We took an extra day of rest. Bilbao is a fun city with different districts that have distinct personalities, pretty churches, and the Guggenheim Museum. We had to restock some provisions and found everything we needed while wandering around the city. Met and talked with some really nice folks in and around town.
We combined two days into one so we could get to Bilbao sooner. On our longest walk yet (8.5h/48,512 steps/30.4KM) from Gernika to Lezama and then into Bilboa. Our legs and feet are beginning to rebel, so we’ll spend an extra day in the big city of Bilbao for some recovery time. That little graphic…
There is beauty everywhere. I love coming up on these houses and very small communities, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and finding all the beautiful flowers and generational homes. A small church (or chapel, really) had this beautiful cross at the front door and then twelve crosses spaced down the very long winding road…
We hiked uphill for two hours to start our day. When we got to the little town (1 church and 2 buildings) of Olatz, we approached a fork in the road, and a dog was coming straight toward us. (Dogs have not been overly friendly along the way. Barb has tried to pet many but…
Another challenging but beautiful hike today. The first hour was a flat, coastal walk, but from there it was a lot of steep ups and downs -often at a 70-degree ascent and descent. We’re getting a workout! These Spanish towns nestled in the valleys have so much personality, and you can feel the sense of…
Walking around San Sabastian all day without our backpacks was wonderful! Europeans eat dinner around 8 pm. Anyone who knows us, knows that we are not going to do that, especially after a long day of hiking! Today we had a nice lunch and walked around town. On top of the hill in Old Town…
Eight hours hiking today. More perfect weather! It was hard but beautiful. We’ve taken some great pictures, and they still don’t do it justice. Spain is gorgeous. At times we walked with an expatriate couple from Texas now living in Mexico, four Jesuit seminarians from Madrid, a nice woman from Colorado, horses, and a wild…
Getting married, adopting Channing, taking more than 23 pounds out of our backpacks and taking a bus from Pamplona to Hondarribia/Irun all will go down as best decisions we ever made in our lives! Our time on the Camino Frances was fun and exhausting. We met nice people from Australia, Taiwan, Minnesota, Baltimore, Cologne, and…
Stage 3. Zubiri to Pamplona Less climbing today, ending at the Cathedral in Pamplona. It felt weird coming into civilization. We ate some good pintxos, checked out the Cathedral, and did laundry the easy way. The most exciting thing to happen today was our buying a suitcase and starting to fill it with extra baggage…