Sunday, July 15, 2018

BEGINNING OUR CAMINO

Its July 14th and its Bastille Day in France.  We are sitting on an outdoor patio on the edge of forever in the French pyrenees mountains.  There is a large group of French people celebrating the National Holiday.  Singing national songs and drinking together.

I flew to Madrid from Paris Friday afternoon and waited eight hours for my daughter Jennifer to arrive.   She left California Thursday evening.  Eight hour layover in Gatwick airport in London gave her time to catch the train into London to see the outside of Buckingham Palace and several other notable famous places before going back for her plane to Madrid.  OOPS..
The flight was delayed. Her flight was over an hour late
Arrived at 22 minutes after midnight.  Sidenote: its thundering overhead.  Our bus to Pamploma that we'd reserved months ago was due at 1:15 am.  No refund.  She ended up getting a taxi to take her from terminal one to four where the bus was.  We made the bus with 5 minutes to spare.  Very exciting.  Bus arrived in Pamploma at 7 am.  Sleeping bodies all over dressed in white with red scarfs... sleeping on concrete floors,
No blankets, most wrapped in their girl friends arms after celebrating  the last days of "running of the bulls".... they say there were a million people there celebrating.  We walked for half an hour and hired a taxi for over an hours ride through the mountains  to France and the village of St Jaun PDP.   The beginning of the Camino Frances.  We walked for 4 hours up the mountains to Orisson, our first albergue on our journey.  We enjoyed a community dinner with 30 plus people from all over the world: south Korea, ItaLy, Austrilia, Canada,  America and French.  Tomorrow we continue to walk and will be in Spain  before our day is done.  Buen Camino

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