León

The Parador of León has 300 guest rooms, several banquet rooms, many sitting areas, an attached chapel, a library, a restaurant, a cafe bar, an interior cloister and several stone staircases, not to mention tapestries, carved statues and paintings of important nobles. It started out as a hostal - hospital in the 12th century for pilgrims walking the Camino, then later was given over to the Knights of Santiago. It has a Renaissance facade now  because it was reconstructed in the 16th century. The Camino passes right by the front of this. We feel pretty good starting out our walk from a hospital.... 

 

Getting started

Day One

On the one hand:  Burgi's luggage stuck in Atlanta (probably the hair mousse that looks like a pipe bomb), power outage in the hotel so no electricity and no elevator from our room on the 24th floor, forgot the adaptor plugs, 35Euro pizza in hotel sports bar, 93 degree heat.

On the other hand: first class airplane ride, thanks to John, a delightful young man at the Delta counter who arranged for luggage to be sent, Joyce has a year's supply of Clif bars in HER luggage, an astoundingly modern hotel that turns out to be five star with very accommodating staff, bought the last two train tickets to Leon from an employee at the train station who speaks Spanish, English AND French and was more than happy to explain things to us, and we have not been robbed, gotten lost or fallen... 

Thoughts About the Camino

Joyce is reading a book called "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years or, what I learned while editing my life". It's about how you make your life meaningful.  We've been wanting to walk the Camino for years and training for it, etc etc, practically ad nauseum. And we've run into soooo many people that either have walked, will walk, or would like to walk the Camino. Kind of like making your life meaningful, and at the least making lots of stories, and at the least making the Camino an opportunity for reflection and thinking about your life. Fernando wants us not to be tourists. I think people may start out as tourists, but they all end up making stories and being pilgrims in their own way

So this will be the story of our Camino. And we already have lots of experiences to turn into stories.