Travel and Addiction

We spent three days in Germany visiting four friends from last year 's Camino - three from Germany and three from the US  ( including us). It is difficult to put this into words, but the prior years experience was so positive that we all want to continue or repeat caminos.

Today we are traveling by train as a result of the Air France strike and are going about 550  kilometers from Germany to Paris in under 4 hours just watching the distance fly by at times at 312km/hr (180mph) and will then fly onto  Biarritz - our total Camino will be about 35 days and 800 kilometers.  And this just highlites the journey and what it means .  We are anxious to begin the walk at our own pace.

Two anxious men.

The transfer from the train station to the airport in Paris went well with the help of a young Frenchman.  The economy flight from Paris to Biarritz was truly simple, not even free water, but that is what we signed up for.

The Camino spirit is working already.  We met one gentleman from Vancouver BC (Alan) who is retired and has done a lot of research on the Camino.  At the Biarritz airport Alan introduced us to a woman from Korea (Sooa) who needed some help getting started so she joined us in our rented shuttle and ended up staying at the same Albergue as we are.  It turned out that she has worked three summers at a camp on Lake Chelan. We shared a glass of wine with dinner  - our first "vino on the Camino" this trip. She brought some kim chee from Kores so Paul may try to trade some smoked salmon he brought,

Our Albergue host , Erik , is incredibly outgoing and gregarious.  He is full of helpful advice including a strong preference for walking shoes over my boots notwithstanding the fact that they worked fine last year.