Day 18? They're blurring together

6/2
Start: Mansilla de las Mulas
End: Leon
Distance: 23.44 km

1. Blister lady and German dude

The lady at the last municipal was the blister lady. She took care of my blisters without question, told me that they shouldn't be an issue, and how to know when to pop them. The German in the albergue was able to show me a better way to wrap my ankle. It seemed to help and showed me some things to prevent blisters on my toes. Both of them scolded me for the duct tape use since it's for construction and not for the body, but it worked...

2. Short day, all on pavement

Walking on pavement is awful. It was only 23 km into Leon but it was on all pavement along the road. It was no fun. It hurts the feet, there's typically nothing to see, and typically I don't like walking along the road but hey that's just me. This leads to my next point

3. Walking into big cities

It is awful. You are walking along the road on pavement which after walking so far, it hurts. There's no give. More importantly, I have two main reasons for my dislike of walking into a city. 

3a. Typically, when you see a city, town, village it's with 5k, or 3.1 miles. That's doable and can help push into where you're going to stop for a break or the day. However, in a big city that 5k is probably to the suburb. You have at least 2k until you hit the city then you have to find the place to stop. Therefore, you're looking at more like 7k+ which is a killer

3b. You walk through suburb and the industrial areas of the city. For example, we walked through car dealerships and mechanic shops for a good 3k yesterday. Not fun.

4. Pizza and everything we needed

We have been craving pizza and ice cream for a while now. We were able to find both of these pretty quickly. The first pizza, yes I said first pizza, was mediocre at best in quality but it was incredible due to desire and need for food. We found a nice private hostal that would allow us to sleep in and not be with 70-100 others. Then, ice cream happened as my friend Nilaj went looking for new shoes since he was walking soleless. Overall, it's started out as a good rest day. I'd imagine that yesterday was the most food and calories I've consumed all trip. 

5. Leon is cool so far

We walked around a bit last night, probably more than we should have, and got to see some of the city. It's pretty cool in my opinion. Id say it's my favorite out of Pamplona and Burgos so far. Granted I've not seen much but still see the point above. It reminds me a lot of Sevilla and is a stereotypical Spanish city especially when it comes to the old town. I'll have a better write up tonight. 

For those of you following this blog, I don't always post via social media that it's updated but it typically gets a post daily depending on whether the place has wifi.