Day 38k: Just as grateful for little … (05/22/20190
I limp into Chanaz proper — a town that turned out to be a high-end haven for relatively well-to-do tourists, and thus a town relatively uninterested in harboring mendicant pilgrims like yours truly. I head directly to the local church for potential assistance and yet both its sanctuary and its parish are already locked up tight. I also see no readily available pavilions or roofed bus-stops under which I might spend the night, and yet I do find a map of the town that identifies a “Gite d’Etape” at its far end.
I finally find the same (after more than a few minutes of relatively lost looking) and tell its owner/manager Denise my story. She is obviously less-than-thrilled with the “predicament” in which she has been placed ( 🙁 ) and yet she eventually (and somewhat reluctantly) agrees to let me use one of the four free beds in her hostel, through she also makes it clear that I was not going to be offered any food and that I was not allowed to use her blankets ( :O ) … I frankly didn’t care about either of these latter prohibitions, preferring instead to remain incredibly thankful for a dry bed upon which to sleep … 🙂
To my joyful surprise, Juergen & Jennifer had already checked in to the hostel’s private suite by that time, and the three of us thoroughly enjoyed a jovial reunion before fellow pilgrims Michael (from Austria) & Judit (from Switzerland) arrived to complete the evening’s company. Conversation remained light for quite awhile and yet it soon came time for me to quickly & quietly retreat to my room (seeing as how dinner had already been withdrawn by Denise, seeing as how none of my fellow pilgrims had offered me the same, and seeing as how I didn’t want to make any of my aforementioned compatriots uncomfortable with my food-less presence). I reveled in a long hot shower instead, and then snuggled up under my own sweatshirt and gratefully drifted off to a surprisingly sound night’s sleep … 😀
“When your footsteps and thoughts carry you down the same path your Heart directs, you will know without doubt that you are headed in a right direction.” ~ via Molly Friedenfeld
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