psheehan said:
I have read that the albergue is closed from 15 December until February.
If that is the case, there are a number of reasonably cheap hotels in Leon.
Cheapest: explore the back streets off the main road running alongside the church of San Isidro where the Camino leaves the centre of the city. A plain hotel room with bathroom for twenty Euros a night is quite easy to find.
Medium priced: thirty-nine Euros, the Hostal Albany * * next to the cathedral at the start of Calle Paloma. (It is where I stayed on my last night before heading home last week.) It is good value and the rooms are small but stylish. There is a very popular restaurant. (
http://www.albanyleon.com for phone number for reservations.)
On the subject of accommodation, I can recommend two private albergues on your journey out of Leon. If you go on the Villar de Mazarife route, the first albergue (on your right) as you come into the village, Refugio Paramon is good value and he cooks an excellent paella. In Hospital de Orbigo, the parochial refuge is closed in winter, but just fifty metres along the road from it on the left hand side is Albergue San Miguel
http://www.alberguesanmiguel.com where there is a good self-service kitchen and you can buy groceries easily in the same street. The host is friendly, the facilities are excellent and there's a nice warm wood-burning stove! Ten Euros including breakfast.
Come to think of it, I didn't use the kitchen: I went to a
comedor above a bar and had an excellent three course menu for ten Euros. It is in the first street on the right as you come off the famous long medieval jousting bridge into Hospital de Orbigo.
After all this extravagance in hotels and private albergues, when you get to Astorga I suggest you stay at the basic
donativo pilgrim refuge - open all winter - because there are those on this Forum who will say you are not a
proper pilgrim (whatever that means) unless you are staying in unlovely accommodation.
But the good news is you can still eat in a good restaurant in Astorga and be a proper pilgrim (hooray!) because the restaurante Capricho does a
menu peregrino (follow the marked Camino street - Calle Postas - out of the main square and the Capricho is on your left after two hundred metres). This also gives you the added pleasure of serving you with typical Maragato cuisine, anticipating your next stage: that's the country going up to Rabanal that you will be walking through next.
Gareth