St. Jean Pied de Port

September 3, 2018

We spent last night in Bilbao with Enrique ‘s cousin. Took the bus early this morning to St.Jean Pied de Port in France, the start of Camino de Santiago. Five hundred miles of walking across Spain, from the Pyrenees to Santiago, in the western part of Spain. Our goal is to complete the trek in 35 days, hiking about 15 miles a day. Hope I’m up for this challenge.

We arrived in St.Jean Pied de Port with a lot of other “pilgrims.” We all headed to the official Camino office to register and receive our passports, which will allow us to stay in albergues along the way. The albergues are like hostels in America, with bunk beds in dorm rooms. They are very inexpensive. Our first albergue here in St. Jean is clean and quiet. Enrique and I scored bottom bunks (highly sought after) next to each other. Yumi, from Japan, is in the bunk above me. Thomas, from France, is in the bunk above Enrique. Thomas started hiking from Belgium in the middle of July, and is planning on hiking the Camino and beyond. It seems like this becomes a way of life for some people!

We set out early tomorrow morning for stage one, the hardest of the entire trip, since we’ll be hiking over the Pyrenees.