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Wine, cheese and friends; Day 11 on the Camino del Norte, Guemes to Santa Cruz de Bezana

July 1, 2015

I’m again just a bit behind on writing- I’ve actually just finished my 12th day of walking and am sitting in a bar in Santillana del Mar. But the post on today will come later- maybe, if the words flow and I write quickly, I’ll catch myself up again.

Wi-fi has been intermittent on the Norte, it seems like I find it every few days. It’s pretty nice though; I love checking-in after being offline for awhile and reading emails, seeing the comments on this blog. Speaking of those, I wish I could find time to reply to all of them, and I hope to catch up a bit or at least answer some questions (especially for those of you who are going to or want to walk the Norte!). But it makes me so happy to know that you are all reading and following along with me on this journey.

So, the walk from Guemes to Santa Cruz de Bezana. It felt like a day with a bit of everything: a little country walking out of Guemes; walking on narrow, winding paths on rugged cliffs along the coast; a few kilometers on the beach (my favorite!); a ferry ride to Santander (the perfect way to enter a city… no need to walk through noisy, congested industrial areas!); a walk through a bit city with shops and bars and restaurants; and the long slog out of the city.

We had a communal breakfast at the albergue in Guemes, and since the albergue draws so many people, there seemed to be a big crowd leaving together (and by big, I’d say about 20 or so were in the albergue the night I stayed there).

I tried to leave separately, but I soon caught up to other pilgrims… then others caught us, and we all tried to figure out how to take the ‘alternate’ coastal route towards Santander.

We figured it out, but I felt a bit trapped in the crowd. I was walking separately, but just ahead of me was Henri, and just behind was Guillemette. The walk along the coast was so beautiful, but I think I would have preferred to be completely alone. Maybe the Norte is spoiling me, with all the days of isolated walking. To have pilgrims surrounding me felt claustrophobic!

Soon I saw Nicole sitting on a bench, resting her feet. She and I walked together down to the beach that would lead us to the ferry that would take us to Santander; we talked as we walked on the hard sand, a cool breeze made the walking feel easy, and we ended up going past our turn-off. So we climbed over some sand dunes and found our way back on track, then boarded the ferry with some other pilgrims.

Nicole and I stayed together for the rest of the day: having a coffee in a bar with some wi-fi, hitting the supermarket, buying stamps, postcards, soap, finding an ATM. It’s so funny how sometimes (like the morning), I wanted to be completely alone. But others times, I don’t mind company. Often it depends on who the company is, and Nicole has become a good Camino friend. She’s someone I felt a bond with pretty quickly, and being in her company is so easy. So we walked out of the city together, through those awful industrial zones, and as usual here, the last few hours of walking were tough. It’s been so, so hot lately, and walking with the sun beating down and the sound of the highways all around us wasn’t fun.

The albergue we wanted to find was further away than we expected, and when we finally arrived we saw that it was next to a giant supermarket (which means we lugged chunks of cheese and packets of ham, peaches and apples and bread all the way out of Santander for nothing. But it’s good to stock up on food while you can!).

We were feeling just a bit defeated when we arrived at the albergue- I know that I was hot, tired, and wondering why we’d walked an extra few kilometers for an albergue that seemed to be practically on the edge of a highway. But then we walked inside and, like the albergue in Guemes, I knew that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. The building has a small albergue on one side and a family’s home on the other: Nieves is the hospitalera, and she lives with her husband and two kids (I think). We were instantly greeted with glasses of cold water and the invitation to take off our shoes. Nicole and I were the first to arrive, so we each chose bottom bunks in the large, comfortable sleeping area.

After the usual chores- showering and washing clothes- I ran over to the supermercado to buy a couple bottles of wine and a bag of potato chips. We spread out in the small yard behind the albergue, to sit in the shade and drink wine and eat the cheese we had lugged from Santander. Jenna (New York) soon joined us; she and Nicole soaked their feet in buckets of warm water, the family’s two cats wandered in and out of our conversations, the first bottle of wine disappeared quickly.

There were only five of us in the albergue that night (two Germans joined us later in the evening), and together we had such a great Camino dinner. Nieves cooked for us: salad with tuna (yay! at some point I became known to a few people as the American girl who loves tuna fish), tortilla, rounds of goat cheese with strawberry jam, bread and wine and fruit. With just five of us the meal was so comfortable, and I truly felt like I had been invited into someone’s home and made to feel like part of a family, even if it was just for a moment.

After the meal Nieves sat us down to explain the next day’s walk (there were five different route options and one section involved a tricky railroad passing… more to come on that in the next post!). But this also made me feel so taken care of. You’re never really on your own here- I knew that last year, but in some ways I feel it even more strongly on the Norte. Maybe because it’s far less crowded here, with less pilgrims and less Camino infrastructure. So people look out for each other a bit more, you kind of know everyone who is walking within a day or two of you (and if you don’t you quickly introduce yourself), and care is taken to have tricky sections of the route explained to you. The locals continue to be wonderful- people wave as they pass in their cars, bikers shout “Buen Camino!” as they pedal past, old men with canes stop and speak to you in Spanish and you nod along, not understanding a word but knowing that whatever they say, it is from the heart.

By the end of the night, as I was in my bunk bed about to drift off to sleep, I was so happy. Even though I’ve been here 11 days, I still don’t know quite what to expect. Each day is a bit different: the places I walk through, the albergues I stay in, the people I surround myself with. But this day had so, so many things that I loved: a long walk on the beach, coffee in a cool bar in Santander, the company of someone who I know will always be a friend, sitting in the shade with a bottle of wine. Today I felt so safe, comfortable, content. A great, great Camino day.

Previous Post: Day 10 on the Camino del Norte

Next Post: Day 12 on the Camino del Norte

The Good and Beautiful Days of Patience

May 5, 2015

I’m sipping a glass of wine (a tempranillo, got to prepare for my Camino!), and eating a small bowl of potato chips. At some point along the Camino, potato chips became my go-to snack (I don’t think this counts as tapas) to go along with a glass of wine. I think it was my friend Mirra who first introduced me to this combination, when we took a bottle of Rioja and a bag of papas fritas down to the banks of a river in Najera, to sit and talk and stretch out our legs after a long day of walking.

In the last week or so, I’ve been consumed with memories from the first portion of my walk on the Camino. I think it’s because everyone’s on the Camino, these days: blog friends and Philadelphia Camino friends and even a real-life Camino friend, from last year. They’re posting blog posts and photos- “I made it over the Pyrenees!”, and “Here’s Belorado in the rain” and “Passed through the small, quaint village of Ages”.

I’ve loved seeing these updates; I click on every photo so it enlarges on my screen, and I press my face in close to examine the image for the tiny details that I might have forgotten, to peer at each stretch of road, knowing that I walked the same path nearly a year ago. It almost makes me want to return to the Frances, to walk that road again.

But it’s too soon to go back to that particular path, not yet anyway. The Norte is still my plan for June, although I have to say- this year’s preparations and anticipations are completely different from what I experienced last year.

Maybe that’s one reason this blog has been a little quiet. I assumed that by now, I’d have a lot to write about- my training and the things I’ll be packing and my thoughts and impressions of a second Camino. I’ve had so many thoughts, but they’re all still muddled up there in my head. Sometimes, I still wonder if I shouldn’t be spending the month in France, writing, instead of walking. Sometimes I worry that I’m going back to look for something I never found on the first Camino, something I can’t even identify. Sometimes I think I want a re-do of certain aspects from the end of my Camino. Sometimes I think that if I had figured out more about my life in this past year, I wouldn’t feel the need to go back for another Camino.

But a lot of those thoughts are based in fear and control, aren’t they? I still want to choose the exact, perfect thing to do this summer, the thing that will help me out the most in my life, the thing that will point me in the “right” direction. Nothing I do this summer will really give me that, of course, and finding direction is just about taking steps towards something- anything- and then figuring it out as you move along. And in this past year, I’ve been doing that. I just need to keep moving, and practice some patience.

So that’s been my word, lately. Patience. I tell this to myself as I sit in a long line of traffic on the way to work. I tell this to myself as I hurry through the last miles of a training hike, my voice saying, “Slow down. Not amount of rushing will bring this Camino any closer.” I try to practice patience as I look through photos of friends on their Camino, envious of their days spent walking through Spain. I try to practice patience with my writing, as I wait to hear back about an essay I’ve submitted, as I wait to find the right words to say something.

And maybe the biggest is this: practicing patience about the direction of my life. I’ll get to wherever I’m going, I’m sure of it. I want to be there NOW, I want to have all the answers to so many of the questions. I know that I’m going to be okay, and yet, I just want a flash of an image from my life, 5 years from now, of the 39 (yikes) year old me. Just a little reassurance that the decisions I’m making now, the things I’m testing out now, are going to lead me somewhere good.

So in the meantime I’m just going to keep trucking along- drinking my wine and eating my potato chips, hiking miles through a park, practicing Spanish phrases, writing my essays and making to-do lists for my next Camino. Despite the unknowns, these are such good and beautiful days.

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?

Searching for Hans Christian Andersen; at what point does a visit to a country “count”?

January 19, 2015

A few months ago I had a short conversation- in the comments section of one of my blog posts- about what it takes to check a country off your list. I have this scratch-off map of the world, and as I start to do more traveling, I’m wondering which countries I can scratch off, and which ones I need to spend a little more time in.

I think this is probably an interesting conversation on its own, and I’d be very curious to hear opinions on the topic. If you’re spending a 2-hour long layover in an airport in Belgium, does this count? I think a lot of people would say no, and yet, I had a friend who vehemently believed that setting foot in a country- in any way and for any amount of time- “counted”.

And then, how much time is enough time to feel like you’ve gotten to experience a place? Can you experience a place in 24-hours? A few days? A week? A month? A year? All of the above?

It depends, of course. I spent 9-months studying in France, and a month walking through Spain on the Camino de Santiago. In both instances I felt like I was able to experience the culture of these countries, in a much more intimate way than I have on any of my other travels. But then I think about Italy, where I just spent a week, and I feel like I don’t really know the country. I was even able to stay in someone’s home and chat with some locals and see a few places off the beaten path… but to know Italy, to try to understand it, I need more time. I’m still checking it off my list, still scratching it off my map, but there is more I want to experience there.

And what about Iceland and Denmark, the two countries I “visited” on long layovers at the beginning/end of my travels? I’ve been wanting to write about this idea of the long layover and more about my experiences (and I probably will, in a future post), but for now, I just want to consider the idea of whether I have actually visited these countries.

Some have said that you need to have a unique experience in a place to say that you’ve been there. So I think about Iceland, about my two long layovers: busing out to a hotel at 4am and peering out the window to see a light sky. Sleeping a disjointed few hours in a comped room and then meeting up with a few people I’d met the day before for lunch. Wandering through Reykjavik, touring the Hallgrimskirkja and going up its tower to see a panoramic view of the city. Buying a warm bowl of soup from a food truck, drinking strong coffee in a cafe and writing a blog post, walking along the old harbor. On my second stint in Reykjavik I again walked along the water, for a few hours (I was just coming off the Camino, so walking was the only thing I felt like doing); I found another coffee shop and I ate a hot dog and I could get around some parts of the city without my map.

Then I think about Copenhagen, and I’m not so sure I can check this off of my list. I was in Copenhagen for less than 24-hours; I slept in a hostel and I toured an art museum, but does this count? When I was on the train heading back to the airport, I thought: “I’m in Copenhagen, but just barely.”

And yet, traveling gives you these unique moments and experiences that feel like something. They are so much bigger than the moments in my typical days because they are foreign, because I am far from home, because I got myself on a plane and on a train and down a street in a city in a different part of the world. I had a few moments like these in Copenhagen. They were so regular, and yet, they were also strikingly different. I was walking down Stroget, the main shopping street of the city, and so many people walked down the street with me, bundled up in long puffy coats and thick scarves and wooly hats. The street opened onto a small square and a man sat on a chair strumming a guitar. The music drifted down the street and as I listened to his voice and walked past bright window displays, I saw a large, full moon hanging low in the sky, just in front of me. I had to stop walking, I had to stop and stand against a building and consider where I was. The music and the people and the moon and the fact that I was walking through a city in Denmark.

Later, I wandered through Magasin du Nord, a large Danish department store. I ended up eating dinner in the cafeteria area on the 5th floor; it was a good solution for a (shy) solo-traveler on a winter night. I saw a few ladies sharing a small bottle of wine so I bought one for myself, and as I ate my meal and drank my red wine, I laughed a little at myself. Shouldn’t I be having a different kind of experience? I justified my department store meal with the knowledge that Hans Christian Andersen had, at one point in his life, lived in a small room in this very building. So after my meal, and feeling nice and warm from the wine, I set off to find the room. Except I couldn’t. I think I had the wrong building (I had the right department store… somewhere in Copenhagen there is a Magasin du Nord that has a room that Hans Christian Andersen lived in, I am sure of it). I explored every nook and cranny of that store, convinced that the room must be tucked away in some obscure corner, but finally gave up (I had a similar experience on my first visit to Paris, when I spent several hours hunting for Jim Morrison’s grave in the wrong cemetery).

So, is this an experience? Of course it is. I can’t say that I know Copenhagen and I certainly can’t say that I know Denmark, and yet, I’m always going to have these memories. Of a beautiful voice and a busy street and a full moon. Of wandering around, a little fuzzy from my department store cafeteria wine, searching in vain for Hans Christian Andersen’s room.

For now, Iceland and Denmark “count”. But the great part about traveling is that you get a taste for more. If I never make it back to Copenhagen, then at least I have a story about the time I drank wine and wandered around a department store looking for an author’s room. But now I have a reason to return: among all of the other things to see and experience… I need to find that room.

Department Store Dinner, Copenhagen, Denmark

Dinner in a department store

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.

Walking to the ocean; Day 34, Olveiroa to Cée

October 4, 2014

Since I’ve been home, I’ve been measuring time by Camino milestones. As in: “It’s September 27th… three months ago, I started walking out of St Jean Pied de Port!” and “It’s October 4th, two months ago, I was one day away from Finisterre.” Two months since the end of my Camino? Time is a funny thing. So much living was packed into my 5 weeks on the Camino, and it feels like I’ve done a fraction of that kind of living since I’ve been home. Which makes sense, I suppose, because “real life” isn’t “Camino life”.

And yet, my pack sits on the kitchen chair closest to my back door. Ready to go, at all times. I take it with me and wear it when I go out for a hike. I don’t need to wear it, but I like to wear it. The feel of it on my back reminds me of the Camino. And, maybe, part of me doesn’t want to get out of practice. I reason that if I continue to walk, continue to wear the pack, I’ll be ready for another Camino at a moment’s notice. I like to pretend that I could leave for another Camino at any time, even though the reality is that it will take time- maybe a lot of it- before I will go again.

This was a long way of getting around to the real topic of this post, which is, the last days of walking the Camino. I think there’s a part of me that didn’t really want to write about the ending, because it means that I’ve finished writing about the Camino (which isn’t true at all, because so much of the future writing I want to do is about the Camino); but still, putting the ending into words makes it real.

But I did finish, and the ending was incredible. Here are some of the highlights from the second to last day of walking:

Since my friend from home, Sonal, had joined me just in Santiago, we decided to divide the walk to Finisterre into four days. Most pilgrims do it in three long days, but since we had the time, we split up the last 30+ kilometer day into two smaller days. Which was perfect.

On Day 3 we walked from Olveiroa to Cée, which was about 20 km (I think), and it might have been one of my top 5 Camino walking days. It was like the night before had brought the Camino magic back: a good, strong cafe con leche and croissant a few kilometers into the day. A perfectly placed ‘rest stop’: a church with picnic tables under the shade of large trees (Sonal and I were walking and talking about when to take a break, and I think one of us said something along the lines of, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we rounded that corner and there was a place to stop and take a break?” and then a few minutes later we came upon the church and picnic tables). We ran into some of the people we had talked with the night before, further strengthening these ‘late’ Camino friendships. The walk continued, the sun came out, and as we walked, far off in the distance you could see the ocean.

It’s hard for me to describe how incredible this was for me. On the Camino, my destination had always been Santiago, but I also knew that I would be making the trip to Finisterre. Seeing that ocean gave me a sense, maybe for the first time, of the distance that I had walked. I’d started in France, and now I was approaching the very western edge of Spain, and the Atlantic ocean. I was walking to the ocean! I had just walked across a country and I was going to walk until I couldn’t walk any further.

And it was all so beautiful: the cool air, the sunshine, the green grass and trees, that light blue sky and the darker blue of the water. We stopped to take a photo at a marker that read: ‘To The End’, and then we found a spot nearby, took off our packs, and settled down on the grass to take it all in. Mo-mo, a girl from Japan who we’d met the night before, came over to join us. We stretched our legs out in the sunshine and snacked on cookies and looked towards the ocean. Then we continued walking, that ocean getting closer and closer.

We stopped for the day in Cée, a coastal town about 11 kilometers from Finisterre. As we approached the town, we talked about finding an albergue. Jokingly (somewhat), I said, “We need an albergue with a kitchen. And a view of the ocean.” Guess what we found? Not only a clean albergue with a kitchen and a view of the water from our bunk beds, but we also found Emma, the friend we’d made the night before. She was making her bed in the albergue as we walked in, and we looked at each other and laughed. “Of course I’d see you guys here,” she said. “It’s the Camino.”

The three of us went to the beach, sat outdoors in a square and drank coffee, made a big salad in the albergue kitchen and later smuggled glasses and our bottle of wine outside to sit on a bench along the water. I ran to a pastry shop we’d seen earlier in the day and arrived 5 minutes before they closed. I came back with Tarta de Santiago- an almond cake famous in Galicia- and we ate pastries and drank wine and looked over the water as the sky darkened.

What a great day. But the last day was even better. Stay tuned.

Kids and shampoo and gummy bears and getting away; Day 6 of the Camino, Estella to Torres del Ria

July 2, 2014

Day 6 of walking is finished, and I’m still feeling good. I walked a lot with Mira today, and we decided to finally go “off stage”, and do a little more than was recommended for today’s route. So we walked about 29 km from Estella to Torres del Ria, and we were commending each other for doing so well. The bulk of the walk was great, and it was just the last few kms, with the sun shining strongly and some road walking, that felt a little oppressive.

I’m sitting on the terrace of the albergue where we’re staying. It’s a small place, in a small village, off of a side street and tucked away. The view out of the back looks past the church and onto golden weight fields. There is a storm in the distance, with dark grey clouds on the horizon and a cool wind blowing. 20 minutes ago, there was a sliver of a rainbow beside the church.

Mira is sitting here, along with a Polish couple, and they are all writing in their journals. There are only 26 beds in this albergue and the place isn’t full; it’s a quiet and relaxed night, especially compared to the last few.

Yesterday’s walk was from Puente La Reina to Estella- about 20km- and the scene at the albergue, once we got to Estella, was kind of crazy. It was a big municipal albergue, with about 75 beds, and most people that we’d met over the past 5 days were staying there. I think people are getting more comfortable with each other and more social; in any case, the Koreans were having wine parties, people were hanging out in the courtyard and the lobby, there was a lot of singing and laughing and merriment.

I was enjoying talking to everyone. With each day I either meet someone new or have a conversation with someone I’ve seen along the way, and at this point, it’s hard to move through a part of the path, or an albergue, or a town, without stopping to talk to someone.

I’d set up my bunk in Estella (top bunk, again), and was intending to take a nap or do some writing, but I never actually made it to bed. I walked into our room- which held 26 people- and started talking to Connor, the boy who walked his first Camino day barefoot, and is on this trip with his brothers and mother. Somehow the conversation turned to my hair and how much I wished I had some shampoo, and the next thing I knew he had gotten a small packet of shampoo from his mother and handed it to me.

I walked to my bunk with the shampoo and a big smile, then saw three heads poking up from their top bunks like little eager birds. It was the group of teenaged American girls who were on a summer school trip with their history teacher and his wife, and I think they just wanted to talk to someone. I walked over and said hi, and asked about why they were walking the Camino. When I found out that they were on a school trip, I asked how they were doing so far. Instantly, the youngest, a blond 15 year old named Lani, said, “It’s hard, and I’m really homesick.”

The three girls launched into accounts of their past 5 days: the things they hadn’t expected, how tough the walking was, how they missed being at home with their friends. I loved talking to them, and just like I had reminded Steve and Peg, the other night, of home, these three teenaged girls reminded me of my ‘normal’ life.

“Someone farts every night!” Mimi told me. “We’re keeping track, and so far it’s happened every night.”

I nodded in agreement. “It’s hard to sleep with all of these noises, isn’t it?” The girls all nodded at me, their eyes wide. “We never expected that it would be like this,” Emily said.

I’m impressed that teenagers are doing this. Kids are, too. There’s an Irish couple with two small children (the mother nearly gave birth to her daughter on the descent into Roncesvalles, which gives the difficulty of that day a whole new meaning when you think about doing it 9 months pregnant). Connor, the barefoot pilgrim who found me shampoo, has a 12 year old brother, Matthew. I’d gone out to explore the town of Estella, and when I was returning to the albergue, ran into Matthew and his mother. We talked for a bit, and then she asked if I would mind walking Matthew back to the albergue while she searched for a grocery store. So Matthew and I walked down the cobblestoned street, and he talked about how there’s a house in Germany that’s constructed entirely of gummy bears. “Just think!” he said. “If you get hungry, you could take a bite out of the wall!”

I think about what it’s like for a 6 year old to do this walk, a 12 year old, a 15 year old. And any of my discomforts and concerns seem so small in comparison.

The last two days of walking have been good. Yesterday was probably the hardest day; I walked over 6 miles before I had my morning coffee, and I was just grumpy by the time I found a town with an open bar. But then I had a very large cafe con leche, and the biggest piece of potato and onion tortilla that I’d ever laid eyes on (along with a piece of delicous bread). After that breakfast there was definitely a skip in my step, and the afternoon’s walk was good.

The Italian guy, Paulo, has been walking with me, but I think I might have gotten rid of him today. He’s not a bad walking companion, but I’m not sure that he’s on this pilgrimage for quiet reflection. In any case, he caught up with a group of California girls who were giving him the eye, and I think he’s enjoying the attention. Hopefully, this means that I’ll have more solo walking time in the next few days.

It still feels like I’ve been walking for weeks, rather than just 6 days. But I think that’s because so much life is packed into these days: the waking and the walking and the conversation. The food and the exploration and the connections. I’m still marveling that I’m walking across such a large space: that I can look behind me to see where I’ve come from, and know that this line I’m making, this path, will continue for a long time. I’m pretty excited to see what comes next.

Next Post: Photos from Day 8 of the Camino Frances

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…