You would think that with our experience, getting ready for a Camino would be a cinch. It’s not. In fact it makes me even lazier.  Melanie was better prepared than I was, thankfully.  I started packing about 10 hours before the flight departed.  I figured that would be plenty of time but as I pulled out my poncho, I saw that the Singapore weather had destroyed it.  I forgot to look for the guide book. I couldn’t find the shirt I wanted to walk in. I discovered we didn’t have the rubber tips for our new walking sticks. I didn’t check the weather so I left the better coat behind.  All is okay though, we know we can deal with this stuff.

We left our house for the airport in Singapore at 8:00pm on Tuesday. 26 hours later, we arrived at our hotel in Pamplona.   That journey involved a flight to Munich, a confusing connection there to the next flight to Bilbao, a rush to a bus directly from the airport to San Sebastián, then another bus to central Pamplona, finally a 30 minute walk to our hotel. The only part of that journey which surprised us was the stop in Munich. We weren’t sure if we needed to collect our bags and clear customs there (we didn’t). Getting off the plane wasn’t what we are used to in the US or Singapore. There were two directions other travelers were going to – either towards the baggage claim and airport exit or directly towards their next boarding gate. Where was Immigration??  As it turned out, we arrived in terminal C and walked all the way to terminal G. Only then we had to show our passports and explain why we were in the EU.  That was odd but I guess they have their reasons. It did mean a shorter queue at immigration though. 

Once we got to our hotel, we fought off the urge to sleep. We had a nice Basque dinner, then organized what we did bring with us and took an inventory of things we forgot so that on Thursday (today) we could go shopping.  Our sleep was pretty awful in the end. We both kept waking up every hour or two. The best sleep we had was from 6:00am to 8:15am but that was a problem since we planned to wake up at 7:00am to get us in a rhythm. 

We made the nice owner at Caminoteca (a hiking outfitters) very happy this morning.  Two backpacker’s raincoats, a windbreaker, a merino shirt, four walking stick tips, a guide book, a small torch and batteries, a collapsable water bottle, and a pair of compression socks later, we had already done our Christmas shopping and it’s still September!

Tonight, we are hoping for a better sleep.  Our plan is just to do an easy 14km day tomorrow and Saturday but that is a plan written in sand right at the ocean’s edge. We will see how things go.