Having hiked 17 miles of the trail we came to a rough realization: there were simply too many people on the trail! When we arrived at our destination (a very small town) we found the albergue and all private hostels completely booked (and by 5PM!). We were not alone. We were wandering around with a group of 6 other pilgrims. All exhausted and not able to continue. We finally found a little hidden Cafe/Hotel/Shop that had two rooms and gave them over to the most physically and emotionally exhausted members of our group. That left the two of us and our new BFFs (best friends forever) Spencer and Kristy. After a failed attempt to get a pension owner to let us sleep on his lawn, we asked him to call us a taxi and take to Pamplona. He happened to also own a pension in Pamplona and as we didn't want to have to wander around and find a place, we went right there and checked in. And by "right there" I mean we sat on his porch for nearly an hour waiting for the taxi and Spencer managed to help navigate a phone conversation about a hat with an English speaker (who could speak no Spanish) and the Pension owner (who could speak no English). Very fun. During this time, we got to know Kristy and Spencer better and by the time we go to Pamplona we were committed.
Being in Pamplona we decided to take a day off and tour around. We hung out the next day with Kristy and Spencer, got a sim card for the phone, ate breakfast in the Art Deco cafe Iruna and then bought a delicious picnic lunch and lots of wine and spent the rest of the day lounging around. At some point, we ended up back at the pension where we met a lovely Swedish couple and then we all drank more wine, wandered next door and had dinner together. Overall, an excellent time!
The next morning, Kristy and Spencer walked on but we decided that as my birthday was coming up, we might as well stick around and tour and celebrate and drink wine in Hemingway's favorite bar and make sure to experience Pintxos (Basque for tapas) in as many bars as humanly possible. Success! We went out for a real dinner on the night of my Birthday at this place, Baserri, that has won (according to the lonely planet) loads of awards. The food was good, albeit a bit strange. I got duck-which was amazing, but it came with a scoop of green apple sorbet on top of apple compote and with homemade potato chips on the side. The presentation was lovely and once I got past the strangeness of it, the flavors melded perfectly. But it was a bit strange.
Right. So that was Pamplona. We walked the route of the "running of the bulls", we were lucky enough to be in town for the "medieval festival", and we toured the city via the ancient stone walls that still surround it. Over all, pretty awesome stop and I'm glad we decided to stick to Pamplona instead of bouncing around to other cities.
So, the Camino. The lazy approach to the Camino. We don't have enough time to walk the entire thing so we are skipping ahead to the town of Leon and will walk from there. Technically you only need to do the last 100km to get the certificate. Not that it really matters to us. But from Leon it's still another 336.1km (208.9 miles). We've got 13 days. Perfect! I am a bit worried about the sleeping situation. There are so many people walking that we imagine it will happen again, but we'll try to figure out a plan where we won't be so dead by the time we get to a hostel so that we can walk on if necessary.
Life is so good!
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