The good news is that we arrived in Pamplona.  We will start walking tomorrow with two very short days before getting into the rhythm of the Camino with 20-25km days and later longer ones. We need these first two short days to get over jet lag as well as getting used to carrying all our gear again.  We will see how that goes.

Getting here provided a few surprises.  First, I found that I got scammed  a bit when when I had bought the flight tickets. I knew Lufthansa had the best connections to get us from Singapore to Bilbao so when I googled “Lufthansa” last month, I ended up carelessly clicking on the top result but that was one of these on-line travel agents that pay a lot of money to be the top search result.  They sold me tickets that probably were overpriced (it’s impossible to check this late) but the worst part was the surprise I got when I went to check in on-line early on the departure date.  The tickets did not include any luggage allowance. Melanie was going to carry her bag on but I was checking mine in with the the things we have to check in like hiking poles, nail clippers, Swiss Army knife, and all the liquids (hand wash laundry detergent, sunscreen, etc).  At least that was the plan.  Lufthansa was going to charge me $323 to add the bag so we scrambled to repack and then crossed our fingers.  We could buy the liquids and metal stuff in Pamplona but our trekking poles are very good and too expensive to replace in Europe and we would have the same problem coming home next month.  Fortunately, they let us carry on our sticks. Now, we just have to get them back to Singapore. 

Other than that, the trip here was pretty uneventful. We got some sleep on the 13 hour overnight flight to Frankfurt. Once there, we asked if we could catch an earlier flight to Bilbao. Those great tickets I bought had an eight hour layover there. We managed to change our flights to only a four hour layover but it cost us the same price as adding a last minute piece of luggage. The funny thing was that the flight we changed to was completely full and at the gate they said I had to check in my luggage as there was no room to carry it on. At least it was free.

In Bilbao, our prior experience had taught us how to get the bus from the airport to the city efficiently. That experience helped get us quickly to town and we spent the night there at a hotel just above the bus depot. We had also bought our bus tickets to Pamplona for a 7:00am departure this morning.

That two hour bus ride went quickly compared to the flights and after sunrise at 7:48am, we even got to enjoy the lovely early morning views of the countryside and distant mountains.   We could not check into our room until 1:00pm but that was fine with us.  We went first to the cathedral to get the credentials we need to walk the Camino.  As mass had just begun before we got there, we joined the four priests,two octogenarian alter boys and six other mass goers for an early blessing of the Camino. Then we when to our favorite store, Caminoteca, a place that sells pretty much everything a pilgrim could need.  We still had a few pieces of gear that needed replacement and they took care of everything in addition to fine tuning the way our backpacks were adjusted for the best fit. After a little walk around the old town and a light lunch in a bar, we then got into our reserved room, one floor above the bar we had lunch in.  We had already walked enough. 

The street where we are staying is a very thin road with many bars, restaurants, cafes and at least one ice cream parlor. I’m in heaven and the room seems well soundproofed so we should get a good night’s rest.

Edited to add – after walking around for an hour, we found a place with a pilgrim menu for dinner. That delay mostly occurred because we started looking at 6:00pm. No kitchen opens for dinner at least until 7:00am. More interesting than the meal though was bumping into a large gathering of people while we were still looking for place to eat.  Several hundred meters away, we could hear a loud din.  We could not make out the sound but as we approached, we wandered if someone was playing in public a movie of the running of the bulls. As we got closer though, it sounded more like the slaughter of the bulls. It sounded more like crying animals. It turned out to be a demonstration by a group child carers from the state run nurseries who were protesting that their nurseries were too small for the number of children. To get attention, they were blaring at full volume the nonstop sound of dozens of babies crying together, apparently recorded right after they all received their measles vaccine shot.   They got our attention, for sure.