or

The End of the Journey.

This post is from the end of our walk from Logrono to Burgos, Spain. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

In my longtime obsession with the Camino, I have read quite a bit about the different cities that you pass through, so when we made our Camino plans, I knew that I wanted to have a whole day in Burgos, Spain.

Plus having an extra day built in had the added benefit of not making us feel rushed on the walk to get to Burgos. If we had needed to take a day off because of an injury or mishap along the way, we had this extra day to fall back on.

But since we didn’t need to use our “cushion day” on the trail, we had a full day in Burgos before we needed to take a bus back to Madrid, and I’m so glad we did.

We started off with a slow morning at our hostel, having breakfast with everyone who was headed off along the rest of the Camino. We wished everyone fond farewells. I sat long after the breakfast buffet had been cleared, having more coffee and writing in my journal, filling in the details I didn’t want to forget.

We opened the windows of our room to air out our packs and Kandace washed our smelly hiking clothes in the hostel laundry. For the first time in days, we didn’t smell of mildew.

Then we began to wander the rather gorgeous town of Burgos. The Arlanzón River runs right through the town, so we found ourselves walking up and down its shores several times as we criss-crossed around the city.

I always love a city with a river walk!

We wandered away from the Cathedral (though it was always in view), and then back towards it again.

We visited the Museum of Human Evolution, where among other exhibits, we saw the oldest human remains found in Europe. They were found just outside of Atapuerca.

We had entered the Old Town the day before from the east so we had missed this great gate that welcomes you from the west.

It’s actually a tower that we climbed up into. There were offices inside, but also some historically preserved corners where soldiers used to stand guard over the town.

We returned to the rows and rows of tapa bars for lunch, where we managed to find some new bites to try as well as favorites from the day before.

After lunch we wandered the city some more.

We made a stop in a pharmacy where Kandace introduced me to the wonderful world of French moisturizer.

We stopped in more shops for souvenirs, including a stack of postcards we later sat writing in the hotel bar.

We climbed the stairs up the north side of the Old Town behind the Cathedral.

They lead to several more old church buildings.

And then up to a park that overlooked the city.

Beyond the park is the medieval Castle of Burgos, which we wandered around for a long time. It was open and free to the public to climb around the castle ruins.

All along the walls we stopped for photos of the city of Burgos below.

Also, we photographed ourselves with our matching Camino shells in the castle ruins. I’ve had mine since I walked the Camino in 2015, a precious gift from my fellow walker LynEtte. And Kandace got hers that day in Burgos. So fun.

The cathedral seemed smaller from this height, though it still towered over everything else below.

The views in every direction were just gorgeous.

It felt like you could see everywhere we had walked over the last week.

We stayed in the park until we started to catch a chill. Then we walked back to our hostel where we ran into the hostel host from our first night on the trail. That hostel had closed now for the winter and the staff had all come to Burgos to find different jobs until it opens again in the spring.

We also saw our friend Tony, who had stayed back a night to have a rest day. He was returning from visiting the monastery, a sight we had missed and further proof that Burgos, Spain is a city worth spending a bit more time in.  Tony had invited everyone in his hostel room to dinner, which he was fixing in the hostel kitchen. We joined them for our last meal as pilgrims on the Camino, a fitting end to our week.

The next morning we threw on our backpacks, had a final coffee and headed off to Madrid to fly away. We so enjoyed every moment of our time in Burgos, Spain.

And every moment of our sweet Camino journey. Even the rainy, snow bits.

PS. Since I have no idea where all the places we ate are, here’s a great guide to food in Burgos.

This post is from the end of our walk from Logrono to Burgos, Spain. Thank you for following along! You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

PPS. Most years, I take a small group of 6-8 gals on the Camino. If you would like to walk a Camino with me, please get in touch and I’ll send you more info. (alison AT alison chino DOT com) Or sign up for my newsletter.

The post Snapshots of Burgos, Spain appeared first on Alison Chino.

19 kilometers.

Day 7 on The Camino.

Or

We Made It! Let’s Have A PARTY and Eat All The Things.

This post is our trip log from Atapuerca to Burgos. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

We got up and packed fast, walking out of town while it was still dark. After moving for about twenty minutes, I was finally warm. Bless. And it was not raining. Thank you Jesus!

We walked back past the bar where we had spent such a joyful afternoon, now all quiet and locked up in the dark. And then out of town as the sun rose. We climbed a grass-covered hill and passed a large pen of sheep that would probably roam the hill once the sun was all the way up. Their droppings were all over the trail, and indeed the area felt like the pasture where David might have written a Psalm. 

The morning air filling our lungs and the sight of the hills around me shook away the bad night of sleep. It’s amazing how a walk in the morning can do that! 

There was an iron cross at the top of the hill, where we left our stones with many others. And soon we could see our first glimpse of Burgos. It was still over 15 kilometers away, but there she was in the distance. I couldn’t quite believe it was our last day. I felt both excitement and a little sadness. I wanted to get there. I was ready to walk into Burgos and have the days of rain and snow behind me, but also the walk had been such a balm to my soul in every possible way and I wasn’t quite ready for it to be over.

We walked down the hill and then followed a winding road into a little town where we were delighted to find an open cafe. We had our normal breakfast of coffee and eggs, which on this particular morning, was like rocket fuel for our tired bones.

As we came out of the cafe we saw Jin-Young, who we hadn’t seen in a while. His friends had ended up taking a bus to Burgos on the day of the snow, so he was trying to catch up with them before they left. He had a new friend he was walking with, so we joined them for a little while. It wasn’t too long before we reached the outskirts of Burgos. In fact, once your get to the edge of the city, you still have about 10 kilometers before you get to the cathedral in the old part of town.

It’s so tedious to walk through a city after you’ve been in the countryside. I took a picture of an intersection just to remember that this was the ugliest part of our walk. I always forget what it feels like to be in the middle of intersections and buildings on a walk like this. For most of our journey, the other faces on the road were fellow pilgrims, but now the people wearing backpacks were far outnumbered by people going about their regular business. 

The streets seemed to stretch on forever. I had to stop for a minute to rest. We had some energy bars left, so we split one on the side of the road before pressing on through the rest of the town. Finally, we reached the old town gate, which was like walking through the wardrobe into Narnia. The industrial part of the city fell away behind us and now we were on cobblestones and in old beautiful plazas. We were here.

After a couple more blocks we reached the cathedral. I cried a little when I first saw it. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to go inside or just sit down on the stairs and weep. We went in through a side door for pilgrims where you could store your backpack and get a final stamp.

Then we toured the grand cathedral. It was so much bigger than anywhere we had been on our journey. Even the small chapels off to the sides of the main space were larger than many of the churches we’d seen.

It was almost hard for me to take in the vast, yet ornate building. I wandered from room to room in a sort of dumbstruck reverie. I almost didn’t notice the Italian bikers who were also exploring the Cathedral. We whispered greetings to one another in the sacred space. 

The tour exited the main nave of the cathedral and took you through halls of paintings, sculptures and smaller chapels. We flowed through the space quietly and were almost surprised to end up back at the lockers holding our backpacks. We walked out into quiet streets, shops were closing up for the afternoon, as they do in Spain. They would open again around 4 or 5pm. We had spotted a pizza place on our way in that now seemed like a very good idea, so we re-traced our steps to have a celebratory lunch.

We were walking in a slow daze towards lunch, when we heard someone running up behind us and singing. It was Fernando, who we had just met on the road the day before. He told us to go to the nearby Hostel Catedral, which he had switched to after a rough first night in the municipal albergue. There’s no hot water there, he said. We thanked him and made plans to meet up later for drinks.

Kandace and I had discussed getting a hotel room, but we decided we would check and see if the albergue had private rooms so we could be with friends at dinner, but in our own room for sleeping. 

At the pizza place, I ran to the bathroom while Kandace ordered more food than we could possibly eat, but we made a great effort. It was almost 3pm and we were tired and hungry. It was easily the best pizza I’ve ever tasted, washed down with a couple of beers and a mixture of disbelief and joy that we had made it to Burgos. 

In our post-lunch stupor, we wandered to the hostel, which was happily very close by and asked for a room to ourselves. Between the lobby and finding our room, we ran into more friends, several that we had thought would have been further on by now, which turned into an entire evening of crossing paths with pilgrims. The hostel had its own bar, so after we showered and settled into our room, which was a DREAM compared to the barn in which we’d spent the previous night, we met up with friends in the bar and met a few new ones as well. We had celebratory drinks all around, Kandace and I for finishing our walk, and everyone else for reaching one of the milestone cities.

Lots of folks had either already stayed one extra night in Burgos or were adding a rest day there. Spas and massages were being booked. Plans were made to see the castle and visit the museums. There was more snow in the forecast ahead for those who would continue on walking, but at the moment, everyone was warm and dry and delighted to be together. 

Some of us broke off from the party and went to the Pilgrim’s Mass at 7:30, which is a time for being blessed by the priest in Burgos. It was held in one of the smaller chapels around the back of the Cathedral.  Inside the service, I saw more familiar faces, and I remembered vividly my first walk on the Camino, and how everyone met up again in Santiago at the Cathedral and in the streets.

I remembered this feeling of everyone being a part of this beloved Camino community, how effortlessly people came together and how grateful I was to be a part of it again, even for just a few days.

As I listened to the priest speak words of blessing over us, I felt so strongly that we are all one. And not just the small group of us gathered there at Mass, but all of us in the world. And we are all so dearly loved. I looked into the eyes of each pilgrim I met that night, with that same love I felt poured out during Mass.

As we walked out of the cathedral, Jin-Young told me it was his first time at Mass. He had gone and taken communion and then asked me to explain what it was. I loved that he didn’t understand that you are supposed to be excluded from communion if you are not Catholic. It was the body of Christ, Jin-Young, broken for us. So we can be whole. You are whole. Made new. I explained in halting terms. Yes, I understand, he said. 

Outside the church, I said goodbye to Gautier and Marion, who were headed to Madrid. They were also leaving the trail and would come back to walk some more one day. I even saw the man from Switzerland that Kandace and I shared our first lunch with.

We then went to meet up with the others for a tapa bar crawl that lasted until what felt like 1am but was really just a little past 10pm. We had a Barcelona restauranteur with us who was getting recommendations for different tapas we should try, and he did all the ordering from bar to bar. Shrimp with pineapple, tuna tartare on top of tiny steamed buns, mushrooms and olives and beautiful cheeses. Every bite we ate was divine and the moving celebration and rotating conversations felt like an extension of the day’s pilgrimage.

At the end of the night Kandace and I lingered outside our hostel laughing with our fellow pilgrims before saying goodnight and farewell. We’ll get up and eat breakfast with you all, we promised, but we weren’t sure how early we’d be up. We were both looking forward to a well earned rest in fluffy beds. 

Buen Camino, everyone! Buen Camino.

This post is our trip log from Atapuerca to Burgos. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

The post Day 7 on The Camino (Atapuerca to Burgos) appeared first on Alison Chino.

18 kilometers.

Day 6 on The Camino.

Or

Remember That One Time We Slept In A Barn.

This post is our trip log from Villafranca to Atapuerca. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

One of the reasons our albergue in Villafranca was full, besides being the only one open, was that the next town was 12km away. Along most of the Way, there are stops every few kilometers, but from Villafranca, you walk up a steep mountain incline (really the only one between Logrono and Burgos) and then follow a long, slow descent into San Juan de Ortega.

The mountain trail began right outside our albergue, and we welcomed the incline on the first part of our day as a way to quickly get warm with fresh morning legs (as opposed to already tired afternoon legs). The trail was still snow-covered from the day before, which made the walk quite beautiful.

Especially since it was not currently snowing (or raining).

Kandace and I talked all morning for the first time in several days. We realized we hadn’t been talking while walking on the previous couple of days because of the weather. In fact, our whole faces had been covered and we had just been marching with our heads down for most of the day.

The first 12 kilometers flew by and as we descended into San Juan, we decided the biggest gift of this day was that we were finally out of the wind. 

It was still cold, so we were grateful to find a cozy bar in San Juan with a fireplace. It was completely empty when we arrived, so, as usual, we re-arranged the chairs so that we were sitting right by the fire enjoying our coffee and eggs by the time others started to arrive.

Everyone was in good spirits after the previous day and we laughed as we filled the small space and tried each other’s food. After about an hour, a new group came in so I started collecting our things to get moving again. It seemed like a good time to vacate our seats by the fire. The young guy who was journaling the night before and  his walking partner from Australia gratefully took our seats, the Australian mentioning that he needed a new pair of legs. Apparently they had come well over twice as far as we had walked the day before and it sounded like they had perhaps pushed it too hard. It reminded me of why I really enjoy doing the Camino in stages rather than all at once.

Perhaps the 800 kilometers is so daunting that you find yourself just wanting to get as much of it behind you as you can each day. And so some days you just walk until you can no longer feel your legs. I’m not sure. We later ran into the first guy again. He passed us as we were stopping for the day and introduced himself (Fernando…which of course, I took as a cue to break into the Abba song). He had left his friend behind and was planning to walk all the way to Burgos. Burgos!! We couldn’t believe it. That was nearly 40 km in one day! But I suppose that once Burgos felt within striking distance, he just wanted to keep going until he got there. He was planning to take a rest day in Burgos so he said he’d see us there when we arrived.

One day I think I will tackle doing a whole Camino, and I’m so curious how it will change my perception of The Way to walk for longer than a week. At this point, I wasn’t quite ready to get to Burgos. I felt a bit sad about the journey coming to an end.

We walked in a slight drizzle after our mid-morning stop, but still no wind and nothing like the rain or snow of our other days.

From San Juan, there were villages about every three kilometers the rest of the way into Burgos, so we had plenty of choices for stops if the weather got worse. 

We continued through a forest and kept up a fairly happy pace through another village (Agnes) and over some lovely green hills before getting to the next town, all the while enjoying being able to laugh and chat without being blown over by wind.

As we came into the little town of Atapuerca, a small parade of people came out of a building led by two men playing instruments. They walked from the town hall to a bar at the edge of town, where they all went inside for drinks and dancing. Kandace and I had no idea what was going on but we (and several other pilgrims) followed the musicians like the Pied Piper into the bar and proceeded to stay there for the rest of the afternoon.

We ordered lunch and drinks and listened to the small band for as long as the party lasted.

(Here’s a short video of us sitting in the bar.)

When it finally finished up, we decided that we might as well stay. There was a little rain falling and we had already walked 18km. Kandace held down our table at the bar, while I headed up the street to put our names down at the town albergue.

I had read that there were only 18 beds, and maybe it was because the rooms the night before had been full, but I was concerned that we needed to go ahead and claim our beds. The albergue was at the top of a hill, called The Hutte, and I went into the reception area and communicated to an older lady that I wanted to pay for two beds. I might should have been a little suspicious when the fee was only 6 euros per bed, but I was delighted at the bargain. After paying, I walked back down to the bar where Kandace and I finished our lunch and our drinks and sat visiting with some of the locals for the afternoon. We kept expecting to see some of our friends, but they had either stopped at the town behind us or continued on ahead. 

We finally pulled on our backpacks and walked up the hill to the albergue, which actually turned out to be a barn. We laughed and laughed as we spread our things out, took showers and got dressed for dinner.

We had planned to find a grocery store to buy dinner but there were no shops in town, so we ended up back down at the bar until the restaurant next to our barn opened for dinner.

The same lady who checked us into the albergue served us dinner, including a gorgeous eggplant dish as my vegetarian option. A wood-burning fireplace (our fourth in two days) in the restaurant made our lonely two person dinner a lot warmer.

After dinner, we went next door to our room, where we were the only ones. We laughed at my earlier need to “secure two beds” out of concern that it would be full. The barn door didn’t lock from the inside, and all of a sudden, the small, quiet town felt kind of creepy, so I barricaded the door with some chairs before we crawled into bed.

The room was drafty and cold, and I kept having to get up to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t seem to fall asleep. I was awake for what felt like all night, and couldn’t get warm. I kept imagining animals crawling out of the barn roof and into our beds.

I would get up and go to the bathroom and then have a whole conversation with myself about how or why I had chosen this poor sleeping arrangement. I managed to convince myself that it was going to be funny eventually, and I just had to endure a few more hours of the cold, dank room. Finally, I looked at my phone and it was a respectable enough hour to wake up, and I so I asked Kandace if she was awake and when she moaned back a sleepy “Ugh, yes,” I said, “Dear Lord, please let’s get out of here!” 

This post is our trip log from Villafranca to Atapuerca. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

The post Day 6 on The Camino (Villafranca to Atapuerca) appeared first on Alison Chino.

12 kilometers.

Day 5 on The Camino.

Or

We Walked In The Snow But This Day Was Still My Favorite.

This post is our trip log from Belorado to Villafranca Montes de Oca. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

We got out onto the Way fairly early, ahead of some of the others which was unusual for us, but we had heard the weather would be progressing from not-so-great to terrible throughout the day, so it seemed best to just get on with it. 

We headed out from Belorado in a slight drizzle, but we were good and bundled so off we went. We managed to go about five kilometers before it started snowing, so we started looking for a cafe. We came to the first town at the same time as our three friends from Korea and we were all circling buildings and shouting back to each other that everything was closed.

This one too. Not open!

Onward!

By the time we had gone another kilometer or so, the others had gotten ahead of us and must have gone a different direction into little Villambistia than we did, because we found a cafe but they weren’t in it. We were so thrilled to find something open as we badly wanted a break from the weather. Also, we hadn’t really had breakfast or even coffee, since we’d gotten going so early. We threw off our wet things and expressed our joy to the bartender at finding him. He brought us menus and coffees and we ordered up huge plates of eggs. While we ate, we watched the snow falling harder and harder outside and Kandace said she wasn’t sure she was going any further today. It was not even 10am yet. I didn’t feel like we could stop already but I kept quiet while we ordered a second round of coffees. 

By the time the coffees arrived, four more of our fellow pilgrims had trickled in to escape the snow: the French couple, whose names we had finally learned (Gautier and Marion), our friend from Poland, (Emelia) and Tony. Tony asked the bartender if there was a Mass happening in the little town. Kandace and I, in our attempt to find any possible escape from the weather, had already noticed that the church was closed, but the bartender told us that they didn’t use the church in winter because there was no heat. Instead Mass was held in a little room that was just around the corner from the bar. It wasn’t happening until 11, so we all sat in the cafe visiting and watching the weather until a few minutes before Mass. The bartender let us leave all our things in the cafe while we went to Mass, which was incredibly kind as it looked like about 20 peoples’ belongings spread everywhere instead of just 6.

We walked across the street and entered a door that I would have otherwise thought led to a residence, and then down a hall and into a small room where a priest, two women and one older gentlemen were beginning Mass. It was kind of like a classroom. The six of us arriving more than doubled their number and filled up all their chairs. We came in tracking mud and drops of water, and I noticed with amusement that Marion was laying her wet gloves, socks and trousers on the heaters in the back of the room.

Once we had settled into our seats, one of the ladies began the reading. She and the other lady took turns reading, with the priest filling the spaces in between. Of course it was all in Spanish, but it didn’t matter. I knew when it was time to say the Lord’s Prayer and I knew the priest was blessing our pilgrimage. The room was warm and I was grateful for the quiet pause in our day, the gathering of saints, the reading of God’s word.

For my whole life, I have loved church gatherings, but I have experienced some pretty traumatic church events in the last year which have sort of shaken my heart with regards to Church. This handful of us in a room, from different countries, and with different mother tongues, gathering to be a part of worship that was faithfully happening with only four people in a small village, was like a sweet balm on all my church wounds. It didn’t heal them fully, but it helped me remember how much bigger the church is, how many perfectly imperfect gatherings are happening around the world. I was grateful for the gift of this moment, this sweet pause from walking in the snow and a chance to be a pilgrim at Mass. 

Afterwards, Tony spoke a while to the priest while the rest of us gathered up our things and headed back to the cafe. Marion collected all her warm, dry clothes from the heaters and on the way back she told me that a lady at the cafe had told her that the heaters at the church would be on so she should take her wet things over there. I was still so warm from the service that I wasn’t even jealous of her dry socks. 

It was starting to snow even harder, and we still had a long way to go to get to San Juan (18km).  It wasn’t looking like we were going to make it, but I also didn’t want to stop for the day after only walking 6km. We debated for a little while about how much further to go, and about whether we were going at all, and finally Kandace said she would keep walking, but we needed a shot of whiskey first. 

Our sweet bartender who had fed us coffee and breakfast, sent us to Mass and watched over our things, now poured up the shots that would finally send us on our way.

One. Two. Three.

Down the hatch. Boom. TIme to go, so off we went.

Back outside. Into the snow. And the wind.

Little bits of frozen rain pelted our faces. I think the weather was worse than the morning, but our spirits were high. We were warmer than the day it rained so hard on us because we were both wearing an extra layer on our legs. We walked quickly, and really did not stop again until we reached our destination.

Though as usual, we started out behind everyone, we eventually caught up to the rest of our group and arrived as a party of six dripping wet pilgrims at the albergue in Villafranca. It was actually a fairly fancy lobby of a hotel and restaurant where we checked in, and the albergue was out back. I was conscious of how much mud I was tracking into the lobby, and as I dug out my passport to check in, the mini puddles of water that had gathered on my backpack, ran off onto the floor. The host didn’t seem to mind, except he did joke that he wouldn’t be able to take Kandace and I because we were American. (That joke, barely funny the first time we heard it, was starting to be really tired.)

We were all dying to get off our wet things and into hot showers, but the host regaled us for a long time with the historical importance of this particular town on the route to Santiago. I wish I could remember what he said, but I was far too preoccupied with wondering when he was going to stop talking and take us to the bunkhouse. Upon Googling, I read that Villafranca Montes de Oca was the seat of the bishopric at one time and was a thriving area for monastic life in medieval days. It was later destroyed and the bishop’s seat was moved to Burgos. 

Finally, he lead us down a long hall and outside through a courtyard to the albergue. We were excited to find a wood-burning stove inside, but it wasn’t burning at the moment. Tony and Gautier immediately asked if we could have the fire lit, and Kandace and I ran off to the showers to thaw out all our frozen extremities.  

By the time she and I had showered and settled into the bunkroom, which consisted of dumping out everything I owned and trying to find places to dry it all, the fire in the common room was going strong. We all gathered around it, sharing a makeshift late lunch of bits and pieces we had left in our packs and sorting out what we would do for the afternoon and dinner. Though we were tired, we had only hiked 12km that day, so it was still relatively early.

There was a bar in the hotel, with an even bigger wood-burning fireplace. Kandace and I took our journals and books down to the bar, we pulled chairs away from tables and sat right in front of the fire for most of the afternoon.

Maybe it was the fire or the snow outside, but we got super sleepy so we decided we would go have a short nap before dinner. We went back up to the bunk room and crawled into our sleeping bags. (I had figured out how to keep my sleeping bag dry by keeping it in the middle of my pack after the day of really heavy rain soaked the bottom of it.) Pulling my sleeping bag up around my shoulders and closing my eyes, I was deliriously happy to be right were I was. SUCH a good feeling. I woke up after about an hour because there was a bit of commotion. It was well after 6pm and a group of hikers was just arriving. Having walked more than twice as far as us and in horrible weather, they all looked rather miserable. They didn’t really talk, just communicated with grunts and nods. I’m sure I would have done the same in their position. This night was the only time we stayed in an albergue and felt that it was really full. Kandace gracefully took the top bunk. The shelf at the front of the albergue that held boots and walking sticks was packed by the time we were heading to dinner.

The hotel was serving dinner so most of us opted for their pilgrim’s menu instead of trying to cook, as the albergue kitchen only had a microwave. Kandace and I were sat at the end of a long table with two French brothers who had walked all the way from their home in France. We had a strange exchange with them in which one revealed that he had a daughter in Texas that no longer speaks to him and could Kandace possibly look her up and greet her for him. Honestly, in retrospect, that was the least odd part of the conversation. Perhaps the strangest part of the meal was when the older brother reprimanded me for not finishing my pasta. I had ordered pasta as the vegetarian option, and it turned out to be a massive plate of rather plain pasta. It was the second course, so I’d already had a lovely soup and bread. The funny thing is that I have a habit of usually finishing my food regardless of whether or not I am still hungry, because of how much I hate wasting food. But the set pilgrim’s menus often seemed to be more food than I would usually eat, even after walking all day. Anyway, the man gave me a whole, gruffly-delivered speech about how I needed the fuel for walking the next day.  He seemed disgusted with me for ignoring his unsolicited advice, which usually would have rattled me, but instead (hello wine) I found the whole exchange to be so amusing that I could hardly keep from laughing. The desserts came and as they were underwhelming, I discreetly passed mine down the table to someone else and managed to leave without being scolded a second time. The brothers were walking quite a long way each day, so we bid them farewell and didn’t expect to see them again.  

After dinner, we sat by the fire and worked Kandace’s NYT crosswords, another favorite evening activity. I watched people come and go from the common area, where everyone was talking either not at all or in very hushed tones. I think a lot of folks in the group who had been walking so much longer than us were already sleeping. There was a young guy I had seen come in earlier, who was sitting and writing in his journal. A couple of girls were rearranging wet clothes to try to get them dry. I made two cups of tea and Kandace and I whispered back and forth to each other while we drank them. We both commented the next day that the new arrivals made the evening feel very serious somehow. The laughter from our morning in the bar after Mass seemed far away. We finally decided to call it a night. I switched the wet newspaper in my boots for new, dry pieces and went to bed.

I must have slept very hard because a few days later we heard that one of our friends spent that same night refusing the unwanted advances of a girl in the bunk next to him. When we realized we’d slept through the entire exchange though it occurred only a few bunks away from us, Kandace told me I was fired from the bottom bunk for missing it. 

That’s fair. 

This post is our trip log from Belorado to Villafranca Montes de Oca. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

The post Day 5 on The Camino (Belorado to Villafranca Montes de Oca) appeared first on Alison Chino.

22 kilometers.

Day 4 on The Camino.

Or

Thank God It’s Not Raining.

This post is our trip log from Santo Domingo to Belorado. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

We had a little coffee and breakfast before starting out around 8am.

We were so relieved that it wasn’t raining when we started. In fact there were a few patches of blue sky. It was still cold and windy, but Kandace and I both had an extra layer on and had managed to get most of our things dry the night before so we were happy.

We started out walking in a larger group, but everyone else got ahead of us when we stopped in Granon (about 7km into the day). We had coffee and tortilla in a cute little bar, and on a tiny shelf near the bar there were four seashells and two hats for sale. The seashell is the sign of St James, so most pilgrims hang a shell on their backpacks (You can’t ever see ours in photos because our rain covers are ALWAYS on). These were the first hats we had seen since Kandace had lost hers. We hadn’t managed to find one the day before, and this one was so cute, so Kandace bought it along with our coffees.

We didn’t stop for long because we had a bit further to go on this day. We wanted to stay ahead while it wasn’t pouring down rain. And though it rained here and there, we never had the same thrashing rain from the day before, so we were in generally good spirits all day.

In the afternoon, the path seemed to hug the local highway a good bit, which was a little loud. Also it was fairly dull going, just a path between a field and road for long stretches. 

We didn’t stop again until we reached the edge of town. We were both getting cold and needed a bathroom, so we popped in a cafe. I ordered a tea and we ate what was left of our dinner from the night before. As we came out of the cafe and near our hostel, the sun started to shine. It was so delightful. It seemed like years since we had actually felt the sun on our faces.

And as we reached the door of the pilgrims’ albergue in Belorado, a dog came out and greeted Kandace. Between the sun and the dog, Kandace was insanely happy. She spent at least the next hour with that dog. (She was missing her own dog back home.)

This hostel actually ended up being one of our very favorites. The host was incredibly welcoming and friendly. We paid 10 extra euros to have our own room and he carried both our backpacks up to the third floor for us.

We immediately took hot showers and then dumped our backpacks out everywhere, taking full advantage of all our space.

Because it was winter, the albergue wasn’t serving dinner, so after we had settled in and cleaned up, we walked into town to get food for dinner. We loved the grocery store in this town. I noticed in a lot of the stores in Spain that you don’t choose your own produce. Instead, you would tell an attendant what you wanted and then they would bag up your two apples or your carrots or whatever. For me, this usually entailed a lot of pointing and signaling, but in Belorado, the girl who was attending spoke perfect English and was super helpful. She was handling the produce the bread and deli, which was about a third of the little grocery store. But she was very efficient, and even recommended which bread we should eat with our wine and cheese. While she was helping us, she noticed that some of our fellow pilgrims were starting to touch the produce, so she finished us up and went off quickly to go set them straight. We felt like she was really running the whole place, and I could have stayed in the store a while longer just watching her assist everyone. 

Back at the albergue, we ended up finding lots of folks who we hadn’t seen in a while. The French couple we met the first night and the Italian bikers from our second night were both there. We figured they had gotten way ahead of us, but the weather seemed to have set everyone back.

It was like a big reunion at dinner. Everyone shared their food and we even had a special Chocolate + Banana + Creme Fraiche Dessert that Tony made after discovering that the Koreans had never before tried freshly whipped cream. It was a big hit.

While we were sitting around the table, it started to snow outside, so everyone began checking the weather and confirmed that yes, it was also supposed to be snowing the next day. Tony suggested that since the following day was Sunday, we could take a break from the snow by going to Mass in one of the towns along the way, which we thought was a great idea. 

Kandace and I had built in a couple of extra days, so as we were going back to our room, we talked about how we could do a short day if the weather was really brutal. There’s no hurry. We were laughing as we went to bed, probably partly because I kept hitting my head on the low wooden beams in our room. But also, rehearsing the events of the day before we went to sleep always made us laugh.

This post is our trip log from Santo Domingo to Belorado. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

The post Day 4 on The Camino (Santo Domingo to Belorado) appeared first on Alison Chino.

21 kilometers.

Day 3 on The Camino.

Or

We Only Thought It Was Raining Yesterday.

This post is our trip log from Najera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

We had decided at dinner the night before that we three Americans would start out walking together. We were planning to get to Santa Domingo which was 21 km away, and Rohit, our new BFF, was hoping to get a little further to Granon, which was 28 km away.

If you’re walking the whole Camino, I think you have to average about 28 kilometers every day in order to reach Santiago within a month or so. On our first night in Navarrete, everyone else had been walking since well before Logrono. Actually there were many nights that we sat around the table with folks who had walked lots more kilometers than we had. 

In Najera, we were the last ones to leave the albergue. One of the advantages of being the last to go is that it’s always super easy to find your shoes.  

Our new friend was probably anxious to get going, but he was super patient with us. We took a photo with the albergue hosts before setting off. 

As soon as we got outside of the town, the wind really picked up. But even though it was cold, it was a beautiful morning.

We were soon walking through vineyards again and enjoying talking with one another.

When we came to Azofra, we had been walking a little over an hour.

But we hadn’t really had any breakfast, so we stopped at a cafe in town.

We ordered coffees and a slice of tortilla, which in Spain, is a dish of eggs and potatoes, layered together in sort of a pie or really like a frittata. All the bars along this section of the Camino had tortillas baked, so we ate it often, but we first tried it in Azofra.

After a quick stop we got back out on the trail and kept walking into the wind. It had definitely picked up. It was blowing so hard that you wanted every little part of your body to be covered. 

The views all around us were gorgeous.

You could see for a long way in every direction, which also made you feel like you were going to be walking against the wind for a really long time. The sky kept changing because the wind was blowing different weather patterns through so quickly. 

You could literally lean forward as you walked with all your weight and the wind would hold you up. It was crazy. It reminded me of the many windy walks from my days of living in Aberdeen, and I was thinking about how I would get home from a walk in Scotland and just be exhausted from the wind. I started dreaming about a hot cup of tea. 

Somewhere on the windy plain, our American friend picked up his pace a bit and got ahead of us. We figured we’d see him in the next town or in the next life, so we sat down on the side of the road for a minute to try to get a break from the wind. If you got really close to the ground, there was a pause in how much the wind was whipping your face.

We watched a sweet man and woman from Korea who approached us walking in a line. The man was in front and she was walking behind him so he could block the wind for her. They thought we had the right idea, so they came and sat down with us to get some relief from the wind.

Another friend who had been at our hostels for both of the last two nights walked by and paused to give everyone a little encouragement. Earlier when we had seen him, he was singing Rocky music out loud: Dun dun dunnnnn dun dun dun dun dunnnnn, which made us laugh and forget about the wind for a minute. In fact this Italian guy from Belgium probably made us laugh more than anyone else we met on the Camino. Among other strange items, he carried a pink wig in his backpack, just for fun. He always got ahead of us, but then we would pass him again because he was stopping to roll his own cigarettes and smoke. He was basically chain smoking throughout his entire Camino. Anyway, he paused to give the couple next to us a little pep talk before going on his way. 

We finally pulled ourselves back up into the wind and walked until we reached the edge of the plain and came to the next little town (Cirueña). It was about noon when we stopped at the first open bar we saw. We weren’t even super hungry, but we both felt we just had to have a real break from the wind.

When we got inside, the girl at the bar was serving up paella, so we decided we’d have some. We still had 6km to go after lunch, so we tried not to sit for too long. We headed back out into the wind, and soon it was also raining. The wind made the rain feel like little pellets of ice hitting us, which is also an experience I’ve had walking in Scotland, but Kandace, who maybe has not been hit with both rain and wind so aggressively was questioning everything. After the little town, the plain opened back up so there was no escaping the weather.

We felt completely exposed, but we just marched on. Really, there was nothing else to do. We couldn’t really hear each other with the wind being so loud, and we had our heads down trying to keep the rain off our faces. For two hours, we continued in the thrashing rain, so that there was not one little piece of clothing on our bodies that was dry by the time we reached Santo Domingo.

Once the town was in sight, we both kept muttering things like, I can’t feel my legs. I can’t wait for a hot shower. I don’t know if I can go any further. We briefly discussed stopping in the first bar we saw, but we were so desperate to get out of wet clothes that we kept marching until we found the only open albergue. It was connected to the church next door, so it felt very somber when we walked inside, with vaulted ceilings and long cavernous halls. There were two hosts, which we later referred to as good cop and bad cop. The younger one gave us very curt instructions to put our wet things in a room off to the side and would not process us until we had dug out our passports, but then there was an older gentleman who seemed to feel very sorry for us since we were so drenched and miserable.

Much to the annoyance of the younger guy, it took us a while to peel off our wet things, and then when we were both down to just one wet layer and shivering, we pulled out our passports and found some cash so we could get our bed assignments. The beds were numbered and he actually gave us tiny little pieces of paper with our bed numbers on them, so you didn’t choose where you slept. We were sort of all filed into this one room full of beds. Then the older host walked us up a few flights of stairs to where the albergue was. We thanked him, threw our stuff down and practically ran for the showers. And I promise you this: A shower has never felt so good in all my life as that hot shower did. It restored us back to being human in a matter of minutes. This was not the first time in my life I have loved a hot shower so much, and I’m sure it won’t be the last (it was not even the last on this trip), but it was the best. I was beyond cold when we arrived at the hostel. Neither Kandace or I had on an extra bottom layer under our hiking pants, a mistake we did not make again for the rest of the trip, so we were thawing out from a deeply settled cold.

We rested on our beds for a while, but since it was still relatively early we decided we had to venture back out. Kandace had lost her hat somehow and so was on the hunt for a new one, plus we wanted to visit the church, which apparently keeps live roosters because of a legend about a rooster coming back to life. (What?). So we put on whatever dry things we could find and went back out into the rain to see the church.

Then we went to a bar and had a drink and a snack before wandering around a little more to look for a hat (no luck) and to find ourselves a little picnic dinner (success).

We went back to the hostel and joined our friends (old and new) at the community table. We pulled out our groceries and tasted some of the dishes being cooked up. Our American friend and several others had gone on ahead to the next town, (Well done them for braving 7 more kilometers in the rain!) but there were several folks we knew with us. The couple from Korea who we had stopped on the side of the road with was there, as well as Tony (the guy from Belgium) and Jin-Young (from Korea). There was a gal from Poland that we had met, and several others from Korea. There was a lot of lamenting about the weather and wondering what tomorrow would be like. But tonight we were cozy and warm. We went to bed in our (mostly) dry sleeping bags. Everyone’s wet things made the hostel bedroom smell like a gym bag, but we still fell asleep grateful to be out of the rain. 

This post is our trip log from Najera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

The post Day 3 on The Camino (Najera to Santo Domingo de la Calzada) appeared first on Alison Chino.

18 kilometers,

Day 2 on The Camino

Or

It rained and then the sun came out. 

This post is our trip log from Navarrete to Najera. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

Some nights of sleep are so bad that you are just relieved to wake up and it be morning, so you don’t have to think about trying to go to sleep anymore. That’s how I felt when the light trickled in through the window of our little room.

We quickly packed up and went downstairs for coffee and a quick breakfast. 

A few folks came and went as we ate, everyone sending well wishes,

Buen Camino!

We finished up and said goodbye to our host, who was perhaps a bit sleepy. I was amazed he was up to greet us at all after his late night, but he cheerfully sent us off. We were the last to go, which would become a habit of ours. 

It was cloudy and cold, but not raining yet, so we left without pulling our rain covers over our backpacks.

We walked back through the little town of Navarrete, now our fourth time after all of the previous day’s wanderings. Before we’d gone ten minutes, it started to rain. So we stopped and dug out the rain covers, promising we’d just put them on preemptively from now on. Live and learn.

Now we were ready. Onward into the rain we went from Navarrete to Najera.

As the buildings of the town receded behind us, we lost any cover from the rain and began to feel it full in our faces. Heads down, we marched on through the morning. 

I considered that perhaps I had not fully appreciated our first day of walking. I started to doubt my planning: Maybe we should have walked further yesterday while it was prettier. Maybe we won’t make it quite 18 kilometers today. Maybe Kandace is going to wish she had never met me…

The rain was not terribly hard, just a consistent drizzle, but after a while, it began to soak through our clothes. The drips off the bottoms of my pants fell into the tops of my boots. It’s funny how even if you have waterproof boots, they don’t really stay dry when rain pours into them from the top. I remarked to Kandace that I had left behind two pairs of gaiters that I used for walking through wet Scotland. Why had I thought them unnecessary for this trip? I had pulled them out and thought they were overkill. And also rain pants. I had thought rain resistant hiking trousers would be plenty. 

Ha!

After I’d exhausted all the should haves and could haves, I settled into just taking step after step, finding a rhythm of walking, walking, walking.

Remembering that the only thing to do is to take the next step.

And then the next one.

And the next one after that.

Simple.

Soon enough we came to the next little village and without even having to speak we both headed straight for the open cafe at the edge of town. Already those who had left before us were warming themselves up inside, and we quickly threw off wet jackets and layers to join them.

We ordered coffee and croissants, and suddenly all was well with the world. Everytime I sit down in one of these little cafes, I think: Well, this is perfect. I could just sit here all day.

And we did sit there for a long time. We watched others go, and still others come and go, and then the rain stopped so we pulled our packs back on and headed out as well. 

Oh, what a delight to walk in the sunshine after a morning of rain!

Yes!

We walked and talked and laughed. After the town, the trail went through more vineyards. Again, the vines were so gorgeous. We might have tasted a grape or two. We picked up our pace a little in the afternoon, as we began to see Najera from a distance. 

Whenever I am hiking, as soon as I spot a town, I tend to make the mistake of thinking that I am almost there. I think it’s my basic lack of aptitude for math that makes me so bad at depth perception.

But I get this little boost of energy when I start to think I’m getting close, and I am almost always tricked by it. This becomes apparent after an hour passes and the town seems hardly any closer. And then another hour passes and I can’t see the town anymore because I’ve lost the long view. 

Still, eventually we came to the edge of town. I was long past beginning to feel the lack of sleep from the night before, so we stopped in the first bar we saw to find some sustenance.

Lucky for us both, we didn’t quite realize how much bigger Najera was than Navarrete and that we still had quite a bit of street walking to get through before we reached the old town and the cathedral.

We had a gorgeous lunch of leeks and spicy, fried potatoes and other warm foods that were probably mediocre, but actually tasted like heaven because we were Oh. So. Hungry.

We ran into a couple who had been at dinner with us the night before. They were finishing up their lunch when we arrived and planning to walk on through Najera to the next town, Azofra, which was 6 kilometers further.

Marion, who had walked the entire Camino back in the summer, said there was an albergue she particularly loved in the next town. She said there was a fountain were you could soak your feet. I asked if it was like a hot spring and she said, oh no, that you need cold water to soak your feet. Yes, of course, I said, but I thought Oh no.

It was freezing outside. There was no way I would be putting my feet in a cold fountain. Y’all enjoy that!

We wished them well and imagined that was the last we would see of them, because we were stopping in Najera and they would be starting well ahead of us tomorrow.

After lunch, we drug ourselves back outside and started the long walk through town. Maybe I shouldn’t have had that second beer, I laughed. We had several kilometers to go before we crossed a bridge into the older part of Najera, but I was just glad we weren’t trying to go 6 more after that!

Soon we came to the cathedral and convent, so we went inside. A kind lady in the gift shop sold us a discounted ticket to see the convent and told us we could leave our backpacks with her. She also gave us each a small picture of a saint, presumably the one for which this cathedral was named.

We walked around the convent dazed and happy to have made it to the end of our day’s walking. Neither of us could imagine going one kilometer more. It was a beautiful church and we both took a minute to sit and enjoy the quiet expanse of the space. I have made somewhat of a Camino tradition of stopping in the church at the end of the day to spend some time in quiet gratitude for the steps behind me. And to bless the steps ahead. 

After our time in the cathedral, we asked for directions to the municipal albergue. I had told Kandace that I really wanted to try out the albergues that were connected to the churches at some point. They are usually the most basic (and cheapest), and I think I had it in my head that perhaps they attract the most pious pilgrims. I’m not sure that this is true or where I even got this idea. 

We followed the directions and soon were at the door of the pilgrim’s albergue. We rang the bell and a volunteer opened the door and asked us where we were from. The US!

We always said this with smiles and laughs. He said he was sorry but there was no room for us.

Then Kandace said that she lived in France, so actually she was from France. The volunteer was also from France, so he said that yes, he had two places for us if we were French.

Of course, he was kidding all along, but you would never have known that from his straight face. This was the first time, but certainly not the last, we were jokingly turned away from an albergue because we were American. Clearly, we have a reputation y’all. And I don’t think it’s a good one. (Yikes.) However, the other volunteer at the desk who checked us in was American. So she explained how everything at the albergue worked.

The front desk was in a common room full of tables where people were sitting and chatting, and there was a kitchen just off the common room. Between the desk and the kitchen was a hallway to the bunkroom where about 50 bunk beds lined the walls and filled a middle row. Kandace and I picked two bunk beds that were pushed together and claimed the bottom bunks. Actually, we almost never encountered an albergue that was so full that people had to use the top bunks. In fact, everywhere we stayed, we said to each other, can you IMAGINE what this place would be like if it was full?

There were two men’s showers and two women’s showers, which was standard for most of the places we stayed, and we felt like we had PLENTY of people to share those with already. 

While we were checking in, our hostess introduced us to the only other American we met on our entire trip. Rohit was as excited to meet us as we were to meet him. We shared an Arkansas connection. At one point he’d worked for Wal-mart and lived in Northwest Arkansas. He’d been walking from St Jean and hadn’t been around many other English speakers.

We decided to find a nearby restaurant and all have dinner together, where we talked and talked about some of my very favorite things: spiritual journeys, meditation, favorite authors and walking the Camino. It was delightful, as was dinner. I had a garlic soup that was so yummy and salad, and of course, flan. Little custards with caramel sauce were the most often served dessert on the Camino. I appreciated that they were small and not terribly sweet, but they were rich (probably made with cream). At one point, after eating several of them, Kandace told me that she didn’t really like flan and wasn’t sure why she kept ordering it. The other option seemed to be a cup of yogurt, which isn’t really that much different, so flan it was. 

We finished our meal and drained the bottles of wine before meandering back to the albergue. We had been warned that the doors locked at 10 and we wouldn’t be able to get inside after that, so we were watching the clock. It was around 9:30 when we came back and lots of folks were standing around outside smoking one last cigarette. Among the group were three bikers from Italy who we asked a little about their experience of biking the Camino and if they were preferring it to walking. They said that actually they felt the bad weather even more on the bikes, which made sense when I thought about it. I guess you would get the miles done faster but perhaps be more miserable, especially in the wind. They were all pushing on a bit further than us the next day, so we wished them well. 

I headed to bed and Kandace stayed outside to call her husband. She ended up being shooed inside after 10pm by the same gentleman who’d joked that he didn’t have a place for American pilgrims. When she came to bed, we laughed about it, which was also funny because we were RIGHT UP NEXT to all the other people. So we were trying to silent laugh, which never works.

You could already hear people snoring and I thought, I’m never going to sleep tonight. But actually I felt super cozy, safe and warm in our little bottom bunk haven. Maybe it was because I was exhausted from the night before, but I rolled over and went right to sleep. It might have been my best night of sleep on the whole Camino.

This post is our trip log from Navarrete to Najera. You can read more posts from this walk, or from other Camino trips. 

The post Day 2 on The Camino (Navarrete to Najera) appeared first on Alison Chino.

At 12 kilometers,

Day 1 on The Camino

could also be titled:

Let’s Ease Into This, Shall We?

We didn’t wake up early in Logrono. 

It was probably around 10am when we walked out of our little flat in Logrono and stepped onto the Camino. 

We knew we were starting with a short day, so we had decided the night before to take it easy. We didn’t have far to go, so we could afford a gentle start.

We immediately saw two other pilgrims who waved at us (and confirmed for us that we were setting off in the right direction).

They got ahead of us when we stopped at a fruit stand. We bought apples and bananas to supplement our coffee.

I almost started crying less than five minutes into Day One when a stranger wished us our first Buen Camino, the traditional greeting for pilgrims walking on The Way. 

Gracias, I said to him, looking straight into his eyes. Thank you so much. 

Later, on our final day of walking, I would feel bothered by a stranger coming over to wish us Buen Camino and ask us where we were from, but today, on this first hour of walking, I felt christened by the simple blessing. 

Here we go. 

The road out of Logrono went through the town and then into a park. Lots of folks were running and walking in the park. I thought how much fun it would be for a portion of the Camino de Santiago to be part of your regular exercise routine. I have often said I would like to spend a season in one of the villages located along the Camino, working in a Pilgrim’s hostel and welcoming travelers.

Towards the edge of town, we came to a lake. Though rain was predicted, it was almost sunny, or at least a very light gray sky. From the lake, we could see where we were headed. 

I wonder if we’ll climb those hills? 

After passing the lake, we entered a forest, at the edge of which were several picnic tables. A man with a pocketful of walnuts was feeding squirrels at one of the tables. The two hikers we had seen walking out of town were talking to the man and feeding the squirrels as well. 

We watched for a while and when they walked on, the man with the nuts beckoned us over to have a go. We hadn’t even been walking that long, and we were already stopped and laughing at little pointy squirrel ears. I love this about walking the Camino with friends. Especially at the beginning of a journey, I’m enamored with everything around me. I can’t feel the miles on my legs yet, so I’m just taking it all in.

Kandace said the squirrels in Spain look just like the ones in France. Same crazy little mohawked squirrels.

After we used up most of the gentleman’s walnuts feeding the squirrels, we thanked him and said goodbye.

We walked through a forest for a while and when we came out of the trees, we could see rolling vineyards in almost every direction. The trail continued through the vineyards. There were still grapes on some of the vines, but the leaves had all turned red and gold.

I’ve never seen vines that have changed to fall colors before. They were gorgeous. This region of Spain, called the Rioja, makes most of the wines we drink from Spain. I’ll never see a bottle with a Rioja label without remembering walking in Spain with Kandace.

Again, since it was our first day, we stopped loads to take photos and to ooh and ahh over the beauty all around us.

Also (and we didn’t appreciate this fact nearly enough at the time) this day was one of the only days we didn’t walk in the rain or wind. The temperature was cool, but it still felt like a soft fall day, the kind of air that is lingering from summer rather than heralding winter’s coming.  

We had all the time in the world, and we filled it catching up with each other. Telling the stories of the last several months of our lives. We had both moved since we had last hiked together, and Kandace’s move had taken her across an ocean.

Soon we could see the small town of Navarette, our destination. We could actually see it almost an hour before we arrived there. It was a little after noon when we walked into the center of town and into the church. We stopped there first to get stamps in our Pilgrims’ Passports and to offer thanks for our first perfect day of walking.

If felt just like I wanted our first day to feel…like we could have gone further but were glad to already have arrived for the day. After the church we wandered around looking for an open place to eat lunch or an open albergue. It was a while before we found either. We came across several places that were already shuttered for the winter. While we were looking we ran into the same couple that we’d already seen twice that day, and the guy suggested that we all have lunch together, if we could find something open.

After asking around town, we found a place that served a pilgrims’ menu, which is a menu with a fixed price for those who are walking the Camino. Usually it consists of a first course, a main course, a dessert and wine. They cost between 11-15 euros. You often have a list of courses from which to choose, so I would frequently choose two first courses if the mains were all meat selections. (Side note: I thought it would be harder to be a vegetarian on the Camino but it was really not hard at all. There was always something I could eat.)

We all ordered our selections and then made introductions. They were from Switzerland (him) and South Korea (her), and had just met a few days earlier on the Camino. We sat at lunch for nearly two hours, talking about conspiracy theories, music, podcasts and our favorite spiritual writers. They were walking on, and so they packed up and left at 3pm, saying they were still going to go 22 more kilometers! Kandace and I were floored as that was nearly twice what we’d already walked that day and they would surely be walking a good bit of it in the dark.

Yes, but it will be romantic to walk in the dark, he said.

I doubted that, but we wished them well anyway. Kandace and I sat for another hour in the restaurant until the owner kicked us out to close for the afternoon, and so we went to find a place to stay for the night. We went to two or three more closed albergues before we found one that was open back at the beginning of town. I think we had circled the town about three times at this point, and it was starting to drizzle a little. Hmmm…romantic. 

The albergue had a huge open sign, but the door was closed and no one answered when we rang, so we went around to a side door, that was unlocked. Kandace pulled the door and inside, just under a no smoking sign, there were four or five people smoking and playing cards at a big table.

Albergue? We inquired.

Si, si, si! A gal got up from the table to check us in.

We dug out our Pilgrims’ Credentials and passports and she gave us a key to a private room. In the hostels, it’s usually between 10-15 euros a night per person, but often 30-35 euros for a private room. So since there were two of us, it was often not that much more (or even the same price) for us to get a private room if one was available. Sometimes the bathrooms were still shared, as well as the kitchen and common areas. So we probably went about half and half on sleeping in our own room vs. sleeping in a room full of bunks. 

She also asked us if we wanted to join the pilgrims’ dinner that night, to which we said yes. And she said they would be happy to make it vegetarian for us as well. Bueno.

So off we went to our room, where my main goal was to not fall asleep before dinner. We took showers and then took our journals and books back downstairs to sit in the common area. We sat outside for a minute, but the sun was quickly setting and it was getting cold so we went back inside and found a couch. The host brought us hot herbal teas because we looked cold, which was precious. We watched a few other folks wander in, including a gal we had seen on our bus who was meeting a friend who had been walking already. We met her and her friend, both from France. 

Soon it was time for our family dinner around the table. The French couple joined us as well as a man from Belgium, and everyone else seemed to be part of the hostel staff. There were some other folks staying at the albergue, but presumably they went somewhere else for dinner that night. It was a small gathering, which was surprising since this was the only albergue open in town. I asked about that and one of the gals told me that this hostel would be closing in just a few days. We had almost missed having a place to stay! If they had been closed, Kandace and I too would have been having a (not) romantic walk in the dark to the next town.

We had a salad of lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and beets. And a pasta dish with vegetables. And wine glasses that never seemed to empty. Everyone ate quietly at first but then began laughing and talking more. Fragments of all different languages were spoken across the table: English, French, Spanish and Italian. The main host (from Italy) was so animated while he told stories that it didn’t matter that we missed most of what he actually said as he switched back and forth between Italian and Spanish. Kandace and I were barrel laughing even without being able to understand, and before the night was over, he had Kandace (who is an artist) sketching his portrait, which he promptly made into his new profile picture. 

We finally excused ourselves from the party at about 10pm and went up to bed. Kandace fell asleep almost immediately, but my jet lag was catching up to me and I could feel the metal bed frame under the mattress. I kept getting up to go to the bathroom. After a while, I got up and pulled the mattress onto the floor. I was almost asleep when I started to hear noises next door. Our friends from lunch were not the only ones having a romantic night. I got up one last time to dig my earplugs out of my backpack and tried not to think about how tired I was going to feel the next day. 

The post Day 1 on The Camino: Logrono to Navarrete appeared first on Alison Chino.

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How You Know It’s Time to Go For A Long Walk in Spain 

The Camino de Santiago.

It’s one of my favorite trails in the world. Not necessarily because of its beauty (though it is beautiful), but (and I realize how cheesy this sounds) what I really love is the Spirit of the trail.

Here’s what I mean:

The Way draws people from all over the world and from all walks of life into this uniquely communal journey. From the moment you declare yourself a pilgrim on the road to Santiago, you are joining a tradition that is longer than you can imagine and opening yourself up to a world of encounters and experiences that could change your life. 

You walk roads that literally hundreds of thousands of people have walked before you, and somehow the collective prayers ands steps of all the previous pilgrims bring levity to the journey that I simply haven’t experienced on any other trail.

What happens when you join so many seekers on a long road to the same Cathedral and travel only as fast as you can walk is that you begin to tell each other your stories. In my short experience, everyone on the Camino is looking for something, even if that something is simply a warm meal or a hot shower. You’re collectively walking and searching, and no one truly knows what’s ahead. You’re all going to find out together. Throw in a little discomfort (bad weather + boots that aren’t waterproof) and suddenly you are commiserating or sharing food and the next thing you know, you’re planning to name your next child after your new best friend you just met. 

When you walk the Camino, even though you are doing a thing that’s been done many times before, every step is new. You’re bringing a new Camino into being by your presence on it. 

One day I would like to walk the entire Camino, but it takes about 40 days, and I’m not quite ready to be gone for that long. So I’m doing it in portions for now. In 2015, I walked the last 100 km with three girlfriends. I have longed to go back ever since, and for a number of different reasons, this fall was the right time.

My friend Kandace was living in France, and she was willing to meet me. The airplane tickets from Chicago were exceptionally reasonable. And the weather didn’t seem like it was too terrible just yet. 

So off I went. 

I’ve struggled all fall to make decisions. We moved (again), and we bought a new couch for the first time in over twenty years. I thought I was going to lose my mind trying to decide which one to buy. I’ve deliberated to the point of madness about whether I’m going to write in the morning and walk in the afternoon or if the reverse would be better. I stand bewildered in unfamiliar grocery aisles, because I can’t decide if I’m going to make pasta or soup for dinner.

But somehow, in the midst of indecision about almost everything, the decision to buy a ticket to Madrid and return to the Camino was effortless. Everything about leaving seemed to fall into place. 

I had most of the gear I needed lying around the house, and extras for Kandace since she didn’t have all her backpacking stuff in France. I boarded the plane without any of the anxiety I usually have about leaving town. It was almost uncanny how the journey felt foreordained. Dare I even say Blessed. 

It all came together so quickly that now it seems like sort of a dream. A little bit before leaving, I emailed Kandace and asked her what she thought about trying to raise money for some of the causes we both care about while we were walking. We got on the phone and threw together a plan for how to make more good come from something that already seemed so good. 

Kandace and I met in Madrid as soon as I walked off the plane. We grabbed coffee and hopped onto a bus that would take us to Logrono, the beginning of our way. Most everyone we would meet on the trail would have already been walking 154km (or more) before reaching Logrono, but we were just beginning. 

Camino Beginnings

We dropped off our packs and went for a walk around Logrono. We needed to purchase Pilgrims’ Credentials and get our bearings before heading out the next morning.

As soon as I spotted the first familiar seashell signpost marking out The Way, my heart swelled. Everything came flooding back to me about how much I love this path, not the least of which is how well marked it is (read: easy to follow). 

Once it got dark, we pub crawled through the tapa bars that lined the streets of Logrono, trying new foods and drinking Spanish beer and wine.

I think I started laughing that first night in Logrono and didn’t stop for the next eight days.

I fell asleep hard after all the travel and woke up ready to walk. 

Even though I had a big pack to strap on, somehow I felt lighter than I had in months.

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