• Blog
  • About
  • Camino Frances
    • Why the Camino?
    • Camino Packing List
  • Other Camino Routes
  • Books
  • Contact Me

Nadine Walks

stories of trekking and travel

In the footsteps of Monet and Hemingway; Day Two in Paris, and the end of my Camino

August 11, 2015

I’ve been trying to write a post about the last day in Paris and the end of my trip, and I’m reminded of why I loved writing in the moment so much: writing about something that happened several weeks ago is a completely different experience than writing about it when the memories are fresh, when they’re all around you.

So I’ll start how I often do, with what’s around me in the moment: it’s just after 8am and I have a half finished cup of really strong coffee on the table next to me. I’m in my living room and despite the early hour it’s dark in here; the skies are a thick grey and rain drizzles and pours through the trees, onto the stone porch that’s just outside my door.

I’ve had a disjointed and crazy and wonderful few weeks since I’ve been home: a day in my apartment, a week on the road. A few days home again and a few days back out. Back and forth, home and away, over and over. I have one week left of vacation before I return to work, and at the start of the summer, I was tempted to pack in as much as possible: go to Europe, walk the Camino, come home and travel south for a wedding and to see friends. Then take off again- maybe California, maybe Maine, maybe an impromptu backpacking trip in the woods. I realized I was totally unprepared to do any of this, and what’s more, I didn’t want to do anything big. I wanted to sit still for awhile- and even though I’ve been back and forth and continuing to move, there’s also been so much calm in the past few weeks.

I moved so much on my Camino. We all do- anyone who walks a Camino- and I certainly moved last year, but this time? I was running, sailing, gliding through Spain. I could feel it- even in the early days of pain and fatigue and blisters, I pushed on, I pushed harder, I made myself move. And by the end, I felt like I was flying. I’ll write more- hopefully- about how I did this walk, why I decided to walk those long days and what I got out of it- but what I’m thinking about now is my mental state, especially at the end of the Camino.

My mind was strong. It was solid and confident and settled. I was so present in my moments on the Camino, but towards the end, I was also aware of what would happen when I returned home, aware of how I felt when I returned home last year. I’d thought about this as I walked, I thought about this during my conversation with Andrea, on my last night in Santiago: the Camino begins when the walking ends.

And I thought about this on my last day in Paris. I did a small day trip out to Giverny, the home and gardens where Monet spent the end of his life, and where he did some of his most famous work. I lingered over this trip- I could have rushed to the Gare du Nord and made it on the first train out to Vernon (a town near Giverny), I could have hopped on a bus that would take me with the first wave of tourists into the property, I could have tried to enjoy the gardens and the pond before the crowds would arrive. But instead, I lingered over my MIJE breakfast, I slowly wandered through the streets of my quartier and over to the nearest metro. When I arrived at the train station I learned that the next train to Vernon wasn’t for nearly two hours, so I walked through the streets around the Gare du Nord, and found a café near a church. It was on a bustling street corner but inside the café was quiet. I drank a café crème and wrote in my journal and chatted with a man delivering gallons of milk.

I’d become confident with my French- or, at least, confident in attempting to speak- and the attempts paid off. The delivery man laughed with me, tried to teach me a few words, told me I had a beautiful smile. On my way out, I passed a waiter who was standing alongside the bar, and dancing slightly to some pop music that was coming from the stereo. When he saw me he grinned, “Il faut dancer!” he declared. I shook my head, laughing. “I’m not good at dancing,” I told him.

I waved goodbye, and the waiter, the woman who served me my drink, the delivery man- they all stood together and smiled and waved at me and wished me a good day.

It was strange- in a way- to experience something like that in Paris. I love Paris, but Parisians are often rushed and reserved and formal and they just don’t seem to smile so much. Not at tourists, not at people they don’t know. But those moments in the café were different, and I thought about this as I rode the train out of the station and into the countryside: I could have sat quietly at my table and not engaged with the man delivering the milk. I could have smiled politely and not tried to speak. I could have kept to myself, and remained to myself, as I so often do. But I thought of my conversation with Andrea, the Italian, and I thought of what I resolved to myself, just two nights before: that I want to keep the energy of the Camino with me. I want it to shine through and into my life. Maybe I was already practicing this.

When I arrived in Vernon, a town about 5 kilometers away from Giverny, there were buses lined up outside of the station to deliver tourists to Monet’s home. But I chose to walk. Of course I did! There is a flat walking path that runs behind houses and past fields, leading straight from Vernon to Giverny. Most took the bus and several rented bicycles but a few others, like me, chose to walk. And when I arrived in Giverny, an hour later, instead of going to see the gardens, I first sat down to a long lunch. I’d heard great reviews about the restaurant which is part of the Hotel Baudy- just down the street from Monet’s residence- so I found a table on the terrace and ate like a queen: a glass of Bordeaux and slices of fresh baguette. Salad with goat cheese, salmon, broiled tomatoes, crème brûlée.

When I finally made it to Monet’s home, it was packed with people. The gardens were beautiful but so crowded. I walked up and down the rows, admiring the flowers, but I didn’t feel particularly overwhelmed with the beauty or inspired by the setting. But then I walked through a small underground passageway and over to the Japanese water garden and when I saw the weeping willows and wisteria covered bridges and the pond full of water lilies- all of that green- for a moment, it took my breath away.

On my return to Paris I felt full of a quiet energy and inspiration. Those feelings followed me to Shakespeare and Company, an independent bookstore on the Left Bank. I’ve been there before- maybe I’ve been there every time I travel to Paris- it’s my favorite bookstore in the world. As I walked through the stacks of fiction I saw a pile of slim paperbacks, a black and white photo on the cover of a man standing in front of a building. I picked up the book- it was Hemingway’s ‘A Movable Feast’, and I promptly took it over to the register and handed over some euros. My dad had just mentioned this book, when he was driving me to the airport before my Camino. “Have you ever read Hemingway?” he’d asked. “You would like ‘A Movable Feast’, it’s the memoir of his early days as an ex-pat in Paris.”

I’d had no idea. For as many times as Hemingway has ‘appeared’ in my travels these past two years, I’ve never read a thing by him. And yet, ever since I walked into Café Iruna last year in Pamplona, with Ibai and Mirra and Ji-Woo, I’ve felt some sort of small connection with Hemingway. I think maybe it had to do with being a foreigner in Spain- out on this strange adventure, stepping through towns where he spent so much of his time. When I was in Venice, this past winter, I discovered a bar where Hemingway had spent his time, stationed at a corner table in the cold winter months, working on a book. It was Harry’s Bar, and I made a point to walk inside. I’m not sure why, but suddenly it seemed like if I happened to be in the same places where Hemingway used to be, I should try to track down his favorite spots. Maybe I was trying to capture those same feelings that I had when I was gazing over the water lilies at Giverny: that quiet, energizing inspiration.

And this year, on my Camino, there were the words from a local, as I was sitting in a bar, writing: “Hemingway started like this, you know.”

I started reading ‘A Movable Feast’ right away- that night on the stiff, narrow mattress in my hostel room, the next morning, leaning against the concrete wall in the underground of the metro, waiting for my train that would take me to the airport. Twenty pages in and he writes about Shakespeare and Company, how he was shy and poor and had to ask to borrow books. I ate up his words as I read, and I realized- amazed though I probably shouldn’t have been- that I really like the way he writes.

And this is how my time in Paris ended, these are the feelings that I carried back with me from my trip this summer: feeling strong, feeling peaceful, feeling quietly energized, feeling ready to come home, feeling ready to write, feeling ready to figure out how to keep walking my Camino.

café crème, ParisJapanese bridge, Giverny, FranceFlowers and pond, Giverny, FranceJapanese water garden, Giverny, FranceShakespeare and Company bookstore, Paris, France

Next Post: Don’t Stop Me Now

Leave a Comment / Filed In: Camino de Santiago, France, Inspiration, Travel, Writing
Tagged: adventure, art, Camino de Santiago, Claude Monet, dreams, Ernest Hemingway, France, Giverny, inspiration, literature, Pamplona, Paris, pilgrimage, Spain, travel, Venice, walking, writing

Taking the Road Less Traveled on the Camino Frances

April 8, 2015

I approached the church from the side, walking down a pebbly street that was bordered on both sides by open fields. The road was quiet and so was the area around the church, so quiet that I soon realized something was wrong. Not another person was in sight, there wasn’t a single car in the dirt covered lot. And then I saw the sign: “Eunate. Closed on Mondays.”

The walk to Eunate, a 12th century Romanesque chapel between Pamplona and Puente La Reina, was my first detour on the Camino de Santiago. It had been an easy decision, made the night before as I rested in my bunk bed in the large municipal albergue: this alternate route would add only a few kilometers to the next day’s stage, and would take me to what many consider to be a gem of the Camino Frances. The purpose of Santa Maria of Eunate (or, Saint Mary’s of the Hundred Doors) is unknown, but one of the theories is that it was once used as a funerary chapel. It’s octagonal floor plan is compared to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, and pilgrim remains have been discovered in the nearby grounds (how do we know they were pilgrims? They were buried with their scallop shells!). But Eunate continues to remain a bit of a mystery, with ties to the Knights Templar and with its isolated location- nowhere close to a village or a town, surrounded only by wheat fields and rolling hills.

Taking detours/alternate routes was something I came to love doing on the Camino, and it was all because of this first experience at Eunate. Leaving Pamplona, I was accompanied by Ibai, and we were soon joined by Paulo, an Italian, who’d just begun his Camino that morning. This was only my fourth day of walking, but I felt like I’d been on the Camino for weeks. And I also felt like I’d rather be walking alone. But soon Jorge joined our little group, and then we fell in step with a Spanish father and his young son. We traveled in a pack for awhile, sometimes walking single file down a narrow path bordered by bales of hay and fields of young sunflowers. I loved starting my days on the Camino alone, but I also loved the strange groupings that seemed to just happen, the easy nature of meeting people and walking by their side for awhile.

As we climbed up a large hill towards the Alto de Perdon, I moved ahead of Ibai and Jorge and the Spanish father and his son. But Paulo matched my pace. He was young and tall and athletic, so outpacing him wouldn’t be easy. And after we all stopped for lunch at the top of the hill, with the windmills to our backs and the metal pilgrim sculpture below, I lingered and Paulo waited. Later on the Camino, I would learn how to let someone know that I wanted to walk alone, but I hadn’t figured it out at this point. So Paulo and I walked together for much of the afternoon; at some point we were separated but soon enough I found him waiting for me, leaning against a low stone wall, next to a wooden sign that spelled the word ‘Eunate’.

“This is your detour, I think.” He pointed off to the left. Earlier on our walk I’d told him that I’d planned to take this detour, and now, as he sat against the stone and in the shade of a curly-branched tree, he squinted down the path, tired. “I don’t think I’m going with you.”

So when I took that left and walked down the long road towards Eunate, I was finally alone. And not just alone on the fairly populated Camino path- where eventually you will catch up to someone ahead of you or be caught by someone behind you- but alone. Very alone. I have at least one hundred ‘top’ memories from my Camino, but this is surely one of them: walking and dancing and singing and skipping down that path, under a bright hot sun, feeling far away and free. It’s when it all clicked in my head- that I was actually in Spain, and actually walking the Camino de Santiago.

The road to Eunate, Camino de Santiago

The road to Eunate

There was something spectacular about the approach to Eunate; spectacular because of the quiet and peace and calm of the afternoon, and of seeing the chapel appear, if out of nowhere, in the very middle of an empty field. So when I realized Eunate was closed, it didn’t seem to matter. In fact, if anything, I preferred it that way. Closed meant that no one was visiting- not any other pilgrim (at least when I was there), no tourist or local. No one.

I jumped up onto a low wall that ran parallel to a circle of arches enclosing the chapel, and I walked around and around. My backpack and walking stick had been dropped somewhere in the grass behind me, and I stretched my arms out as I walked along the wall. Later, I sat on a bench and ate a bar of chocolate, softened and melting from the hot afternoon sun. Relaxed and rejuvenated, I continued to walk, and soon returned to the main path of the Camino.

I would take other detours in the month that I walked the Camino, but this was the first, and my favorite.

Eunate, Camino de Santiago

Eunate, Camino de Santiago

Leave a Comment / Filed In: Camino de Santiago, Travel
Tagged: Camino de Santiago, Camino Frances, detour, eunate, friendship, hiking, Italians, Pamplona, pilgrimage, Spain, travel, walking

Dirty hair, solid legs, Hemingway’s cafe; Day 3 on the Camino, Zubiri to Pamplona

June 30, 2014

This trip feels surreal. It’s like I’ve been suddenly plucked out of normal life and placed into an alternate reality. I’ve been walking for three days- so this is still, supposedly, new- but it feels natural. A different place and different people and different things, but I feel like it fits.

I think it might be hard to articulate this Camino experience. I’ve read so many accounts of others who have walked, I’ve talked to friends who have done this, I’ve heard how incredible it is. But I didn’t expect that after three days, I’d be sitting in a beautiful cafe in Pamplona, eating tapas and drinking wine with three new friends: another American, a guy from the Basque region of Spain, a guy from South Korea. Or that before going out in Pamplona, I’d wander into the courtyard of the albergue to look for Mira, and then be drinking a beer with a guy from New Zealand, who it turns out is one of a duo who did the first day of the Camino barefoot. And then I met his mom and his 12 year old brother; they’re doing the Camino as a family.

So far, I’m liking the Camino. My feet are feeling good, my legs are feeling good, though I was definitely more tired than the past few days, but I think’s more from lack of sleep than anything else. My hair, on the other hand, feels disgusting. Washing it with a bar of soap isn’t fun. And I sort of wish I had brought a shirt to change into at night, or maybe something separate to sleep in. But those are small complaints. Everything else- the important stuff- is good.

I wrote a long blog post last night but I lost it, and so far the wi-fi hasn’t been great. But I’ve been wanting to write about and capture this experience as much as I can… while also going out and experiencing everything this Camino has to offer. And trying to get enough sleep. But mostly, I’m focused on enjoying the experience.

It’s almost 11pm and that’s late for a Camino night, but I was out with Ibai and Ji-Woo walking around Pamplona, taking in the pre-running of the bulls festivities. We’re staying in a large albergue, this building was a church, and there are long rows of bunk beds running down the sides of the building. There are six beds in my cluster- I walked into Pamplona with Ibai and he got the bottom bunk, but was very kind and offered it to me. Between the other four occupants of the beds: right now one is listening to music that we can all hear, a father and daughter are loudly whispering to each other, and a man occasionally snores loudly. There are footsteps above and voices echoing and cell phones beeping and hall lights on… here’s hoping for at least three hours of sleep tonight.

I slept pretty well last night- I was in a municipal albergue in Zubiri, pretty bare bones, rickety bunk beds (top bunk), but no snorers. I’d also had a few glasses of wine and maybe that helped; after dinner with Mira and an Australian and Texan (who’d met last month on an archaeological dig in Jordan, people here have such great stories),I went over to a bar to find Steve and Peg and watch some of the World Cup match. I’d met Steve and Peg on the first day in Bayonne, waiting for the second bus (and, as it turns out, most of the people I’ve gotten to know are the ones who didn’t push their way onto the first bus). As I talked to them last night, I found out that they have four kids around my age, and that Peg also does school counseling. After the game and before I walked back to my albergue, Peg gave me a big hug and said, “Thank you so much for finding us tonight, being with you reminded me of home.” I had to assure them three times that I could make it to my albergue okay, but it was nice to know that there were people looking out for me.

The people I’ve met have been great, but I’m here to walk, and that’s been incredible. I’ve only walked three days so maybe it’s too early to say how much I love this… but I do. I love waking up and loading my pack and setting off for who knows where. I glance at the guidebook and maps, but all I really know for sure is that I’m headed west, to Santiago. It’s easy to just follow the arrows and go, not worry about where you are because it’s hard to lose your way. There is purpose and direction in the walking, and all along are beautiful sites and small villages and dogs and horses and sheep and kittens.

Uploading photos has been hard, and I already have hundreds. Maybe this time I’ll be able to share a few…

20140630-162352-59032083.jpg

20140630-162349-59029353.jpg

20140630-163055-59455423.jpg

Next Post: Day 4 on the Camino Frances

14 Comments / Filed In: Camino de Santiago, Camino Frances
Tagged: Camino de Santiago, friendship, Hemingway, hiking, Pamplona, Spain, tapas, walking, wine

Welcome! I’m Nadine: a traveler, a pilgrim, a walker, a writer, a coffee drinker. This is where I share my stories, my thoughts and my walks. I hope you enjoy the site!
Support Nadine Walks on Patreon!

Looking for Something?

Struggling with the Post-Camino blues? Check out my free e-book!

Top Posts & Pages

  • Camino Packing List
  • Home
  • About
  • What to Wear on the Camino de Santiago: A Packing List Explained
  • The Loch that Never Ends; Day Two on the West Highland Way; Balmaha to Inverarnan, 32km

Archives

Prairie, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, ND
Walking along the coast on the Camino del Norte

Coffee on balcony of Airbnb, Paris, 12th arrondissement
Nadine writing in journal in Arrés on the Camino Aragones, sunset in background

Curving path of Hadrian's Wall, Day 13 on the Pennine Way
Nadine in Finisterre, Camino de Santiago

Inspiration

 

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

-Lao Tzu

 

 

“… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

-Wendell Berry, The Peace of Wild Things

Camino Packing List

Nadine and backpack on beach, Camino del Norte

Theme by 17th Avenue · Powered by WordPress & Genesis