Anyway, we thought that yesterday was going to turn out to be just one of those days on the Camino, a day you just have to write off. But then the end of the day gave us some nice surprises. The day started out fine, or so we thought. We ate breakfast in Azofra. Tom had a big slice of potato quiche and another big chocolate croissant and a cafe solo (that´s a strong black expresso - Tom´s become a real fan). All I had was a croissant and tea- not enough, first big mistake. But all was going well, very well, in fact the first 15 km´s just flew by, we were burning up the Camino! Then outside the town of Santo Domingo we crossed a dirt lot where Tom, in his words, "found the only rock in the lot." He fell, I about had a heaart attack, but he was all right. He did get a cut on his knee, tore the heck out of his pants, and was covered with dirt, including the clean laundry pinned to his backpack to dry in the sun. (That´s usually how we dry our laundry.) The only fortunate thing was that da few minutes later we came to a water fountain outside a red cross building, and one of the workers came out and gave Tom a package of bandages! By then it was 2:00pm and I was ready to eat the cobblestones off the streets of Santo Domingo, but I won´t go into how one mistake led to another and before we knew it we were far out of the town and any possibility of buying food. We found a sad old park overrun with weeds and cigarette buts and rotted-out picnic tables and a non-working water fountain. In the panic of the moment I´d forgotten to refill my water in Santo Domingo, so now we´d have to travel on half-water rations for the next 6 hot, sunny kilometers. But we sat for a few minutes anyway and gobbled up some left-over snacks we had (our good-old ham rice cakes) then pushed on. By the time we reached the next town, Granon, I was so weak and achy, I was ready to drop. Tom was doing a bit better than me, but we were both truely straggling along. As we entered the town, though, Tom said, ¨this seems like a friendly town.¨ It was true. The town immediately had a nice feel to it, probably because the streets were rather wide and there was a big open square on the right and an old, old stone church on the left. We came to an älbergue¨sign that looked like it had been painted by Peter Max, the Yellow Submarine artist. We went inside and the place looked like an art gallery, with half-brick, half painted plaster walls, artwork or photos on the walls. The name of the palce was Casa de los Sonrisas (House of Smiles). The place did make me smile, it felt so, I don´t know, nice, special, or something, inside. The owner, pretty young guy, I,d say in his late thirties, maybe, told us that he wasn´t a registered albergue, that he didn´t even have a Camino passport stamp, and that he only had one bathroom. I didn´t care, I wanted to stay there. The place was a big old rambling house, art everywhere you looked, photos, art sculptures, enviroments, everywhere you looked, bedrooms here, there and everywhere. He put us up on the third floor in a little room that was probably a big walk-in closet at one time, but now hel just one bunk bed, so we had our own private room. Then the owner told us that he´d have a home-cooked meal for us and he´d fix us breakfast, too. All this not for a price, but for whatever donation we cared to give! . There were about another dozen piligrims there besides us, mostly French, though there were a few Spanish and Dutch as well. The meal was awesome, about the best we´ve had on the Camino (and we´ve had some pretty good meals!). Grilled zuchini, thick, delicious lentil soup, pasta with tomatoes, red peppers and mushrooms, and saffron rice. After dinner we alled washed our own dishes and cleaned the table. It wasn´t required, I think we all just felt like we should. Anyway, The arty albergue in the little town of Granon is hands down my favorite, Tom says, if not his favorite, it goes down as his most interesting one - but best meal. Anyway, we left the guy 50 euros. You can look up this albergue on facebook: Casa De Los Sonrisas. Maybe there will be some photos of it. We hope to cover at least 15km today to the town of Belorado, but if we´re feeling super-enegetic maybe we´ll smoke 27km to the town of Villafranca MOntes De Oca, a motherlode of available albergues. Marianne: One of these times I intend to write about a typical day waqlaking along the Camino, but I haven´t had time yet - compute time is so limted. But one of these times maybe I wall. A wonderful day to all! Love, Patti 8)
Just a quick NB to try and keep the confusion to a minimum: yesterday´s post should have started "So, yesterday morning", not ¨this morning". Because I was actually writing about the day before. I´m usually writing about the day before.
Anyway, we thought that yesterday was going to turn out to be just one of those days on the Camino, a day you just have to write off. But then the end of the day gave us some nice surprises. The day started out fine, or so we thought. We ate breakfast in Azofra. Tom had a big slice of potato quiche and another big chocolate croissant and a cafe solo (that´s a strong black expresso - Tom´s become a real fan). All I had was a croissant and tea- not enough, first big mistake. But all was going well, very well, in fact the first 15 km´s just flew by, we were burning up the Camino! Then outside the town of Santo Domingo we crossed a dirt lot where Tom, in his words, "found the only rock in the lot." He fell, I about had a heaart attack, but he was all right. He did get a cut on his knee, tore the heck out of his pants, and was covered with dirt, including the clean laundry pinned to his backpack to dry in the sun. (That´s usually how we dry our laundry.) The only fortunate thing was that da few minutes later we came to a water fountain outside a red cross building, and one of the workers came out and gave Tom a package of bandages! By then it was 2:00pm and I was ready to eat the cobblestones off the streets of Santo Domingo, but I won´t go into how one mistake led to another and before we knew it we were far out of the town and any possibility of buying food. We found a sad old park overrun with weeds and cigarette buts and rotted-out picnic tables and a non-working water fountain. In the panic of the moment I´d forgotten to refill my water in Santo Domingo, so now we´d have to travel on half-water rations for the next 6 hot, sunny kilometers. But we sat for a few minutes anyway and gobbled up some left-over snacks we had (our good-old ham rice cakes) then pushed on. By the time we reached the next town, Granon, I was so weak and achy, I was ready to drop. Tom was doing a bit better than me, but we were both truely straggling along. As we entered the town, though, Tom said, ¨this seems like a friendly town.¨ It was true. The town immediately had a nice feel to it, probably because the streets were rather wide and there was a big open square on the right and an old, old stone church on the left. We came to an älbergue¨sign that looked like it had been painted by Peter Max, the Yellow Submarine artist. We went inside and the place looked like an art gallery, with half-brick, half painted plaster walls, artwork or photos on the walls. The name of the palce was Casa de los Sonrisas (House of Smiles). The place did make me smile, it felt so, I don´t know, nice, special, or something, inside. The owner, pretty young guy, I,d say in his late thirties, maybe, told us that he wasn´t a registered albergue, that he didn´t even have a Camino passport stamp, and that he only had one bathroom. I didn´t care, I wanted to stay there. The place was a big old rambling house, art everywhere you looked, photos, art sculptures, enviroments, everywhere you looked, bedrooms here, there and everywhere. He put us up on the third floor in a little room that was probably a big walk-in closet at one time, but now hel just one bunk bed, so we had our own private room. Then the owner told us that he´d have a home-cooked meal for us and he´d fix us breakfast, too. All this not for a price, but for whatever donation we cared to give! . There were about another dozen piligrims there besides us, mostly French, though there were a few Spanish and Dutch as well. The meal was awesome, about the best we´ve had on the Camino (and we´ve had some pretty good meals!). Grilled zuchini, thick, delicious lentil soup, pasta with tomatoes, red peppers and mushrooms, and saffron rice. After dinner we alled washed our own dishes and cleaned the table. It wasn´t required, I think we all just felt like we should. Anyway, The arty albergue in the little town of Granon is hands down my favorite, Tom says, if not his favorite, it goes down as his most interesting one - but best meal. Anyway, we left the guy 50 euros. You can look up this albergue on facebook: Casa De Los Sonrisas. Maybe there will be some photos of it. We hope to cover at least 15km today to the town of Belorado, but if we´re feeling super-enegetic maybe we´ll smoke 27km to the town of Villafranca MOntes De Oca, a motherlode of available albergues. Marianne: One of these times I intend to write about a typical day waqlaking along the Camino, but I haven´t had time yet - compute time is so limted. But one of these times maybe I wall. A wonderful day to all! Love, Patti 8)
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So we started off this morning from Navarrete, sticks blazing, ready to burn up the 23 km to our next destination of Azofra. All was going well until we were on the other side of the town of Najera, about 5.8 km from Azofra. Short story short, there was a fork in the road and we took the wrong prong. We walked up a steep red dirt road for abut 40 minutes until the road ended at the top of the mountain outside the isolated house of a sympthetic Spaniard who told us what we by now knew - that this wasn´t the road to Santiago! So we made our way back down the mountain and it was close to 7 pm when we finally came dragging into Azofra, exhausting and covered in sweat mixed with the red dirt of the region of La Rioja. We continued dragging through the town, passing our fellow pilgrims who, clean and settled in, were eating dinner in the cafes. They cheered us on and were happy that these two lone stragglers had finally made it. When we reached the town´s 60-bed municipal mega-albergue all the beds were taken so we were taken down the block to the over-flow building where we shared a room with two Spanish retired firemen. They spoke no English but with my sketchy Spanish we were able to carry on a conversation. They were from a small town on the southern coast of Spain, near Africa and close to the town of Marbella. They were cousins, born in the same house in the same bed sixteen days apart. They told me they did everything together and now that they were 60 years old they were doing doing the Camino as an expression of their faith. ONe of them warned me that he was a really bad snorrer and he wasn´t kidding. It was like sleeping next to a John Deere riding mower all night long! They were really nice. The main campus of the albergue was really pretty with a courtyard with a fountain shaped like a pineapple, café tables and, of course, dirty boots lines up outside the door. Pilgriims never wear our boots inside the albergues. There were also the standard clothelines strung around the courtyard with hung with pilgrim laundry. Inside the reception área of the albergue there was a big dining hal with long tables, a well-stocked kitchen, and a 1-euro washiing machine! (You know I headed for that bad boy!). There were lots of young people (in their 20´s & 30´s. The younger folks tend to go to the municipal albergues because they are cheaper, 6 to 8 euros per bed. This one cost 7 euros each) and many of them had bought food and were fixing comunal meals. It reminded me of a college campus, lots of kids eating together in the dining hall or our in the courtyard, talking, laughing, overcoming the language barrier. I did have one issue with the albergue: the bathrooms in our building were not my ideal. There were enough of them, but none of the showers or pottys had real doors. They had these short sort of salóon swinging doors that didn´t lock. ( And they were co-ed). No one peeked, of course. I´ve never yet come across a pilgrim who lacked respect. We´re all in the same boat, right? Or, as my aunt Mary used to say, Ïn this hive we´re all alive, let´s keep it sweet as honey.¨ The drain was blocked in the shower stall that Tom used so he stood in several inches of wáter and then the wáter flowed out under the saloón door and onto the bathroom floor. But that´s why we wear flip-flops int the bathrooms, right? By the time we got clean and washed and hung our laundry it was 8:30 but we walked back into town for our 10-euro pilgrim meal. I´ve sworn off pasta - for now, and Tom´s sworn off wine - for now, so we both had the (tunaless!) salad for starters, followed by the house specialty, a chicken leg cooked in beer (yummy)with french fries. I dipped the fries in the chicken juice - better tan kétchup! For dessert we both had the vanilla pudding. At the albergue we ran into a couple of our bunkmates from Zubiri, the two sunny South African sisters, Linky and Innish. It seems that when you again run into a fellow pilgrim with whom you´ve connected you feel so glad, like you´re seeing an old friend. I could exegize a bit more on this subject, but my computer time is again up, so I´ll just wish you all a wonderful and happy day! Love, Patti 8)
Ran out of computer time yesterday (won´teven go into the problems I´ve been having trying to find a halfway working computer in these parts! - Let´s just say it´s kind of like being on an advanced scavenger hunt where you don´t have a map). Anyway, I did wnat to write a bit more about the town of Viana. So, to take up where Ieft off, besides the two albergues and the 16 matresses in the parish hall, therewere also a couple of private pensiones and even a nice hotel where a few pilgrims spent a Camino whatever night. I´m guessing this is because this town appears to be a touristy little place as well. Apparently Viana has been a pilgrim stopver since the12th century. It´s a beautiful town with narrow cobblestone streets between tall old buildings. There´s the remains of a castle and a magnificent cathedral built in the 13th century in which are enterred the remains of Cesare Borgia. ( you know, Cesare Borgia? Brother of Lucretia Borgia? Two of the children of the Spanish Borgia Pope Alexander VI played by Jeremy Irons on the HBO series?) Anyway, he´s buried in this town. Of the two available albergues in the town (not counting the 16 matresses) Tom and I opted for the big, new modern one where there were plenty of showers (yay!) a washer (double yay!) and a sort of working computer (triple yay!). For 10 euros We ended up shaeing an 8-person room with three friendly Australians in their mid-60´s, though when we woke up there was a young Russian kid sleeping in one of the beds - he´d come in s late (probably around 9 pm!) that none of us heard him. We had our pilgrim dinner in a little restaurant where the tables were on the sidewalks as well as in the narrow little street, so that when a car came down thestreet we had to hustle to move the tables out of the way! For his first course Tom ordered the salad with tuna (all the salads include tuna. If I say we ordered a salad, just assume that itincluded tuna). I started with spaghetti topped with shrimp, mussles and octopus. For our next course we bth ordered the pork filets with fries. For dessert Tom had the fruit salad and I had the rice pudding (can´t resist those carbs!). I can´t vouch for thequality of the wine, but Tom finished almost the whole bottle! (He said it was really good). Next day we headed off towards Navarrete with a lunch stop in the big city of Logrono where we ate our usual park bench lunch, a loaf of fresh bread from the bakery, cheese, and the biggest honking pastries we can find. I usually buy some chips fr a side but in Logrno I found some rice cakes. ON the package it said,¨"Jamon" - ham. I figured that must be a brand name, or somthing; surely they didn´t make ham-flavored rice cakes? But surely they did! The Spanish are such meat lovers that even the rice cakes don´t get off the hook! So we continued on to Navarrete where we found such a charming little albergue for 8 euros each. Th ehospitaliero was a really nice young guy -they all are, really, but this guy seemed to especially be filled with the spirit of the Camino. There was only one room with 18 beds, all full, but it was such a big, bright, light room that it didn´t seem over- crowded. The town of Navarrete itself seemed tl have seen better times - looked s run down and sad. We did find a pilgrim meal, though, and for 9 euros tom started with the salad,I had the pasta bolognese (of course!) and we had pork chops and baked potatoes for our second course. For dessert Tom had a pear and a fresh fig ( now he´s a new fan of fresh figs) and I had the rice pudding. This morning we set off for the town of Aforza but we couldn´t find a cafe opened so we followed our noses to the bakery where the baker came fromback to wait on us with flour stil on his hands. Tom had a huge chocolate-filled croissant and I had my ideal breakfast, a huge pecan-topped cream-filled croissant and a diet coke. So, all sugared-up, caffeined-up, and fizzed-up, I was ready to once again take on the Camino! Two Caminos! Three Caminos! I wish you all a sweet day flled with good energy! Patti 8)
Yesterday there was bed anxiety on the Camino. That happens when there is a large herd of pilgrims heading for a town where there may not be enough beds for everyone. The main problem was the heat. Tom & I headed out from Los Arcos with the herd (or I should say behind the herd, since the hospitaliero of the small albergue where we stayed didn´t really care what time we left, whereas in the big municipal albergues the pilgrims are shooed out at 8:00 am) and decided to follow to the next guidebook stop, Logrono, a big city and capital of the Spanish state of La Rioja (By the by, Miguel, you´re right the name of the town we stayed in the other night is Viana), since we were a little spooked by our not-lonely lonley albergue experience the night before. But after walking for a while we all started to sweat and wilt and change our minds about walking all the way to Logrono. But the second problem was that there are only two stops with facilities between Los Arcos and Logrono: the first, Torres Del _Rio, is only a few km´s beyond Los Arcos, and the second is the town of Viana, which is about 6 km´s before Logrono. So everyone, us included, was deciding to stop at Viana. The third problem was that, according to the guide books, there´s only one 54-bed albergue at Viana with 16 additional mattresses available to be set out on the floor of the parish hall if needed for piilgrim overflow. So the question being asked all up and down the Camino was, "Where are you stopping?" And the answer was invariably, "Viana". I was feeling the bed anxiety myself. I walked for a few moments with two middle-aged Irish ladies. One asked me where I was staying, and when I answered "Viana", she said , "Not many beds there!" and hurried away with her companion. Bed runners, I thought. A bed runner is a pilgrim who rushes to the next albergue to be sure to snag a bed. A few miles later we came across the Irish ladies sitting under one of the few shade trees along the way, sweating like crazy and fanning themselves with their hats. "It´s too hot," one of them said, and I agreed sympathetically. It really was to hot for us old folks to be doing this, but here were were, doing it! As it turned out, there really was no need for any of us to have feared for a bed. Because as it turned out there was a big, new, spotlessly clean albergue in the town, probably built since the latest edition of the guidebooks, so we all ended up getting a bed. Another good day on the Camino!
Peace and a good night´s sleep to all. Patti 8) Yesterday we took our first Camino cheat. There are a number of way pilgrims occasionally cheat on the Camiino: by hiring someone to transport their backpacks to the next town; by hopping a bus between towns; by staying in a hotel instead of an albergue (that´s what Martin Sheen and his friends did in ¨The Way¨", but I don´t call any of that Camino cheating. I call it Camino whatever it takes - ing. So here´s how our Cammino whatever went down: We started out from Lorca and after hauling 18 km over the Pyreness in the blazing hot sun we arrived in the little village of Villamayor de Monjardin exhausted, sweat cascading from every pore, smelling like Old MacDonald´s farm on a hot, hot day, to find that the albergue was...FULL! Full of old folks who were apparently on to our Lonely Camino plan! (So much for that plan!) It was almost 6 pm and the next town, Los Arcos, was 13 km away. The hospitaliero, a nice Dutchman, was very sympathetic, but there wasn´teven room for nother matress on the floor. He offered us the use of his facilities and a pad upon which we could sleep outside the albergue. On the concrete. There were already three women who were going to do this, two Americans and a Candian, and they seemed quite cheerful about the situation. In fact one of them, an American who appeared in her 70´s, seemed downright excited over the prospect, said it was going to be a fun slumber party and that she was glad we´d be joing her. I must have looked pretty distressed, though, because one white-haired pilgrim insisted that I take his bed and said that he wouldn´t mind sleeping outside. Of course I insisted otherwise. The hospitaliero laid out our options for us: we could either walk the 13 km to Los Arcos or sleep on a pad outside. Or, he joked, he could call a taxi to come from Los Arcos and take us back there. Whenhe said ¨taxi¨my eyes lit up like a Christmas Tree and I heard heavenly harps playing. Now, I think that Tom would have been find with sleeping outside on a pad on the concrete. A scout is tough. But the scoutmaster´s wife is not, so we took the taxi. The Candian, a woman in her 50´s named Ellie decided to ditch the slumber party and cast her lot with us. Los Arcos is one of the big pilgrim herd watering holes, so we figured we´d be in for a night in a pilgrim warehouse, but that was all right with us. But then our bad luck turned into good luck: it turned out that the taxi driver,s wife ran a small albergue on the other side of Los Arcos, on the outskirts of town. So after our 20 euro taxi ride we stayed at the wife´s albergue for 10 euros each. It was such a nice little place in the back of the family´s house with a courtyard and a big lawn. For 3 euros the wife washed our clothes while tom, Ellie and I went out for dinner . Dinner in Los Arcos: there´s a big catherdral in Los and across the couryard from the cathedral was a row of restaurants and the courtyard in front of the cathedral was filled with little tables with unbrellas where the restaurants served dinner and where we saw a number of our fellow pilgrims. We wanted to order the pilgrim meal but the waiter suggested that the paella was better than the pilgrim meal so that´s what we ordered. There was a mass in the cathedral at 8:00 and many of the pilgrims left the courtyard tables to go to mass. Tom really wanted to go, too, but since we hadn´t yet been served he wasn´t able to. But all was well that ended well and tonight we are settled into our albergue in the town of Vania after an 18 km walk. My computer time is up so I need to run, but I wish a won
Yesterday we burned up another 20 km between Utergy and the town of Lorca, where we stayed at the neatest little albergue - I'd say our favorite so far except that we say that about every albergue we stay in - except for the one in Zubiri with the no-stall showers. But even from Zubiri we brought some good memories. Our fellow pilgrims were so nice and on our way out of the town we stopped for breakfast at a cafe/bbakery where we each had a big slice of potato quiche and a bomba de crema - a cream bomb - a doughnut filled with a ton of custard! My kind of bomb! Anyway, the albergue in Lorca was so pretty, the decor was I guess traditional Spanish style, all done in colorful tiles and stone walls. The little dining room looked like a Spanish cave, kind of dark, stone walls and wooden tables. And the dinner was the usual sumptuous meal - for 9.90 euros we had pasta covered with tasty tomato sauce covered with cheese, then a roast chicken leg with french fries, an ice cream bar for dessert. The endless bread and wine are standard. As for our sleeping quarters, we had a choice - for 8 euroes we could share the dorms with our fellow pilgrims - there were about eight there besides us - men in one room, women in another. Or for 10 euros we could have a private room with our own bathroom and shower. Guess which one we went for! We laughed when we say our >private room> . It was a beautiful loft with wood panelling - and eight bunk beds! The hospitaliero told us to sleep where we wanted. So we did! Anyway, we have the secret to finding these small nice albergues, given to us by some veteran pilgrims> don't follow the guide book! The guide books lay out the route and they have you stopping for the night in the cities and big towns where you'll sleep in a pilgrim warehouse and be whisked out by 8 in the morning to start moving with the herd. But if you stop in the little villages between the big pilgrim watering holes, you'll find the small, half-empty albergues where the hospitaliers are laid back and don't care what time you leave in the morning because there isn't much cleaning up to do. I'm thinking about writing an alternative guide to the Camino. I'm thinking of calling it The Lonley Albergue , or The Not-A-People-Person's Guide Too The Camino. Think I could pick up a following? A wonderful day to all! Patti 8)
Every grocery store and cafe sells Cornettos and I vow that before I leave Spain I´m going to eat one in honor of ¨The Cornetto Trilogy". (You non-fine film buffs can google "The Cornetto Trilogy"). But I can´t help but wonder if there´s a relationship between the plentitude of Cornettos and the plentitude of zombies and robots (as per "The Cornetto Trilogy) along the Camino today. Zombies and robots with backpacks, hiking boots and walking sticks. And I must admit I´m in their number, though at this point I ´m not sure whether I´m a zombie or a robot. I feel like a robot zombie. But we met a German pilgrim who is on his third Camino and he says that in another week or so we´ll be doing much better. He says that there are three parts to the Camino: the first part is the physical part, where you struggle with the physical challenge of climbing up and down rugged mountains mile after mile, day after day; the second part is the mental part, when you walk across the Meseta, the desert land, and have to cope with the mental struggle of walking for miles across seemingly endless empty spaces (It´ll be a heck of a mental struggle for me if I can´t find a tree or bush to go behind every now and then!); and the third part is the spiritual part ,when you start to find spiritual meaning on the Camino. I think I should wait until the third part of the Camino to eat my Cornetto as a victory celebration for having made it across the first two parts. On the other hand, maybe I should eat my Cornetto today to celbrate having made it over the 20 km hike from Villava through Pamplona again then up and down a steep, windy, rocky mountain to the town of Uterga. But we struck gold again with the albergue here, it´s the cutest little place, 10 euros a night, and has only 18 pilgrim beds. We also ran into our little friend Maria and her daughter Clara here, it was a happy reunion - and it turns out she had the camera charger adapter that I left behind in the albergue in Espinal! So now I have an extra one to lose. Anyway , the meal in the Uterga albergues was phenominal. There are always options for every course, but I chose to start with a huge bowl of spahgetti with a delicious sauce which I scarfed down, next I went for a plate of also delicious beef stew with french fries which I also polished off, then an ice cream sundae for dessert, which, of course, I finished to the last spoonful. Then there was the standard basket of bread and the wine (though I always opt for the water, but Tom and the other pilgrims did great justice to the wine!). As I ploughed through each course I kept saying, "I can´t believe I´m eating all this!" One thing for sure, even with all this walking I´m not going to lose a pound! In fact, I feel like I could go for that Cornetto now! A happy day to all!
Tom is so good! A couple of albergues ago I left behind (duh!) my adapter for my camera. So while I was writing yesterday´s blog he found his way to the local hardware store look for a new adapter. He found one and made a cultural discovery : hardware stores here are just like the ones in the states! You go into the store, a young kid waits on you, you tell him what you need, he sort of looks around then grabs something in a package from the wall. You pay for it, take it home, open it up, realize it´s the wrong thing, and cuss. Later in Pamplona we found an electrical store run by an old man, with several other old men hanging around. We showed him what we needed, he studied it a moment, went to a drawer full of all kinds of plugs and - voila! - just what we need! We were so happy we cheered. The other old men applauded and said "Bravo! Bravo!" and the shop owner took a bow! It´s a small world after all, right? So, yesterday we took a bus to Pamplona, did the touristy thing, and saw the sights (thankfully, without our backpacks!). Last night our single fellow pilgrim with whom we shared our 50-bed albergue was Ferdinand, a retired Spanish air force officer who walked 40 km yesterday! And then I was astounded by how peppy he was last night after he was after walking all that way! - me, who is pretty much zombified every night after walking less than 20 km! Today the backpacks went back on and we plan on walking 20 km to Uterga. I´ll probably be doubly zombified tonight. Anyway, Uterga is kind of sooner than the usual stopping point from Pamplona (which we also stopped a little sooner than) but we´ve decided to try and stay a bit behind "the herd". (Our affectionate nomenclature for our crowds of fellow pilgrims - no problems, though, there are always a few fellow straggler-behind-pilgrims to keep us company on the Camino). Just a note on how much we love this town, Villava, of the empty albergue. Once again Tom has made a bestie, Miguel, the young Venezuelan who owns the shop where this computer is. Miguel speaks English and is so helpful to the pilgrims and Tom gave him some marketing advice. To answer your question, Romaine: my impression regarding the piilgrim meals is that in the restaurants where the albergues are in cahoots with the restaurant the meals seem to be offered only to the pilgrims but I think other places anybody could order one. But don´t quote me on that, it´s just my impression. A happy day to you all! Patti 8)
Sorry for the gap yesterday, in the last albergue we stayed at the computers no fonctiona and the same for the albergues we´re staying at now. But <I found this little store with a computer so we´re in business! But if I go for a while without posting it´s just that I can´t find a working computer. Anyway, to catch up: The day before yesterday we made the 17 steep-uphill-and-steep-downhill walk to the town of Zubiri. So, up until then it had been for us kind of a luxury accomdations pilgrim experience, but at Zubiri it just got real. We stayed in the municipal albergue for 6 euros each. The albergue is in a former school house where they´ve converted the classrooms to bunk bed rooms. I think our room must have been the time-out room, it was soooo tiny and there were 3 bunks shoe-horned into it. Our suitemates were two very cheerful ladies from South Africa, sisters about our age; a friendly middle-aged Italian man who was doing the Camino on bike, and George, a quite portly old Hungarian ( I say old, I took him to be in his late 70´s but it turned out he was only 61!) who immdiately latched onto Tom as his bestie. Before we left he gave Tom a ribbon of the hungarian flag to attach to his backpack, which Tom did. Now besides his shell he has on his backpack the Hungarian ribbon and the finger rosary the Nashes gave him before he left. The bathroom facilities were quite plentiful (probably because it was a school) but they were across the courtyard from the albergue ( probably because it was a school!) All the facilities were in a brick building. You walk into the building and there were 5 toilet stalls on the left wall and against the right wall was a big communal sink. On either side of the sink were the shower rooms, on for men and one for women. In the women´s room ( and I expect in the men´s, too, though I didn´t take a peek, but I could have since there were no locks on the doors) there were 5 shower heads - but no stalls! (And no locks on the doors, right?) But I decided either take the darn shower or smell like 5-day -old fish, so I sucked in my breath and jumped into the festivites. I just pretended I was at the Y. Next day we started walking towards Pamplona. Tom had read a blog about an albergue on the outskirts of Pamplona about which a blogger had written unfavorable comments, he discouraged anyone from staying there because, although it was a super clean, big and modern place with great facilities, no one ever stayed there, he was the only person there and it was too lonely. Too lonely? As in all the bathrooms for us? We made a beeline for the place! The place was as the blogger described it, 10 euros for wonder facilities plus breakfast but it was better than completely empty: there were 2 other pilgrims there, a middle-aged Canadian with foot problems ( I told him to tighten his boots!) and a German man, Josef, about our age who gave us some great advice & encouragement about doing the Camino (this is his 3rd time doing it). And of course all the commodes and showers for me, me, me! We like this empty place so much ( and the hospitaliero is so kind and helpful) that we are going to spend another night here. Today we´ll take the bus into Pamplona and return later. Life is good on the Camino and I hope it is for all of you, our friends and loved ons. Have good days all ´til I can write again. Love, Patti 8)
In a few minutes we will be on our way to our next stop, either 16 km to Zibri or, if we´re feeling all hale & hearty, another 5km beyond that to Larasoana. One thing we´ve been learning is that the Camino experience is different for each person. Many people, in fact, most Europeans we´ve met so far son´t go all the way to Santiago, they just go as far as they can for the time they have allotted, then maybe each year they´ll go a Little further until they finally reach Santiago. Here in Espianal we are sharing a room with a nice Finnish lady and a young German mother who is doing the Camino with her Little 4-yr-old daughter! Between my pathetic German and her great English we are communicating just fine. Tom, is quite a hit with the little girl though niether speak the other´s language. The mother, whose name is Maria, says she only has ten days then they have to be back home. She already did the
Camiono before and she says she doesn´t care how far they go, she just likes being on the Camino. That seems to be how people feel. Maria says she would love to come to the states so, of course, I told her to come with Clara (her daughter) and stay with us, so maybe that will happen. Though there is no one way to do the Camino, still the typical route for those doing the Camino Frances (what we´re doing) is to either start from Saint Jean Pied-De-Port and go over the mountain (which we didn´t do - took the wonderful but under used low road) to Roncesvalles, or skip the mountain (or low road) altogether and start the Camino in the town of Roncesvalles. Subsequently Roncesvalles is a great congreation of pilgrims, kind of like Pilgrim Central. We decided to skip Roncesvalles as a stop-over and walk about 7.5 km further to the tiny town of Espinal. But we did stop by Roncesvalles since it was on the way. The <pigrim albergue there is a fromer monastery, a beautiful, enormous old building, I guess from the middle ages, where there are over 400 pilgrim beds! The monastery dominates the tiny town but there are 2 hotels and a couple of restaurants and bars on the "campus" as well. I say campus because my impression of Roncevalles wasa campus the first day of college! Happy-looking people, Young and old, wandering around and meeting up, we peeked inside the pilgrim office, which is also the "admission office" of the albergue and it was overflowing with people, backpacks on the floor everywhere. The terraces of the bars and restaurants were full of peopleas well, laughing and talking. And the Monastery kind of looks like a college, so the whole impression was "exciting first day of college". But better, I guess, because there are no clases, no studying, no anything except waking up in the morning and walking. But <i´m glad we didn´t spend the night in Roncesvalles because Maria and her duaghter did and Maria said that there were 400 people sleeping there in bunkbeds in an enormous comunal room! As I said, we moved on to Espinal, also a tiny under used town, since everybody stays in Roncesvalles. But we had a wonderful room her in a hotel that reserves the top floor for pilgrims. It´s a big loft with a big living room, lovely terrace, and a free computer on which I´m writing this. Everthing is very kind of Danish modern decor and new. There are only three other pilgrims vesides us, Maria and Little Clara and Kirsti, the finnish woman, so we have the wholoe big place to ourselves. Our Pilgrim meal last night was, for 10 euros each, a big plate of spagetti with a delicious tomato sauce for starters, then a pork cutlet with Fries, then rice pyudding for dessert (lots of carbs for the road!) And of course, the standardbread basket and bottle of wine. Breakfast is usually some bread and coffee or tea for me, here we had a huge toasted baguette. So now we´re off onto our next leg. Quick answer to some questions: Claire, yes, I´ve been using my French like a house afire, you wouldn´t believe all the people who are floored by an American who is fluent in French, though I always assure them that us francophiles are out there! As for theweather, it´s been great so far though rain is predicted for tonight. Love and a wonderful day to you all! Patti 8) |
Patti Liszkay
My husband Tom and I will be walking the 490.7-mile Camino de Santiago from St. Jean Pied de Port, France, to Santiago, Spain. We leave Columbus 9/11/13 and return 10/30/13. God willing. ArchivesCategoriesThe sequel to "Equal and Opposite Reactions" in which a woman discovers the naked truth about herself.
A romantic comedy of errors. Lots and lots of errors. "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay Buy it on Kindle: http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa or in print: http://www.blackrosewriting.com/romance/equalandoppositereactions or from The Book Loft of German Village, Columbus, Ohio Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
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