Day of rest and reflection…John and Linda want to explore Pamplona today, and I want a day to myself. I feel a strong desire to catch up on writing and posting my blog and reflecting on what I’ve learned so far.
Yesterday John’s daughter sent him a text with a lovely message that kept me going when things got tough “push through the pain dad, pain is fleeting, glory lasts forever”

Life on the Camino sometimes feels like 52 card pickup… Every single routine, habit, way of doing your life has to change. From thinking I have to have a cup of coffee before I start my day…. I need more than two sets of clothes… I don’t eat white bread…I could never sleep on a cold concrete floor for an entire night…I realized that in the comfortable confines of the life I have created for myself, I feel in control… There! I said it…. haha. But when I step outside those confines I lose control and have to surrender to circumstances.

My life here seems to be a surreal study in extremes… 2 nights ago I slept on a concrete floor in a sleeping bag… This evening, we ate at a five star restaurant. John and Linda asked the cab driver today to recommend a nice restaurant, and he sends us to one of the best in town… Had I known, I would have cleaned the mud off my boots.

It seems that the extremes may be my higher self trying to shake things up a little, loosen up all the ways I’m stuck…not sure where this is going, guess we’ll all have to stay tuned.

On the mundane level I catch up on my wash, which means, I hand wash everything in the bathroom sink of the hotel room and hang it around the bathroom. I go for a lovely walk into town in search of a bank, a pharmacia and a bakery for more of that delectable, naughty carbohydrate that shall remain unnamed. I have eaten more bread in the last week than I have had in probably three months… ‘when in Rome do as the Romans’ as my mother always used to say.

One thing I found adorable, is that everywhere I went I had to ask directions for the next place I wanted to find, each time the person would escort me outside the door of their store and point in the direction they wanted me to go, rattle off something in rapid Spanish, and I would somehow understand the universal language of hands waving and fingers pointing.