Ourense

June 30, 2018: Today was a record late start for us. Normally, when we travel, we are early birds. We get up out of our tent at 5 and are on the road or trail before anyone else. But apparently the European summer lifestyle has taken over. We don’t finish dinner until 10 pm or later, and by the time we get back to our hotel and get settled etc we are all going to bed between 11-12. It’s nuts! The next morning brings 9-9:30am wake ups and the vicious cycle begins again. One taxing part of this trip has been the winging it. James and I usually thrive on this mode. But with virtually no cell data to rely on we have to be on WiFi to make plans. Finding campgrounds, best trails, best restaurants is usually done from the passenger seat en route from one place to the next. Not in Europe. We get home from dinner and try to do some planning to know where we should head the next day. I usually fall asleep before a decision gets made and so then it has to be done the day next morning. Therefore delaying our departure. We want to break out of this rut but it is tricky. We had plans to explore all the beaches on the northern coast the next few days but of course the weather looks bad so now we have to scramble for a new plan. Anyways...back to regularly scheduled programming; my report on Ourense, Spain. We drove into the mountains today and it rained most of the trip. We found our hotel which could not have been more different than last nights opulence. This looks like a storage container unit. Does the trick though. We came here to swim in the thermal hot springs but there was thunder and lightning when we arrived so we checked into our hotel first. Things calmed down so we went out in search of this place. We parked and walked along the river, over a bridge until we discovered the thermal pools. I cannot believe this place is free. Cool little pools, all fairly shallow filled with naturally fed hot spring water. There were not a lot of people there when we arrived. I think it was calm because the weather had been bad. We had fun testing all the different pool temperatures, dipping into the real river to cool off and just relaxing. We stayed for a long while and it was getting more crowded by the time we left. We went back to shower then headed out to eat. World Cup soccer was on and we went to a locals Italian restaurant. On the way home we got out to climb up this cool looking, modern bridge. I loved the contrast to the Roman bridge just a few hundred yards away. Blogging after midnight...it continues.