We didn’t walk today. Well we walked a little bit we didn’t hike, so we call it a zero day, as in zero miles. Last night we stayed in a campground and that was fine, but maybe not worth 28€ to pitch a tent. We took showers, got to do laundry, charged our devices, and got some spotty WiFi though. It’s hard for me to adjust to, given you can basically get showers, laundry, charging, and WiFi often for $15 in the U.S. when hiking. Usually the charging and WiFi are just free and easy to come by, with the other two. Here, we often have to separately seek out something.
Anyway, for our zero day, we decided to stay at a hotel in town for 60€. They said they would let us check in early, between 13:00-13:30 when we showed up at 10, so we left our bags and walked to a nearby restaurant. We spent a bunch of time at the restaurant, mostly doing research on the internet. Simon came and stayed with us for a few hours. At 14:00 we left to check into our hotel.
Once we checked in, we did the best part of any zero day: laid on the bed. We hung out for a few hours, getting up periodically to try and prop the windows open which would slam shut with gusts of wind but without them open it was stifling. No fan and obviously no AC. This is Europe. Before dinner, we needed to go to the store and do our shopping for the next section of trail. We also opted to buy things to make dinner: chickpeas, white beans, and a cucumber. We is simple folk.
We noticed that the restaurant we visited for lunch had wheeled a TV into their outdoor seating area, presumably for the World Cup finals that would occur at 21:00 that night. We were looking for a place to go and that sealed of for us. Back in our hotel, we ate our meal and packed our bags for the next day.
We headed over to the restaurant around 8:40, snagged some chairs next to already full tables and settled in. We didn’t really have much at stake in the game. Neither of us really had a team to root for although I’d always root for Messi. The game turned out to be terribly dull. When overtime came, I was mostly annoyed that we’d be up even later now, when we wanted to get an early start tomorrow. You probably saw by now that Spain eventually won the game. They definitely deserved to win that game, particularly when it looked like they had an earlier goal called back. The folks cheered loudly for Spain to win, but the town of Bielsa is so small that there thankfully weren’t people driving around, honking their cars all night. After the game ended, we left pretty quickly and promptly went to bed. Our ear plugs came in handy.