Pensión A Burgas

 Mary has done a great job finding us a variety of places to stay at the end of each days walk. So far we've stayed in at least one each of: an airbnb, an apartment, a b&b (the old fashion kind), a hotel and a pension. We've avoided the more common alberges who typically house many guests in a large room full of bunk beds. Six months ago when the bookings were made we decided it would be safer to be in our own  room each night. 

Yesterday, we got to Caldas de Rais about 2:30 in an insistent rain.  We got to the location in our spreadsheet, and saw the small sign by the door indicating we were in the right spot.  After a long day of wet feet, it would be good to get out of our boots.  The door was locked: no one was around. 

At this point, it what clear what we needed to do: there were a set of combination key lock boxes on the wall, one for each room.  We had the pin code in our spreadsheet, we just needed the room number to know which box to unlock. I tried all of them. Nope.

Ordinarily we would expect entry instructions to be emailed to us if how-to-get-in wasn't obvious. We had no such information. Mary texted to the provided number that we were here, and in about 10 rainy minutes a harried looking woman let us in, told us to go to the fourth floor, then disappeared.

Once on the 4th floor we were faced with yet another set of locked doors, all of which we dutifully tried to open with no avail. Just as we convinced ourselves we were on the wrong floor, the woman reappeared and let us into apartment 4A.  

Number 4A, likely once a grand spacious apartment, had been refitted to contain 6 tiny rooms and two tinier bathrooms: one bedroom was for us, the bathrooms were to share.

At least we could look forward to the breakfast that was included in the room rate - it would be nice not to have to trudge back out into the rain for our morning coffee. In fact, tomorrow's breakfast was waiting for us as soon as we entered the room: two pieces of bread the looked left over from a previous day's Olive Garden bread basket, two kids boxes of fruit flavored sugar water, and two "pods" of coffee. At least we could have coffee in the morning.

Sadly, the coffee maker was broken. By the time we found an open cafe we'd  walked almost 8 miles. That coffee was great.