food Archives - Nadine Walks

Paris of My Dreams

August 4, 2017

I arrived in Paris in my hiking clothes: long green pants that zip off at the knee, a t-shirt over a tank top, my good socks, my sturdy and quite worn in shoes. I wore my pack, too, and over my right shoulder was a small duffel bag, all the extra clothes and items I’d needed for the writer’s retreat I’d just left.

I felt just a little strange, and nervous. My walking stick, which I’d carried for the last 34 days, had been left behind at La Muse; tucked away in the corner of a basement room where, hopefully, I might be able to find it again. My loaded pack felt heavy, though it was a weight that I had gotten used to just weeks before, as I hiked through the Chemin du Puy. Already, I was out of practice.

But I wasn’t in Paris to be a hiker or a walker, was I? I thought that maybe I was here to continue my writer’s retreat but I wasn’t sure about that, either.

All I knew were, well, three things:

1. I missed those full days of walking, and part of me wished that instead of a week in Paris, I had organized a week long trek somewhere new and exciting.

2. I missed La Muse. I missed Homer and the way he would bound up to me and then bound away, dancing in a circle when he knew we were going for a hike. I missed, already, my room with the big window and the view of the mountains, I missed the friends that I’d made, the little writer’s community we’d formed.

3. I love Paris. I really, really love Paris.

But why was I spending a week in the city, alone? What was I going to accomplish here? I already know Paris, at least I know the things that tourists know: where to get a hot crêpe and what the view from the top of Notre Dame looks like, how to find the room with the Van Gogh’s in the Musée d’Orsay and how to open the door of a car on the metro.

I’d spent time in Paris at least a half dozen times during the year I studied abroad in Toulouse, and in the last 4 years, have spent between 1-4 days in Paris every summer. It’s become a regular thing, a mandatory swing through Paris when I’m in Europe. Sometimes all I have to do is buy a baguette and walk down the streets of the Île de St Louis and come upon Notre Dame and stare up in wonder.

Now I was in Paris and I had an entire week and I wondered: am I going to continue to be in love with this city? Am I going to become restless? Will I wish I were somewhere else?

Here are the answers: Yes. No. No.

My days in Paris didn’t exactly have a routine, though I suppose in some ways, little ways, they did. I’d wake up between 7 and 8am, though sometimes if I was awake in the 6 o’clock hour I’d roll out of bed and walk onto my balcony to see if there was a good sunrise. Several times, there was.

Once I was up for good I’d spoon some coffee into the little stove top expresso maker and then take a shower, toweling off just as the coffee was ready. There was a small fridge in the “kitchen” of my place and on my first day I’d stocked it with some essentials: yogurt, fruit, cheese, meat. I’d have a small bowl of yogurt with my coffee and flip through a guidebook and come up with ideas for the day.

Around 9, sometimes earlier, I would set out. The city is quiet in the morning, even at 9 many places are just beginning to think about opening, the tables start to go out in front of the cafes, brooms sweep leaves and trash off the pavement and sometimes I’d pass men or women hosing off the sidewalk in front of their shops. Trash trucks drove up and down the streets, bottles would crash and shatter as recycling bins were emptied.

Usually, the first thing I’d do was stop for another coffee, or a croissant. I found a few cafés that weren’t traditionally French but featured pretty decent coffee, and a few cafés with mediocre coffee and a lot of French charm.

After coffee I would always head off somewhere, walking through the streets, never using the metro (not in the morning, anyway). I went to art museums: the Musée d’Orsay, Espace Dali, the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Musée Rodin. I explored the arrondissements, the neighborhoods: the 5th, the 3rd, the 14th, the 17th, the 6th and 7th, the 3rd and 4th, the 20th. The Latin Quarter, St-Germain, Montparnasse, the Marais, Montmartre.

And more. I walked everywhere. I almost don’t want to write this because it seems absurd, but on two separate days I walked 20km through the city. 20km! Around and around and around.

But I used the metro, too, I love the metro. Even in the summer when it is hot down there in those winding corridors, when the smell is so distinct, it’s a smell that screams to me: “This is Paris. THIS is Paris.” But the metro can take you anywhere, and on the streets you will always find one, there seems to be one at every other turn.

I went to bookshops, and I bought books. I read books, too, in back rooms of the cafés, with a noisette or a flat white (the coffee that is taking over Paris, apparently), and I’d sit and arrange myself on a wooden stool and I would open my book and read.

A few times, I met up with friends: for dinner in a bistrot, for a picnic by the Seine, for a glass of champagne to celebrate my birthday. We shopped for picnic supplies in La Grande Epicerie, a place I’d never been to before and I went back two days later to pick up food for lunches or dinners on my balcony: double crème brie, eggplant and yogurt dip, octopus and prawns and mussels marinated in olive oil, crispy baguettes, fresh raspberries.

I discovered new places: a covered market where I bought hot fries in a newspaper cone, a street market that I walked up and down three times, just to watch the vendors and listen to the sounds. I bought a bottle of wine from a little shop, a chunk of cheese from another.

Parks and cemeteries and canals and squares: I spent a lot of time in outdoor spaces. Jardin du Luxembourg (twice, because it was a 15 minute walk from my apartment), Père Lachaise (twice, because the first time I got turned around and had to leave to meet a friend before I could find Oscar Wilde’s grave. I’ve seen it before- two or three times at least- but it’s like a visit I have to make whenever I’m in Paris. I’m not even sure why, because I’m not a particular fan of Oscar Wilde… I just know that I have to do it). And what else? The Canal Saint-Martin and the Promenade Plantée, the Place des Vosges and the Place de la Contrescarpe. Parc de Belleville.

So many things, all of this and more. But I also spent time in that little apartment of mine- for afternoon catnaps and a glass of wine in the evening, sitting on my balcony and looking out over the rooftops. At 10pm, and again at 11 and again at midnight, thousands of lights on the Eiffel Tower flash and blink, the tower sparkles for 5 minutes and I could see it from my balcony and every night I was home I would stand outside and watch.

Home. That apartment and even Paris, a little bit, began to feel like home. My friend Alex, an Australian writer I’d met at La Muse last summer, moved to Paris in March. She signed a 6-month lease but always intended to stay for at least a year, and when I talked with her about it, her eyes started to shine. “If I can swing it, I want to stay for at least 2 years, maybe 3.”

I asked her a lot of questions about what it had been like to move to Paris, to live in Paris, if the language barrier was a problem, if the cultural barrier was a problem. She told me about a French course she took, how she connected with other expats, her favorite things to do, the site she used to find her apartment.

And I began to dream. What if I could do this? I have an entire life somewhere else but the thing is, I’ve been dreaming about Paris ever since I was 20, from the moment I first laid eyes on the city. And Paris, after all this time, is still a beautiful dream. It’s the city of my dreams.

7 different people asked me for directions during my week in Paris; some of them were tourists but some were French, one- an old lady- might even have been a Parisian. I could only give an answer to one of them, a French guy, and I answered with a smile and with an assurance. I’d understood his question, I knew where we were and where he wanted to go, and I could give a response, in French.

After a week in the city I was beginning to feel like I knew where I was, where I was going. Could I ever have more time like this? More than just a few days, more than a week? Could I live here for a few months, half a year? An entire year?

In my dreams, yes. And if I continue to write and work and aim high and big, if I take chances and with a little (or a lot) of luck, I might just be able to live out my dreams.

But, that’s one of my castles in the air and it’s a beautiful one but for now I’ll be grateful for what is right in front of me: the magical week I just spent in a city that I love, the work it took to get myself there, the chances that I’ve already taken in life, the persistance of my dreams for where they’ve already taken me.

And Paris will always be there. Whether for a few days or a week or a month, a year or a lifetime; it will always be there.

The Last, Perfect Camino Day; Day 9 on the Camino del Norte (Miraz to Sobrado dos Monxes, 25km)

August 31, 2016

Warning: this is a long post. I think this is what happens when I write after the Camino ends, when I’ve had time to think about my days and reflect on all that happened. So maybe grab a cup of coffee or a glass of good Spanish wine and read about my last day on the Camino.

It seems like each time I do a Camino, I have one perfect day. Or, a day that’s just all-around so good and I feel so happy that I don’t want to even think about it too much- I just want to be in the day, in each moment of it, soaking it all up. On the Camino Frances it was the day I walked into Burgos; last year, it was the day on the Primitivo when my friends and I cobbled together some food and ate in the garden of the albergue under a setting sun.

And this year, it was my very last day on the Camino. How beautiful is that? It seemed like good Camino symmetry, that I’d had a rather difficult and isolated time overall, until the very end. And the very end felt magical.

All three of these ‘perfect days’ have something in common: I spent them with people whose company I truly enjoyed, people who I felt connected to. This makes me laugh, because I spend so much time alone on these Camino journeys; walking alone is important to me, facing challenges alone makes me grow, being happy and content with my own company is something I admire about myself.

But in the end, I need people. I think we all do.

My last post left off in the albergue of Miraz, where I’d eaten a hearty pasta dinner cooked by an Italian woman and eaten with a table full of new friends. I woke in the morning knowing I wouldn’t get an early start- the hospitaleros prepared a simple breakfast for us that they began to serve at 7am, so after a couple cups of strong coffee and a large stack of jellied toast, I didn’t set off until well after 7:30.

From my seat at the table in the albergue kitchen, I had watched the light change out the window. At first a dark, almost navy blue that slowly shifted and thinned, turning pale and then pink and orange tinged at the horizon and it was a perfectly clear, pastel colored sky.

I sat watching this sky in the albergue, wanting to be out there, walking, but at the same time content to sip my coffee and crunch into another piece of toast and make groggy conversation with the pilgrim sitting across from me. I almost felt like I was beginning to master something on this Camino (though in reality I’ve probably still got lots of work to do): I was able to just be in the moment, letting go of expectation and control of how I thought things should go or how I wanted them to go. I had learned to let go of worry or stress, and to just sort of take each day for what it was going to give me. I’m still frustrated that I got sick on my Camino, but if there was one take away, it was that everything felt so much easier once I started to feel better. And that I was reminded that feeling and being healthy is maybe the thing I’m most grateful for; if I have my health then I’m able to walk, I’m able to enjoy the food on the table in front of me, I’m able to smile and talk to a stranger. I’m able to be alive in the world.

So for the end of my Camino, I felt so settled into my days, accepting of whatever they would look like: if I would be alone, if I would make a new friend, if I would fly through the walk or if I would feel the burn in my legs. I had no need to make my last day into anything- to frantically fill it with all my favorite things, to make sure I drank Rioja wine or to have a cafe con leche break, to ensure that I would walk alone, to walk to a beautiful sunrise, to arrive at an albergue at any given time. Maybe I’d have these things and maybe I wouldn’t; it was okay.

This is a long way to open a post about my last day, but I’m reflecting on it now because I think my attitude probably contributed to how beautiful this day turned out to be (and it’s a reminder of how I try to keep living, back at home… it’s awfully hard but I’m trying).

When I did finally leave the albergue, full of coffee and bread and the warmth of the hopsitaleros and my new friends, the walk was beautiful. The day was beautiful: it was barely 60 degrees and a strong wind was blowing and the world around me felt a little wild, and free. And by extension, I felt a little wild, and free. I was alone for most of my walk, facing forward but also turning around to catch the sun reaching over the peaks of distance hills. The light was golden and cast long, deep shadows across the reddish dirt and rough stone. I walked, sometimes feeling like I was gliding, being pushed along by the wind.

And as I approached my destination, Sobrado dos Monxes (after a 25km walk), I didn’t feel sad or anxious to try to capture the last steps of this year’s Camino, to savor each one. I just felt… good.

Just before the small town of Sobrado is a small lake, and sitting off to the side along a stone wall was a big group of Spanish teenagers and a few young adults. One of them flagged me down, and began speaking quickly. When I told them I spoke English, another came over to translate. “Do you know where we are?” he asked. They wanted to know where I had come from- they were walking in the opposite direction, not on the Camino exactly, but maybe on a scouting/camping trip. I mentioned the names of towns I’d seen as I walked, and pulled out my guidebook and pointed at a map, to help them orient themselves.

I walked away feeling satisfied that someone had asked me for direction, knowing that I felt sure about where I was, what was behind me, where I was going. I walked a few more steps and saw two pilgrims sitting on a small dock at the water’s edge. They were two English guys who I’d seen a couple times the day before; we chatted for a few minutes- they were killing time because apparently the albergue in Sobrado didn’t open until 4pm. It was almost 1:30 at this point but I didn’t want to linger too long, I wanted to get into the town and find a restaurant where I could get a good meal. One of the guys nodded and said, “Natalie passed by about 15 minutes ago, so she’s just ahead of you.”

I grinned as I walked away, pleased that this pilgrim had linked me together with Natalie, even though I’d only met her yesterday. And I was pleased that she wasn’t far ahead of me. I’d known that just about everyone I’d been in the albergue with the night before was planning to stay in Sobrado- the albergue is in an old monastery and there were over 100 beds available for pilgrims. So I continued walking and I arrived at the monastery to read a sign posted on the door: the albergue had been open until 1:30, and would reopen at 4:00. I checked my phone for the time- it was 1:38. I had just missed a chance to drop off my pack and claim a bed, but in keeping with the theme of the day, I wasn’t bothered by it. I noticed a German man who I’d met briefly the morning before, and for some reason- even though he hadn’t stayed in the Miraz albergue with us and I didn’t even know his name- I considered him part of our group of solo walkers. I grinned and shrugged at our bad luck and said, “Lets go find some lunch.”

We went back to the main square of the town, looked around, and I picked a bar that had a large black board propped against the wall, listing some items from the day’s menu. After using translators on our phones to decipher the food choices, we ordered and took glasses of wine to a table outside. No sooner had we settled in than Natalie, Silvia, Michael and Matthias walked up (they had made it into the albergue before 1:30). They laughed and cheered when they saw us, and we all crowded around the table, then moved inside when the wind started blowing over chairs and knocking over glasses.

My food came out first, and it was then that we realized we had stumbled onto something great. This wasn’t just another Spanish bar with bland lettuce and watery tomatoes, fried slabs of meat, hunks of white bread. I’m sure there are restaurants like this in larger cities on the Camino (I’ve even been to a few good ones), but this was a hidden gem in a small, dusty town. On the outside and on the inside, it looked like any other bar, maybe a touch more modern, a touch more clean. But the food! The guy bringing out our dishes was the chef, and he owned this restaurant. He was young and full of energy and ideas. He could speak some English (which I hadn’t encountered much), and explained that his menu evolved; he aimed to use the freshest, most local ingredients, and so he cooked with whatever was available and in season.

And it was evident in the food that we ordered. My salad wasn’t a normal ‘ensalada mixta’: the lettuce looked like it had been picked sometime in the last hour (and maybe it had; it took awhile for the food to get to us). The tomatoes were the right color of red, there were thin slices of radish and a broiled cheese that I couldn’t identify but the flavors burst on my tongue and I scraped up every last bit. My next dish was mounds of smoked salmon piled on top of an avocado mousse and layered on thick toast and there was so much I could only finish it because it was so good.

I’m not totally sure of what everyone else was eating because I was so absorbed in own meal, all I know is that everyone was raving over the quality of the food. I saw some sort of pulled pork, and long plates of deep green padron peppers. We drank glasses of wine, and then more glasses of wine. When the chef came to ask us if we wanted dessert, we rubbed our stomachs, looked at each other, and asked what he was making.

I ordered his personal recommendation, in English he called it “cream cheese with jelly”, but even he knew that this description didn’t do the dish justice. “Just try it,” he said. “It’s made with ingredients unique to Galicia, and it is the very best.”

And it was. After dessert we ordered coffee, because there’s nothing like a strong shot of espresso to end a really long and really good meal. We thanked the chef countless times and raved over his food and he urged us to come back later that night. (I’m kicking myself for not noting the name of this restaurant; my google searches are bringing up nothing).

Just as we were leaving, I noticed the two English guys I had passed on my way into Sobrado. One of them- the handsome, blond one with long hair pulled back into a knot at the back of his head- was paying at the bar and I decided to walk over and talk to him. I did it without giving it much thought; he had caught my eye and I wanted to say hi. I was feeling good from the weight of the wine and the fullness of my meal, from the soft morning sunlight and the wild wind, from the freedom I’d felt as I walked and the confidence I had at the end of this journey through Spain.

We stood at the bar, talking, then moved outside to where his friend was sitting, then all walked together back to the monastery. We stood in line together and waited to check in, talking about the day’s walk, about where we lived, about our ideas for the future. I was so distracted by the conversation, by the English guy’s light blue eyes and his nice smile that it wasn’t until we were almost at the front of the line that I realized I had left my walking stick behind.

My stick! You guys know how much my walking sticks mean to me on these Caminos, and this year was no exception. I’d found the stick on my second day of the San Salvador and it was different than the sticks I’d carried on my other Caminos but I’d learned how to carry it so that it fit into my hand perfectly, I learned to love it. I couldn’t believe that I had gotten distracted by a guy and left it behind. I was about to turn around and go retrieve it, but then I realized that I didn’t need it anymore. My walking was done, the stick had fulfilled its purpose, I was going to leave it behind that day anyway. (I did go back later to look for the stick, but it was gone. And that, despite knowing I was going to leave it behind anyway, made me a little sad).

I’m amazed that I don’t have a good photo of this year’s walking stick. So here’s another shadow photo.

We got our beds and I showered and a French woman I’d never met before asked if I wanted to share the washing machine with her so I didn’t have to hand wash my clothes. While my clothes were washing I walked around, exploring the monastery. I couldn’t quite believe that I was staying here on my last day of Camino walking. It was my kind of place. Old and nearly abandoned, crumbling and decaying, vines growing through empty windowpanes, the flap of pigeon wings echoing around the vacant spaces. In many ways it was sad to see this beautiful, imposing building left to rot, left behind. But it was also quietly beautiful, more beautiful to me than so many of the gilded and ornate churches that dot the path of the Camino.

The rest of the afternoon and evening went by too fast, and I wanted more time. Time to run my errands and wander through the town. Time to write postcards to my friends and family, time to explore more of the monastery, time to talk to my new friends. I was able to do some of this, all of this, but I wanted just a bit more. More, and yet, what I had was enough. A big group of us did go back to the same restaurant where we’d had lunch, we ordered several bottles of wine and plates of tapas and stayed until just before 10:00, and then we had to rush back to the albergue before we got locked out.

At some point in the evening, Natalie asked me if I was sad that my Camino was over, that I couldn’t continue on to Santiago. And you know, I surprised myself a little that my answer was ‘no’. It would have been wonderful to continue on for two or three more days to Santiago, to try to stick with the group I’d found, and with the people I was continuing to meet. But a few days into the San Salvador I’d known that I couldn’t walk all the way to Santiago this year, and despite my recent connections, I was okay to say goodbye that night. The entire day had felt surrounded by a haze of that ol’ Camino magic- and I was happy. Content with the way I’d walked, excited about a new adventure to come, but mostly just focused on the beautiful place I was in at the moment, the beautiful people surrounding me.

Walking back to the albergue under a half moon and the fading light of the sky, my friends before me, I thought to myself, “This is the perfect end to a Camino. I don’t need anything else.”

Photo of the Week #6: Steak-frites!

March 28, 2015

Today finds me in a warm Panera Bread cafe, on a cold day in western Virginia. I’m here for a mini spring-break trip to visit my best friend, and last year around this time I was treated to sunny skies and 60-70 degree days. Just now, at 11am, it is 25 degrees. I’m not amused. No one is.

Last Saturday, however, was pretty beautiful. I was in DC visiting another friend, and at one point we sat on a bench with a view of the Capitol to our left, the Washington Monument to our right, and the warm sun on our faces. My photo(s) this week come from that trip- a weekend of good food, good coffee, good wine and good bread. And some art.

steak frites, le diplomate, washington dc

Steak-frites at Le Diplomate, a French restaurant in DC. As I took my first bite, I realized that this is a meal I’ve never actually had in France, and I promised myself that I would change that this summer, during the day I have in Paris at the end of my trip.

A “gourmet” food hall with a stall selling some of the best bread I’ve had outside of France (there seemed to be an unintentional French theme to the weekend…)

Photo of the Week #5: Snow Walks and Green Bagels

March 22, 2015

Another photo of the week! This goes back to last Sunday (so… I guess that was the start of my ‘photo of the week’ week? I’m not really sure how I’m measuring these weeks, but I suppose it doesn’t matter too much).

I joined the Philadelphia Chapter of APOC (American Pilgrims on the Camino); I’ll write more about this in a future post, but for now I wanted to share a photo from the hike I joined them on last Sunday. It was the longest day of walking I’ve done since the Camino- 14 miles in about 6 hours, with a few stops and breaks in between. The first few miles were the most difficult, and required us to navigate through snow and over ice; not my ideal walking/hiking conditions…

And, for a bonus photo… the best way I can think of to celebrate St Patrick’s Day (how did you celebrate?):

Green bagel!

Best and worst meals of the Camino (and other thoughts on pilgrimage food)

March 16, 2015

A return to the Camino means a return to the food of the Camino, and it should be no surprise to any of you that I sometimes dream about daily café con leches. In fact, I dream about a lot of the food I ate along the way.

But this wasn’t always the case. By the end of my walk on the Camino Frances, I was getting tired of the food. It happened all at once; one day, I was marveling at how I would never tire of tortilla or tuna or pilgrim’s menus with their slabs of meat, french fries and ensalada mixta (usually a very, very basic salad). By then suddenly, a few days from Santiago, I lost my appetite. Don’t get me wrong, I was hungry, but nothing seemed appealing. Maybe it was having eaten the same food for 30 days, or maybe it was being so close to the end of my pilgrimage (in those last days my body hurt and my mood was a bit off and I didn’t want to eat the foods I had been loving for weeks. My sub-conscious telling me that I didn’t want my journey to end? Or that I was ready to end? I’m still not sure).

In any case- now- I’m craving those Camino foods again. I was on a long walk yesterday, and while it would be nice to always be thinking deep thoughts when I walk, or maybe puzzling through some piece of writing that I’m working on, the truth is that I’m often thinking about food. And yesterday I was thinking about Camino food, and all of the things I’m looking forward to having again when I return to Spain.

This isn’t going to be a comprehensive post about the food of the Camino or all of the unique and wonderful things you can find in the north of Spain (although it will be picture heavy… wow, did I take a lot of photos of my food!). I certainly got to eat some incredible food while on my pilgrimage, but there was a lot I missed, as well. I’ve always been satisfied with simple food, so for the majority of my Camino, I was happy with coffee, bread, wine and a pilgrim’s menu. Sometimes I read blogs about what other people eat on their Caminos and I wonder: were we walking the same path? Where in the world did they find that incredible meal?

Here’s a run-down on my Camino eating routines: I’d wake up early and try to be walking around 6:30am. If possible, I would have a café con leche before I started walking, if I could find an open bar in the town I’d stayed in the night before. If that wasn’t possible, I would stop at the first open bar that I would come across, sometimes 30 minutes away, sometimes a few hours away (those mornings were tough). After walking for an hour or two, I would always eat something at that first stop: either tortilla (egg omelet with potato), a croissant, or toast. I’d walk for another few hours, and then sometimes stop for a second breakfast: sometimes just another café con leche, sometimes another tortilla or croissant or toast if the walk was strenuous or if I was hungry.

If I didn’t have a ‘second breakfast’, I might opt for a pre-lunch ice cream break, on the really hot days.

Lunch was nearly always a combination of food that I had stowed away in my pack. I know that some pilgrims stopped at a bar or restaurant for a sit down meal and a menu del dia (menu of the day, which is a great alternative to the pilgrim’s menu and usually offers a better selection of food). But I didn’t like taking really long breaks and preferred to have a sit-down meal in the evening instead. So I would cobble a meal together with whatever I could find in tiendas (shops) along the way: bread, cheese, ham, peaches, cherries, tuna, tomatoes, crackers/cookies. There was really nothing better than ripping off a crusty piece of bread and dipping it into a can of tuna drenched in olive oil, then biting into a juicy tomato and nibbling on a chunk of cheese. Basic stuff, but so, so good.

In the late afternoons, I settled into a nice routine of finding a place to have a drink and/or some tapas. At first I would go with a glass of red wine, but somewhere along the way another pilgrim recommended a drink called ‘tinto de verano’, basically a summer red wine. It’s popular in Spain and like sangria, but simplified: one part red wine, one part carbonated lemonade (and usually served over ice). The perfect refreshment after a long day’s walk (for this non-beer drinker, anyway).

And dinners were often a pilgrim’s menu (three courses, my choices were usually a salad, some kind of meat/fish with french fries, and ice cream, if available… along with bread and wine), or I would cook with friends if our albergue had a kitchen. The nights of cooking were wonderful and economical, and more often than not we would throw together a big salad with all the vegetables we could find (fresh veggies can be hard to come by on the Camino, at times).

There were highlights along the way, of course. Churros y chocolate at the Cafe Iruna in Pamplona. The wine in Rioja. A local man directed my friend Mirra and I to an amazing restaurant in Burgos, where we split a menu del dia and couldn’t stop raving about the quality of the food. The best plate of grilled veggies I’ve ever had at the O Mirador in Portomarin. A dish of pulpo (octopus) in Galicia.

But hands down, the best meal of my Camino was, in some ways, the most basic. It was before I’d really tasted anything, it was at the very beginning. On my first day of walking through the Pyrenees, I went off the route and found an isolated little spot over a crest and tucked away from other pilgrims. I had bought a jambon-buerre (ham/butter) sandwich at the albergue in Orisson (so technically, this was a French meal, and eaten just before I crossed the border into Spain). And really it wasn’t about the food, it’s about what that meal represented: the first day of a big journey. Sitting, alone and free, somewhere in the Pyrenees mountains. Sunshine, a cool breeze, feeling excited at the start of a big adventure.

By contrast, the worst meal was at the very end of my Camino, 17km away from Santiago. I’d walked a longer than expected day, not ending until after 5pm (which was a very late day for me). I ordered a plate of pasta in the only bar in the “village” where I was staying, and I could barely eat it. The pasta was swimming among bits of unidentifiable meat in an oily “sauce”. Dinner ended up being sleeves of Oreos and a few glasses of wine. Here is the very unflattering photo of that meal, and my disappointment.

Are there any standout meals from your travels that you can share? Any disappointments? Is there something (like a café con leche) that you dream about having again?

Sunshine and Daily Selfies; 5 Things I Miss About the Camino

January 27, 2015

It’s officially my first snow day of the season: school is cancelled and there’s less than 2 inches outside (a false alarm, but I still got a snow day out of it). I have a stack of books on my coffee table, packets of hot chocolate in my cupboard, Netflix opened in my browser (I just started watching American Horror Story, on the recommendation of a teenager I work with. I’m not sure yet if this was a good idea, or a bad idea).

But before I get to any of that, it’s time for more Camino reminiscing. That walk has been on my mind a lot, lately. Last week I bundled up and went out to a park to do a long walk, and I was surprised by how good it felt. And surprised by how sore my legs were. I realized that it had been over a month since I’d walked more than a mile or two, and man, I could feel it. I think my Camino legs are officially gone.

Maybe it was the walk, maybe it’s the cold weather, but I started doing some research into the Camino del Norte, another pilgrimage route that runs across the northern coast of Spain. It’s more physically challenging than the Camino Frances (which I walked last summer); there are many more hills, many more ups and downs. But the route is supposed to be gorgeous; much of it involves walking on a path that has the mountains directly to your left, and the ocean directly to your right. I can’t imagine a better scenario.

So while I’m dreaming about a *possible* 2015 Camino (we’ll see, we’ll see), I’ve also been nostalgic for last year’s Camino. I wrote a post a few months ago, called ‘Endless coffee, top bunks, and delirium; 7 things I miss about the Camino’, and now I’m back for round two. Here are 5 more things that I’ve been missing about the Camino lately.

1. Sunshine

I already wrote about how I loved being outdoors every day on the Camino, but you know what I really loved about that? Being in the sun. This is such a catch-22, because spending hours in the sun can be so dangerous. But I can’t help it, I love sunshine, and I always have. My mom saw a photo that I posted on this blog, while I was on the Camino, and her comment was something along the lines of: “Your skin!!! Wear a hat!!!!!!!” And I did, sometimes. I was religious in my use of sunscreen on the Camino though, and one of my favorite memories was standing, sweaty and dirty, in a farmacia (pharmacy) and trying to speak in Spanish with the woman working behind the counter (I knew about a dozen words, so I didn’t get very far). I was pointing up to the sky (to indicate the sun), then pointing down to my skin (to indicate that I needed something to cover it from the sun). She walked me over to a shelf full of tubes of cream, studied my skin for a minute, then thoughtfully picked out a bottle.

So, I wore a lot of sunscreen. And I loved (almost) every minute of being out in the sun. I walked the Camino at the end of June and the entirety of July, and I lucked out with a mild summer. There were definitely some cloudy days, but lots of sunny ones as well. Some days were hot, and some of the very hottest were difficult… but I still loved it. I feel so much better when I’ve gotten a daily dose of sunshine; I feel energized and healthy. And this is probably #1 on my list today because we’re in the very middle of winter, there is snow on the ground, and the days have been very gray. So I’m dreaming about a sunny Camino.

2. Eating endless food (and bread) and not really gaining any weight

I may have mentioned that I was about 5 pounds heavier when I returned home from my trip this summer, but not much of that was Camino weight. Well, maybe a pound (but most of it was due to the 10 days in France, post-Camino, where I ate entire meals of bread, cheese, and wine). I already wrote about being able to drink as much wine and coffee as I wanted, but I have to say, it was sheer joy to eat whatever I wanted on the Camino and not worry about it. I’m not a fanatic when it comes to food and my weight, but in my normal life I try to eat healthy foods and stay active and avoid my very favorite things (like french fries and sweet candy).

But the Camino wasn’t normal life. I was walking a ton every day, so I let myself indulge, and eat whatever I wanted to. It took me awhile to get into this routine (old habits die hard), but by the end of the trip, I was stopping at 10:30 am for a huge plate of french fries and a tall glass of coke, just because I wanted to. I almost always had a bag of gummy candies stuffed somewhere in my pack, and I could eat an entire basket of bread before my three course pilgrim’s meal (and then ask for a refill). All of this eating meant that I didn’t lose any weight as I walked 500-miles across a country, and I was okay with that. But as soon as the walking ended, my appetite, unfortunately, didn’t.

It’s taken months to get back to my “normal” eating habits. I may have lost a pound or two… but then again, some pants are still a little tight. Oh, those glorious days of bread and cheese and french fries! It’s a compelling reason to walk another Camino…

3. The opportunity to take a selfie every morning.

I know that I can take a selfie every morning if I wanted to. But what would it show? Here I am, standing in my kitchen, about to leave for work. Every single day. There’s simply no need to take a picture like this. But on the Camino, I took a photo of myself every morning before I began my walk (there were only two days when I forgot, so I took selfies along the path, instead). I had this idea before I began the walk, and the entire purpose was to keep track of my photos. I wasn’t sure how I would be able to remember which photos belonged to which day, so I decided to take a photo every morning, to separate one day’s walk from the next.

And even if the selfie-taking was a solution to an organizational problem, it’s now become something more. It shows me. It shows me on this walk: the first photos of my pale skin and tentative smile, the later photos showing confidence and happiness. My hair gets a little lighter, my skin gets a little darker, I become more relaxed. Some of the photos are bad (these are all taken approximately 30 minutes after I have woken up… often from a top bunk in a crowded albergue and after a fitful night of sleep. I spend 5 minutes in the bathroom brushing my teeth and splashing cold water in my face, and then I put on my pack and walk, so I’m not exactly looking my best)… but I love that I took them. And I wish I could once again have the opportunity to take a different photo from a different city or town or village every single day.

4. The kindness of strangers.

I think that anyone who has walked a Camino might be nodding their head about this one. There are kind people all over the world, and certainly kind people in our every day lives. But sometimes it takes a lot to see them, or notice them. And sometimes we’re so caught up in the busy-ness of life that we all forget to stop and help someone out. Or we forget to stop and be kind.

But on the Camino there is just so much of it. It took me about a week to get into the habit of sharing whatever I had. I think the first person to show me true kindness was Ibai, and I suspect it’s one of the reasons that I took the time to walk with him and get to know him, and then try to stay with him until the end. It was the end of my second day of walking, and I was setting up my keyboard at a picnic table in the courtyard of my albergue. Ibai walked over, asked if he could sit down, and offered me an orange. There was such genuineness and simplicity in this gesture, but I think I’ll always remember it. I took the orange and then we started a friendship.

And all along the Camino there are moments like these. People help you out with the bigger stuff (when you’re in pain, when you have horrible blisters, when you need directions, when you’ve run out of food), but they help with the smaller things, too. They offer you the bottom bunk. They ask, sincerely, how you are doing (and they expect to hear a truthful answer). They open up a bag of cookies and insist that you take one. And then you, in turn, begin to offer what you have. Your time, your ear, your extra Moleskin, your bag of cherries. It’s beautiful.

5. The people.

Oh, I miss the friends that I made: my Camino family. This post has already gone on long enough, and I could easily write another 1,000 words about the people I met on this Camino, but I won’t. All I can say is that the connections- whether they were people I walked with for 100-miles or people I talked to for 10 minutes- the connections were so much of what the Camino was all about. I miss those people.

Eating Cheetos Alone in a Hotel Room: An Unexpected Paradise

November 17, 2014

For months now (about three, to be exact), I’ve been wanting to go back and fill in some stories from the traveling I did this summer. I wrote all about the Camino, but I never described my long layovers in Iceland. Or the solo-traveling I did around Galicia in the days after I arrived in Santiago, and before leaving for Finisterre. And then there was the trip to France: the Côte d’Azur, Provence and Paris.

I sat down just now to write about the towns I visited in Galicia, and started to look through my photos from those days. One of the photos caught my eye and I clicked to enlarge it. It is by no means a very good photo, but it captures the essence of an experience better than so many of my other shots did.

It’s a picture of my hotel room, the very first room I had all to myself in over a month of traveling. I was in the town of A Coruna, a coastal city in the northwest corner of Spain. I’d arrived that afternoon after taking a train from Santiago. I was alone, and, also for the first time in over a month, I felt unsettled. So many pilgrims along the way said things like, “I’ve gained so much confidence from walking on the Camino. I know that if I can do this, I can do anything. Traveling anywhere- using public transportation- will seem so easy after this!”

I felt exactly the opposite. I had mastered walking, of putting on my shoes in the morning and setting out on a well-marked path, always running into people I knew, or at least recognized. But hopping on a train and arriving in a bustling city and seeing not a single pilgrim? I didn’t know what to do with myself. It felt completely foreign, in a way that my previous month of travel never had. I was a fish out of water, walking through town with my heavy pack and my hiking shoes.

But I figured it out, of course. I asked a man for directions, and he couldn’t have been more helpful. I found the tourist office (after asking a woman for help), and they directed me to a few inexpensive hotels. I checked in, the guy behind the desk seemed amused at my backpack and my tales of walking across Spain. I felt like I had to tell someone, like I had to explain everything I’d just done, to somehow mark the change that was taking place. I was in a new city and for the first time since I’d arrived in Spain, I hadn’t walked there. For the first time, I wasn’t sleeping in an albergue or meeting up with other pilgrims. The Camino was so fresh, so recent, and now I was in a strange town, alone. The clerk handed me my key, and waved me upstairs.

I walked into the room and it was a bit grim but it was also wonderful. Because, for a night, it was all mine. After arriving in Santiago I had four days to kill before my friend from home would come to join me on the walk to Finisterre. I’d tossed around a few ideas: stay in Santiago for those four days. Walk to Muxia and take a bus back to Santiago. Travel with a Camino friend to Portugal.

It was when I was sitting in the cathedral, the morning I’d arrived in Santiago, listening to the Spanish mass when I decided what to do: I was going to travel around the region alone. I needed something to mark the end of my Camino, and to separate the journey I’d just completed, alone, with the small Camino journey I was about to take with my friend. I also knew that I had so much to process from my walk, and I just wanted a few days away.

The hotel room felt a bit lonely, initially, so I just emptied a few things from my pack and then set off into town. I walked along a pathway next to the water, I explored the city center and I drank a glass of wine in the square. And then I went to the grocery store.

The last thing I wanted to do was bide my time until 10pm when it was acceptable to sit down at a restaurant to have dinner. And besides, I didn’t feel like sitting in a restaurant alone. So I found a grocery store, and I splurged.

I bought everything that looked good to me and then headed back to the hotel, where I settled in for my feast. After a month on the Camino with 3-course meals, endless glasses of wine and tapas, mid-afternoon cafe con leches… this felt decadent. Spreading my goods out on my bed (a real, stand alone, non-bunk bed bed!), pouring myself a glass of cheap and mediocre wine from a small cardboard box, popping open a bag of Cheetos and digging into a huge chunk of cheese with my Spork… this was decadence. I kicked off my shoes, laid on the bed, turned the television to a Spanish pop music channel, and scrolled through my phone to catch up on a month’s worth of facebook posts.

The photos of the gorgeous Spanish coast can wait; for now, for that night, this was my paradise.

Bon appétit

July 21, 2013

Yesterday was my trip down the mountain and it came not a day too soon. My shelf in the kitchen was looking grim: one very ripe and mushy banana, a can of tuna fish, a handful of golden grahams. I’d finished my bread that morning, and ate the last yogurt. All in all I planned my meals well, and could have done even better if the promised ‘épicerie (grocery) truck’ that delivers to the village once a week hadn’t been on holiday. For my last dinner before the great shopping trip, I had an egg scramble: a couple eggs mixed in with whatever veggies I had left in the fridge. Sprinkle on some herbs de provence and it was a success.

Glenn, on the other hand, was a different story. He had a similar idea for his last supper, and went to the cabinets and fridge to pull out his remaining food. As everyone else cooked their meals, we’d occasionally look over at Glenn to see what he was doing. Slicing some bread… no problem. Cutting chunks of cheese… fine. Then he pulled out herring. And pâté. And Pringles. And something pink that I still haven’t been able to identify.

“Glenn, what are you doing??” someone asked.

“Making dinner!” he replied.

Glenn's dinner

(The second plate in the photo is a meal of salmon and veggies, which another resident offered to him out of pity).

The trip to the supermarché was an all day outing. It began with a few hours in Carcassonne (the “newer” part of the city, not the fortified town); my first reaction after being dropped off at the train station was: “There’s too much going on! Too much noise and too many people!” It was a sharp contrast to the quiet and solitude of Labastide. Five minutes later, however, Julia, Artis and I were like kids in a candy shop, pointing at the stores and cafés, oohing and ahhing. The other two went off to do some clothes shopping (it’s ‘soldes’ time in France, big sales!), I walked around to explore.

It was my first time in a French town in over 10 years, and it brought back so many memories of being in Toulouse (even though I’ve been in France now for 10 days, village life is a brand new experience). This felt like the France I knew. The pharmacies recognizable by their green crosses, the crédit agricole banks, even a sandwich shop chain I loved to go to in Toulouse.

After walking around for an hour, I met Julia and Artis in the town’s square. A five piece band was playing beautiful music, kids were running around the fountain, cafés set out dozens of umbrella-ed tables. We picked a café called ‘Artichaut’, and lingered through lunch, soaking in the atmosphere of the square and the luxury of being served a meal.

From Carcassonne we went on to the supermarché, where I loaded up my cart and spent more on food in one trip than I ever have in my life (meat! cheese! fruits! veggies! wine! coffee!). Then more stops: an organic store, a boulangerie for a couple of fresh baguettes, a craft store so Julia could buy some canvases, and an impromptu stop for some ‘road cheese’. We even convinced John (our host and driver for the day) to stop for a “five minute” café. I ordered a petit crème: a tiny glass of espresso with steamed milk and a spoonful of foam.

On our way back up the mountain we ran into a storm, and arrived at La Muse to a power outage that lasted four hours (the biggest worry was not that there were no lights or internet service, but that our food could go bad). But the power returned, clouds rolled through the mountains, and we sat down to enjoy dinner on the terrace. Bon appétit, indeed.

Terrace after storm

A dinner party

July 16, 2013

I’d heard rumors earlier in the day that we were going to be having a fête to celebrate Bastille Day. Residents often try to eat dinner together, but people cook for themselves and the eating tends to go in shifts. Tonight’s dinner would be a collective effort, with everyone contributing a dish.

Judith, the opera singer, came knocking on my door around 5. “Did you hear about tonight’s dinner?” she asked. “I’m bringing meatballs.”

“I wish I could make something,” I replied. “But I don’t have much food left.”

Diane, Glenn and I, the only new residents, laugh a little everyday about our food situation. We were given shopping suggestions before arriving, and I had made a list and was prepared to buy more than I thought I needed. But the actual grocery store experience was completely surreal and overwhelming. I had just been picked up in Carcassonne, rode in a jeep with four strangers for 10 minutes, and then was deposited at the grocery store. We wheeled our carts aimlessly through the store, going our separate ways, studying the shelves and searching for the food items on our lists. After nearly an hour passed I started to panic, because it had been a long time since I’d seen anyone I recognized. I began moving quickly through the aisles, sometimes grabbing food at random, sometimes putting items back on the shelves.

Finally I ran into Diane, and she sighed with relief. “I thought I was the last one!” Soon afterwards we saw Glenn, with barely anything in his cart, looking a bit dazed. “I’m not much of a cook,” he said. We helped each other find the last, missing items: coffee filters, sugar, laundry detergent, and then checked out, satisfied that we’d done a good job.

But almost as soon as we arrived at La Muse later that evening and saw what the other residents had to eat, did we realize that none of us had bought enough. Everyday we put our heads together and talk about what we’re going to eat, giving each other ideas and sharing food. One day, Glenn brought out a can of Pringles saying, “You can each have three.” Diane shared her turkey, I shared my eggs. We have an excess of yogurt and stale bread. Glenn has started walking to the next village to eat at their cafe.

So when Judith appeared at my door, talking about meatballs, I looked at her with a bit of dismay. “I’ll bring a bottle of wine,” I said, “And next time I’ll cook something.”

The windows of my room look out onto the back of the house, and down to the bottom of the village. Around 7:00 I heard movement on the terrace, and leaned out my window to look down.

La Muse terrace

The table was set and Homer, the dog, was resting nearby (no doubt waiting for the food to be served). One by one the residents gathered, opening bottles of wine, finding candles for the table, plating the food.

La Muse Terrace

dinner table centerpiece

Once the wine was poured and the 11 of us were seated around the table, Judith picked up her glass and cried, “Vive la France!” We echoed her toast, and someone launched into La Marseillaise. The first course began with hors d’oeuvres: roasted red peppers, little bites of sausages, slices of cucumbers and pears, tomatoes and mozzarella. A potato and egg frittata, Caesar salad, quinoa, meatballs, and beet risotto dishes followed.

Artis, Jean-Christophe and I cleared off plates and retreated to the kitchen. Artis began to heat water for tea, asking if it would be okay to serve tea with the cheese. “Sure!” we said. Seconds later she came back inside with the mugs. “I was told that the cheese must come first!”

Outside there was laughter and singing. Throughout dinner, Alain had been freely pouring wine and refilling glasses, often when no one was looking. We lit candles, Homer cleaned up forgotten scraps of food, we discovered snails devouring a plate of nuts.

Jeff and Susan invited us over to their cottage on Tuesday night, for another group dinner. We smiled and gladly accepted. Glenn looked around the table. “I’ll bring the Pringles.”

Homer