My day started with a text from my dad at 2 am, asking if I was up for a Zoom. He’d forgotten about the time difference, but was checking to see if I was okay. 😅

My day started again at 8 with a text from Janet #1, letting me know that Janet #2 would be contacting me shortly. And at 9, there was Janet #2, with a care package of coffee, pastry, meds and sundries. The kindness of these women have made me forget that I’m thousands of miles from my bed and my dogs, at least for the moment.

It was a quiet day here at the Mapoula Pensión. (Big bonus points, dear reader, if the word pensión makes you think of the Pensión Grillparzer.) I feasted on pastry and coffee from the Janet’s, showered, washed yesterday’s clothes, read a book about forensic entomology (idk, what do you read on vacation?), and eventually masked up and ventured out.

Here’s something Spain does very well (in addition to many other things): there’s literally a farmacia on every corner, marked by a lighted green cross. All drugs are literally behind the counter, but you just have to ask: Medicina fría? Pruebas de COVID? and someone will bring out what you need. I have watched numerous interactions at farmacias over the last few days and not witnessed anything close to the typical disasters and misinformation at the Walgreens near my house. Everyone is happy. Everything moves along very smoothly. It’s an alternate reality.

Masked and avoiding crowds, I wandered toward the cathedral and watched pilgrims coming in, hugging and high-fiving each other and taking selfies and group photos, and I’m not going to lie: it’s hard to be on this side of it. Tomorrow Will and his (our) Camino family will be coming through, and it will be a relief to see them, even if I can’t get close.

I wandered the city for a bit, heading back vaguely in the direction of my hotel when I began to get tired. Reader, if you’ve ever spent time with me, you know what happened next: I got lost. Not horribly, irreparably lost—just, somehow I walked for twenty minutes and ended up on the other side of the cathedral, no closer to my hotel. Oh well, Google Maps to the rescue, and after a few more wrong turns I was back on track.

This was the main excitement for the day, although a close second was when I returned to the hotel, saw that my room had been cleaned (despite the No Molestar sign on the door), and that the windows were closed up tight, with a heavy metal screen in front of them. Five minutes of panicking and hitting every button in the place rectified the situation.

The rest of the day has been dozing, reading, working (yes, it’s true! More on that later), and randomly scrolling my phone. It didn’t even occur to me until today that I could watch tv on my phone. I’ve never watched anything more than a gif on my phone. But somehow I gravitated toward some old Ellen interviews and wound up watching some back-to-back Friends, which was comforting in a memory–lane way. Also, Facebook has been madly trying to sell me curling irons and eyebrow treatments, so clearly Zucks is concerned about the state of my appearance.

But to answer the big question: I feel okay. Better than yesterday. A little tired (my hour-long walk was probably a bit much), a little snotty, a little worried about giving up this hotel room tomorrow and possibly infecting Will, who keeps testing negative. The DayQuil in Janet 2’s care package hit the spot, and I have a NyQuil waiting for me soon as an after-dinner snack. it could be a lot worse. ❤️