Friday, April 17- cloudy with a few breaks. It's around 8-9 degrees. I'm in Astorga for another day. The walking members of the group will meet me here later today. They are walking about 30km today so they were hoping to send their bags ahead. It would make the walk and climb much easier. This service is available from most Albergues. We just have to let the company know to come by for the pick up. Most hostel hosts will do make the call for us. We leave the 5-6 Euros and when you arrive, the bag is there. It is 9am and I am sitting in a café having what they call a chocolate caliente (hot chocolate). The chocolate is so thick that I was scooping it up with a spoon. The waitress gave me a small sort of cake with it so I placed the cake in the cup to get soaked up. Unreal. There is no way I could drink this. We would use this as a chocolate fondue. The Roman museum and chocolate museum open at 10:30 so I will head there to be better educated on each of these subjects.
As I was arriving at the chocolate museum, so was a bus load of school children. I knew that I should've turned around right then and there, but I didn't feel like walking back up the hill to return later. How bad could it be? I guess I've been away too long. These were probably kids in grade 6 or so. Not a bad group really, but they knew that they'd be getting some samples at some point... I was told that I could follow the group as a guide was describing everything about how chocolate came to be. I was able to hang onto a few words that were being said, but really the Spanish explanations were mostly lost on me. There was a video with English subtitles. We did finally get a few little pieces of the good stuff and that was my cue to exit. Only 2,50 so no complaints.

The Roman wall with the Palace.

The Roman wall with the Cathedral.

Statue outside of the municipal Albergue. I am staying in a private. The municipal ones are usually a few Euros cheaper and way busier. I like the pace of this once. Only about a dozen or so pilgrims here last night.

I'll head out to go meet the gang as they should arrive around 2pm or so today.

The hikers arrived around 3pm. I met them at the first Albergue. We walked to our hostel and they cleaned up. We then went out to get groceries. We had a huge salad, bread, and pâté, then of course dessert. (My friends love the desserts and they are plentiful around here).