Cities are a plague to me. I am currently stuck in Ponferrada with night falling rapidly. I have to either hike through the city and the sprawling suburban nonsense, sleep under a bridge, or find an albergue. We shall see. Also of note, I was blessed by a monk. I went to a service at a tiny church in the isolated mountain town of Rabanal del Camino. The only people in the church when I entered where two towns people and three monks dressed in saggy black robes sitting across from each other along the walls before us. We waited in silence, three more pilgrims filing in. With the six of us, we nearly filled the place.   We sat still in silence for some minutes until the bell echoed its chime for seven o-clock. As soon as the resonance ended one of the monks, a cherub faced man who may have been forty, began singing in the most beautiful voice I've ever heard. He looked straight forward and sang in Latin. It sounded exactly like one imagines a monk singing to sound. He would sing one phrase, then the other two monks opposing him would sing a response. The entire service, lasting nearly an hour, passed like this, in song. At times we would stand, at times they would sing from a book, but always the same format: the one singing solo, and the other two responding in harmony. It was hypnotic. At one point the lead monk approached us, had us stand, and blessed us in song, asking for protection on our passage. After that they stood up, and silently left via the back door. Very cool. No pictures, because that would be unfathomably rude.