Pictures to go with Yesterday´s Post and Today

This is the bridge from Puente La Reina.

This is a picture of our Irish friend, Aiden, who is studying theology to become a priest. We passed through a town that has a free wine fountain. We agreed that this would be an epic failure and bum central in Ireland and USA.

This is the toy I got (we found real kinder eggs today with the chocolate shell).

The tape is to prevent blisters from my shoes. But I switched to flip-flops. Much more comfortable ... or less uncomfortable anyway.

Today:

No pictures. My mom said she was expecting that we would take the bus on Sundays since we´re a little short on time to make the whole Camino. Since we didn´t realize this was an expectation, we took the bus today. We walked from Viana to Logroño (about 10 km) then took the bus to Burgos. Its quite a trip. 2 hours on the bus. But my foot is still in rough shape. We decided to skip the bike concept. I´ll just continue to take it easy until Ian gets here with shoes. Everytime I go into a zapateria (shoe store) and ask if they have my size 15 or 49.5 in Europe) they just laugh at me. So I´m gonna rock the flippie floppies for about 10 more days. Its not that bad except that its cold. Oh well. I think taking a bus is way more complicated than walking ... easier on the feet, but more complicated. we had to walk across Logroño (30 min) for their bus station. And then the bus stopped somewhere in Burgos, it didn´t look like a bus station, but we didn´t want to overshoot, so we just got off and started walking in the direction we figured we should. Then I asked someone for directions. We were headed the right way. But his directions weren´t clear, so we asked a couple more people and made our way and found some of the Camino markers. That was a very nice sign.

But we had to walk for about 1 hr 15 min from the bus till we found a hostel. And it's kind of wierd. Its a little off the Camino. Its in Burgos. Its free. But it locks all the time and you have to ring the grumpy hostel (or should I say hostile) guy to let us back in. Because I didn´t want to bother or see him again, Noah stayed while I looked for food so he could let me in. And there is no kitchen here. But I found some cold cuts and bread (and Kinder huevos!) and stuff for breakfast too. AND I found sliced cheese! It feels like I haven´t had cheese in forever (sorry Mary). So I´m pretty excited about that. But since the place locks and it's cold, Noah and I are going to lay low for the afternoon/evening.

Last night we had sausage, mushrooms, bell pepper, corn, tomato, and beans. The French people were very surprised that Americans knew about the Camino and that we could cook. They were just boiling eggs. We had a good meal last night.

We had some good maps for Navara (a state in Spain?) but we just left Navara today, so now our maps are no good. I´m hoping there is something in the hostel we can use. I saw a little pamphlet with the 5 things everyone should know and one of them is to carefully plan your route and where you will be each day ... I think that's dumb on this kind of trip. We just go until we are hungry and our body hurts. Then we get lunch and then we feel better enough to go to the next town. It's just too bad when the next town is way farther than the sign says!

I think that's it ... Oh, and I added a new profile picture on facebook special for a friend who likes to make fun of me for all my shirtless profile pictures. I have not been walking around without a shirt, I just took it off for the picture. But he likes to call me the ¨shirtless wonder¨so I decided to take the title international!

I´m out!

I Hope the Camino Sign-Maker Got Fired!

Yesterday we decided to push past Estella because 1) we got there around 11 which is way too early to stop, and 2) everyone wants to stop at the big towns. So we pushed a little past. We made it to Villamayor de Monjardin (Upper Village of Mountain Garden?). They had no phone or internet! That put the big town of today way too close as well (Los Arcos). It is ironic that we passed through Los Arcos today, because my feet finally gave in. I think there is something wrong with the arch in my left shoe. I think it's too high or something. It has been bothering me a lot. Today was too much. So I put on my flip flops for what turned into the last about 15 km! I wouldn´t say it's better, but definitely less bad on the feet. We are in Viana tonight and there is a sports store that opens at about 5. I don´t know what happened to the people that colonized America, but they should not have abandoned the siesta culture of Europe. Anyway, we passed through a town that had a sign that said 3km to the next one ... then we saw another one a few km later that said 8. I was pretty mad which is why I´m encouraging firing this camino sign guy. I know no one is perfect, but that was pretty messed up.

Mom - if we can´t find me some shoes, we are going to call you about possibly getting bikes ... I´ll call you, please hear me out. (Love you)

For some reason my camera isn´t hooking up to this computer, so no pictures today. But I´ll go through them to recap some of the past 2 days:

We watched the game 2 nights ago, I was glad to just not lose. I also ordered a Budweiser (1 for a 90 minute game, mom) which turned out to be a flop as it was recommended to drink by 19 May. I guess the Spaniards aren´t too enamored by our beer, so it gets old.

There are huge slugs that are really dark colored. They look big enough to be cat poop. We´ve even seen small dog poop far away and guessed it was a slug.

We got Kinder Eggs. I´ve been calling them Kinder Huevos. But they are different from when we had them in Italy. Its a plastic egg shell, one half has chocolate in it and a small spoon (it's very soft chocolate) the other half has a prize. Mine was actually a little scallop-looking shell that has a button to push and a snake pops out.

We stopped in Bodegas Irache where they have a free wine fountain! I´m no wine expert, but it tasted pretty good to me, and the price was right.

Above the place we stayed last night was a castle that I was told dates back to the Roman days and has been used through the Medieval days. The bar in town had the key and you could walk up the mountain to check it out. We passed. We did about 29 km yesterday (and today, accidentally).

The hostel was free and provided by the church. We left a donation for the average cost of one anyway. It was cool, it was basically just a huge horse shoe-shaped bench with mattresses on it. If I have a dozen kids They get one big room and that´s how the sleeping arrangement is going to be.

That's all I have for now.

Hasta Luego!