Sansol to Logrono

We are amazed by what works for people.  We have seen walking shoes, sandals, hiking boots, running shoes, and trail running shoes.  We have seen people with hiking stick and no sticks.  We have seen people with packs of all sorts of sizes and weight and we have seen people paying to ship their gear ahead to the next town.

Eva and Krystal are two friends we got to know better last evening.  Eva is our intelligent German friend and Krystal we just met is working for Panera in Boston, originally from Detroit.  We are inspired by Krystals efforts to make her own way on the camino even though she parted ways from her main group of friends she planned the camino with.   Krystal, Carson and I found it fun exchanging stories about how we met our significant others and she tells a very cute one about her boyfriend David.

Our walk was nice today.  We saw many incredibly beautiful views through hills of grapes and wheat and found the wind turbines of the camino norte.  I love the Spanish countryside!!!!!!

We stopped in a bigger town along the way called Viana.  It was a superb stop for seeing the hustle of a Thursday within a town before siesta.  The markets were open for us to get aceitunas and manzanas.  We decided to let our feet rest which was about an hour of relaxing the body.  We found it also a spot where we ran into friends Guido and Ryan who were posted at the cafe waiting for the arrival of their friends from further back on the way.   We are impressed with the group of 3 who find ways to connect, but are each experiencing a different camino.  Josh who is rediscovering himself after a break up and has struggled to walk since day 1 and has now a hurt ankle and broken toe.  Allie who has pushed through carrying her laptop computer has hurt ankles and aching feet.   We havent seen her In a day or so, but she is making her way with an amazing attitude.  Ryan, is often running though the camino usually to touch base with the others and has a giant pack.  He also has been picking up a rock each day to represent his life burdens and he will release them at the high point on the camino.  He has left his old life in the past and is fully living the camino using only forward motion.

As we walked our way into Logrono, we decided the church albergue with a communal dinner was the way to go.  Funny thing is we were nervous about it because when we arrived, it seemed full or closed.  We had knocked on the door and it was locked up.  We saw a way to ring the doorbell for peregrinos.   We were let in immediately and they had open beds and right away we saw our teacher friend Susanne. It is a great feeling to see friends along the way.  This albergue was a donation albergue and included mass, a blessing for pilgrims, the communal dinner and breakfast.  We got cleaned up after our walk and took an hour to grab a glass of cold beverages and a tapa on Laurel street, recommended by the group of 4 Spanish ladies we kept seeing the last few days.  Most bars weren't open until later but we found one on the corner to relax at for a bit.

It was really fun and it felt nice to help with the dinner preparation.   Carson cut watermelons and I helped with salads.  We were prepping for 35 people to eat together.   After meal prep we went to Spanish Catholic mass.  Carson and I both volunteered to read at mass and in English along with a bunch of other readers in different languages.   It was tough to follow the mass not being Catholic and trying to understand the priests speaking.  The church is absolutely beautiful.   It has shells on the altar and they did a special prayer for the pilgrims at the end of the mass.

We went back to the albergue for dinner.  It was salad bread and a delicious stew with garbanzo beans.  Hit the spot.  After dinner, there was an invitation to be part of a special private pilgrims blessing back at the church where they read in multi languages and sang to us.  We also got our passport stamped at this time.  It was nearly 10pm by this time and we still had to go back and do dishes from dinner.  That is late for a camino walker...

We feel very lucky to have been part of this amazing experience at the church of Santiago albergue.  The food, bed and commraderie we were part of made us feel very prepared mentally and physically for our hardest day to come on the camino the following day. We will definitely do this again.