Pilgrim menu at 10 euros. Erica is 24, making Tabatha at 31 the 'Mom' of the group. Tabatha had traveled extensively and impressed me on arrival at the hostel by doing Yoga on the tiled floor, folding herself in half in the process.

"DB" was the odd man out in the group (so was I of course, but the others had walked together that day). He was Korean and probably about 65. I'm retired he told me. I go on group travel with my wife but walk alone so I can meditate. He'd come here to find God and through his complete lack of understanding any of the humour of our conversation was in some way the life of the party.