Last night we stayed at a monastery where we were joined by many of the people we met in our stay yesterday on the farm, the one with the cranky pig. It was a bit more austere then previous stays. The bunk beds were comfortable enough but the WiFi was non-existent (no NetFlix streaming—or even posting the blog) and dinner was pretty, um, austere, compared to most.
However, we did get to participate in matins (a prayer service) before dinner and get a pilgrims blessing afterwards. The Cistercian monks may live a simple life but they do brew beer and one of their sister (or would it be, brother?) monasteries, makes cheese. We had to do a tasting of both with our fellow pelegrinos. Thumbs up for both the three varieties of beer, and the cheese. After dinner a Danish pilgrim initiated a ”sing off” where the representatives of each country sang a song. We loved the Croat, French, and German contributions—wish I had recorded them; Laurie and I joined with a woman from Arizona to do the first few verses of American Pie. Good thing others joined in.
We had a short walk today to Gernika, one of the most historic cities in Basque country. I’m looking forward to sharing about our visit here tomorrow. The Relive video makes it look shorter than it really is. Somehow the video got paused in the beginning and wasn’t restarted till midway through the journey. That did manage to hide the one kilometer plus detour we took when we missed a turn. Unintentional, believe me. No, really.
Another great day for y’all!
So, if you stay with Monks, does that make you a Monkee? Hopefully you won’t catch the Monkee pox.
According to my app (PlantNet), that picture is of a black walnut tree.
I asked the monks about your question. They gave me some free cheese and monastery brewed beer to not talk about it.
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