Hello everyone!
Yesterday we had a rather interesting day in Santo Domingo de la Calzada. This saint started the first pilgrim’s hospital in the XI century.
We went to a beautiful mass dedicated to the pilgrims in the cathedral where Santo Domingo is buried and it called my attention that in this magnificent church there was an area with a white hen and a white rooster.
So I went to the hostal and asked the "Hospitalero" (this is what the innkeepers are called) In the middle ages they were all hospital to cure the ailments of pilgrims.)
He told me that Santo Domingo became a Saint because of two miracles:
In the beginning of the XII century there was a German family in pilgrimage to Santiago and they stay in the town for a couple of nights. A young maiden from the town felt in love with one of the German boys and when he did not reciprocate, she put some silver objects in his backpack and accused him of robbery. They sentenced the young man to death by hanging.
The family went on to Santiago and on their way back they found out that their son was alive.
He told his parents that Santo Domingo was holding him up by his feet to avoid death.
The family went to the town authorities and they were having roasted chicken for dinner, They explained that they had to get their son down because he was alive. They laugh and said
"yes your son is alive, just like this hen and rooster" and at that moment the hen and the rooster got their feathers back and were alive, and it is in the honor of this saint that they have an amazing chicken coop at this cathedral.
The full name of the town is "Santo Domingo de la calzada, donde cantó la gallina después de asada" (where the hen croak after being roasted)
Then we went to the hostal and we asked for a private room and the hospitalera said that they did not have any left (there are huge numbers of pilgrims this year). She continued to tell us that she had a room for people who snored and that no one admitted to snoring therefore no one ever went there.
Mark and I proceeded to the room and about an hour later this very tall an big guy came in.
Mark asked him "are you a snorer?" he answer "not I am Slovak".
He went to bed and he snore so hard that he would wake himself up. This morning we left early and we could hear him snore all the way down the street. Anyway we laugh so much about the Slovak and his snoring. He didn't speak neither Spanish nor English, so that was our whole conversation.
I´ll leave for now. Buen Camino! Greg, thanks for the pictures, they made me so happy when I got to the room exhausted. LOVE
The next stage was from Belorado to San Jaun de Ortega
We decided to leave really early, because we are entering the Meseta and it gets pretty hot by noon. When we left Belorado it was still a bit dark about 5:30 AM and we got lost and ended up in a little town in the mountains called San Miguel de Pedroso at about 8 Km. from the Camino. Well you know how we always hear that farmer’s get up with the dawn it's not true we got to this town at around 7:00 and waited for one and a half hours till we saw one person and it was actually a construction worker that was doing some repairs on the church. We asked him what was the name of the town and he told us and also told us that the Camino was 8 Km. from the town and he probably saw the disappointment on my face , so he offered to take us in hi van back to El Camino which was really nice.
I think this was the last time we left so early. It really did not work out well for us. 
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