We completed 2 weeks of walking with one rest day in Pamplona. In that two weeks we traveled from St Jean Pied De Port to Belardo, a total of approximately 240 km (150 miles).. We have seen some beautiful country side of Spain and couple of laerger cities (Pamplona and Logrono). We are in love with Spain. The country side is beautiful and peaceful. The larger cities are exotic and vibrant with life especially after Siesta time.

While the scenery is beautiful, and this journey has been an adventure of a life time, what you don’t get to see is all the blisters, backaches, bug bites and exhaustion. None of us have been immune to any of this, yet none of us is deterred and are fully committed to the journey (yes we need our break day to store up some energy for the next stages).

We have 2 days of long stretches to complete our next stage by getting in to Burgos, but I am getting ahead of myself.

So let’s talk about a day in a village. It was nice to have a private room where the noise was minimized. We still heard the 6 am church bell. We could still hear the pilgrims filling out the street and their click click of the staff as they went on the journey, while we lay in bed and enjoyed our precious sleep.

Here is the view from our alberege at 8 in the morning (no sunrise pictures today).

At 9, we went to the restaurant and had our usual (cafe con lechwe, cafe Americana, or orange juice – you can guess who had what) along with chocolate croissant, tortilla de patata (our savior most morning – this is Spanish omelet and something we all can eat – as most other choices are ham) , and pastries. After that some shopping for few necessities. Center of all of this is typically a plaza where you sit and watch the life unfold.

As we sat we saw this man saying hello to every one by name sitting and talking and singing his best imitation of Pavarati. Pretty soon he was serenading Sitara and us and showing his toe injury caused by a bull in Pamplona.

From there we decided to walk to the river and soak our feet in the cold water (very therapeutic as cold water seems to reduce inflammation and freshens the leg).

We ran into the boy named Arun who had brought his two pet turtles to the river with his dad.

As we came back, our friend was making the round around the town and happen to be passing by the alberge. He entertained us with couple of more songs from his child hood days. Daniel is a very good singer and was willing to record his singing and the watching it as we replayed it for him (unfortunately I can’t upload the movie but here are some shots).

We enjoyed our first sit down lunch of the trip. We started our lunch at 1 and by the time we finished it was little past 3. Since we bought our grocery this morning, we plan to cook our dinner tonight (we did that last night also). Tomorrow will be an early morning start again as we plan to cover 24 km.