OK, LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN

Happy New Year Everyone.  A new year and a fresh start, we are going to walk our Camino this time for sure.  After last years disappointment, having to cancel due to illness, we are in the planning and training stage of our Camino.  Thanks to trip insurance, we did not loose any money because of our cancellation last year.  A pretty painless process with the insurance company, and we had a check within a month.  British Air was a little more difficult in refunding the taxes on our tickets. They finally refunded the taxes, but it took a while.  Every time I spoke to someone is was a different story.  They provided me an address in New York to send them stuff and the address didn't exist.  They weren't refusing, just giving me the runaround.  Finally I got the refund in the form of a credit on my credit card, but their phone customer service sucks.

So, why you ask is there a picture of a British Air airplane?  Well, they are very convenient to get to Europe from San Diego with a daily direct flight to London.  So after watching the airfare stay at the same price for a while, I figured I'd wait a little longer for it to drop.  It went up, a lot.  But we pulled the trigger anyway and made the commitment.  We are scheduled to leave here on April 23rd and return on June 19th.  That gives us a total of 57 days, plenty of time to walk the Camino and have some time left over to explore Portugal.  There are many routes to choose from but we will be doing the French route, starting in Saint Jean Pied de Port and walking the 500 miles or so to Santiago de Compostela.  The plan is to continue on after Santiago to Finisterre, the End of the Earth.  As many of you readers know, I walked the French route in 2015, so together Cathie and I will be retracing those steps.  If you're new to the blog you can read about that journey on the Walking My Camino blog.

OUR ROUTE

We purchased everything we needed last year and with the exception of some new pants, we are good to go.  New pants because we have both lost some weight.  I had a little health issue with some A-fib which was discovered when I started a diet program with my HMO.  It took about six months, but the heart issue is in the past and all is well.  As for the diet, I lost about 50 pounds. Cathie decided to join in and lost 40.  I still have about 10 pounds to go, so new pants for both of us are in the cards.

There are many opinions, some of them strong, as to what constitutes a pilgrimage and being a true pilgrim.  Some believe that you must walk and stay in albergues (hostels) along the way. To them, this is the only way to be a true pilgrim. Others may ride a bicycle to Santiago or ever take a bus part of the way.  I don't think it matters as it is your own pilgrimage to do as you wish and feel comfortable with.  When I walked last time, I stayed in albergues some of the time, but for the most part I had a private room.  Albergues are inexpensive, about $7 to $12 a night, but sleeping in a room with 10 to 50 people was not a pleasant experience for me.  People snore, some quite loudly and I want my sleep.  If I get really tired, when I do finally sleep, I snore, loudly.  Some people fart, and sometimes I do. As for me I prefer to fart in a private room.  As the title says, Walking OUR Camino.  We will do it our way and not worry about other peoples opinions.  We will stay mostly private rooms in small hotels, pensions and B&B's with an occasional albergue thrown in.

So the plan goes something like this:  Fly to Madrid via London.  In Madrid we will spend two nights at Artistic B&B, a place we stayed in 2015.  Then we take the train to Pamplona where Istavan from  Pension Corazon Puro will met us and take us to his pension for the night.  There he and his wife Barbara will feed us dinner, breakfast the next morning and give us a ride to Saint Jean Pied de Port.  After checking in at the Pilgrims Office we start, heading up into the Pyrenees.  I have been making some reservations ahead of time, just to take the guess work out of the equation.  So there it is.  Put your e-mail address up there to the right for timely notifications of future posts.  Ask questions as we  go along and we will do our best to answer them.  Comments too are always appreciated.  Follow us and enjoy the experience vicariously. Hopefully we will inspire some of you to someday walk your own Camino.

Let the training begin.