Madrid to Burgos

We land in Madrid, make our way through customs (which is super easy), retrieve our trekking poles from baggage claim, and get a city bus to the Avenida de Americas bus station. We try to get the ticket machine to work, but it does not seem to like our credit card. Crap...that means I have to speak Spanish now. I get us our tickets with minimal trouble and we wait. We board the bus to Burgos and it is very nice. I have never ridden a Greyhound Bus, but I always get the impression that they are dirty and smelly and not nice. This bus is very nice and clean and new and does not smell at all. It is a 2 hour and 45 minute ride to Burgos. I try to stay awake and see the scenery, but end up dozing some. Chris seems to be out like a light.

We make it to Burgos and start walking towards the cathedral. We know that our alburgue (pilgrim dormitory) is near there and that there will be cafes and whatnot around as well. We decide on a bar (which is sort of a generic term for a small restaurant, its not really quite like a "bar" here in the states) and order our first Spanish food. We order a jamon serrano bocadillo, a tortilla espanola bocadillo and two cervezas for lunch. A bocadillo is the sandwich that is available everywhere in Spain. It is a 6-8 inch long piece of baguette split with a filling. The most common ones are jamon serrano (a dried, cured, ham. They cure a whole leg of a pig and at some places you can watch them cut your thin slices right off the leg), queso (cheese), chorizo (a dry cured sausage) or tortilla espanola (also known as tortilla de patatas. basically a potato and onion omelet). They slap some slices of whatever you order on the bread and voila: a bocadillo. No condiments, no heating, just slap it on a plate.

We then toured the Burgos cathedral which required payment to enter. Chris says that it is the most ornate church he has ever seen. For more information here is what wikipedia says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgos_Cathedral
We also got our first sello here. Sello means "stamp" in Spanish. In order to stay at the alburgues and to get our certificate at the end, we have a "pilgrim passport" that we get stamped at various places that we visit along the way. Churches, bars, alburgues, town halls, random people, etc. have stamps that you can get in your passport to prove you have been traveling along the camino.

We find our alburgue for the night and muddle through some very poor Spanish speaking and listening skills and get beds. It is a very large alburgue, but seems clean and ok. We spread out our sleeping bags to claim our beds, drop off our packs and head back out to look around the city some more. There is a castle on a hill nearby, so we hike up to the top of the hill to see it. It is surrounded by a park and there is a cool looking bar in the park, but we don't stop to hang out.

We walk around the rest of the city in search of dinner and fruit. We find a fruiteria (a fruit store) and buy apples and the most awesomest grapes I have ever eaten in my life. We find a restaurant with a pilgrim dinner and it is pretty good too. We wander the streets some more and marvel at all of the people out and about. Young, old, families, teens, just everyone is out walking, shopping, and hanging out.
We then head back to the alburgue to get clean and get ready to commence our walking in the morning.

And we're off!

Dad drops us off at the airport. We get checked in and wait for the plane. I swear there used to be a Krispy Kreme at the CLT airport, but it seems to not be there anymore. :(

We board the plane and end up sitting on it for an hour past take off. Apparently the plane is "broken" and they are working on "fixing" it. It is so comforting to know that the metal tube that will soon be hurtling through the air at several hundred miles per hour is currently broken and will not be tested before it takes off with you inside. Sigh...

We get to New York... I know we are there because I can see the buildings and we begin circling. The weather is perfect, WTF? After a couple of circles the pilot comes on the intercom and informs us that Obama is flying out of JFK right now and that they have shut down the airspace while they load and take off. Thanks Obama!

We finally land and proceed to eating some Chili's in the JFK airport. In New York it is apparently mandatory that they put the calories of each menu item on the menu. It sure did make me think about what I was ordering. We decided to split a cheeseburger and fries for only like 600 calories each. We finish up and wonder around the airport. I'm waiting on Chris to use the bathroom and I see this guy dressed as I would call "ghettolicious" walking around with two cops and then two more cops following and pointing. I'm thinking to myself "Why?" Chris finishes with the bathroom and we start walking back towards our gate. In the line at the Sbarro, the cops are now taking pictures with this guy. WTF? It then dawns on me...

This guy is Flava Flav. He has the big clock and everything around his neck. Chris wants to go up and ask him to take a picture, but I tell him to let Flava Flav get his pizza in peace.

We load up on the plane and off we go. They serve us dinner on the plane and it is actually a very yummy manicotti and salad and cheese and crackers and dessert. And there is free beer and wine!!!!! Woo hoo!!! I watch Adventureland and The Proposal and try to sleep but it is impossible.

What is the Camino de Santiago?

The Camino de Santiago is a collection of medieval pilgrimage routes to the Cathedral of St. James in Santiago de Compostela.  The most popular route is the Camino Frances which begins in France and traverses Northern Spain to end in Santiago de Compostela.  A fairly complete description is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_of_St._James

We had actually wanted to hike the West Highland Way in Scotland, but the tickets to Scotland were quite expensive and the exchange rate with the pound was really awful as well.  Delta ended up having a once in a lifetime sale and we discovered we could get round trip tickets to Madrid for $210 each.  That along with me being laid off and having more time than I will ever have again until I retire, sealed the deal for us taking an almost 3 week trip to Spain.  We knew that it would not be enough time to hike the entire route, so we decided to start in Burgos, with an ambitious goal of averaging 35 km per day. 

Once we purchased our tickets.  We requested our "Credencial del Peregrino" from the American Pilgrims on the Camino.  This document would grant us access to the "alburgues", or pilgrim hostels, along the route.  The alburgues are accomidations that only pilgrims can stay in.  They are usually bunkhouse style and cost 3-10 Euros a night per person.  The credencial also serves as a record of places that you visit.  You can get "sellos" (stamps) from alburgues, bars, churches, town halls, random citizens, etc. and it serves as proof of your travels.

Since we were walking and needed to carry everything at all times, we packed light.  Only 1 change of clothes, our fleece sleeping bags, rain gear, and only the bare essentials went into our packs.  The base weight of our packs (without any water or food) was about 13 lbs. for Chris and about 14 lbs. for Rachel.

The only thing that I can equate the camino to in the U.S. is the Appalachain Trail.  But the camino is not wilderness hiking like the Appalachian Trail, and it is much, much, much more popular than the AT.  We went through towns on average of every 5 to 10 km.  We stayed in the alburgues and "hostals" (cheap hotels) along the way.  We ate in restaraunts and bought snacks from grocery stores.  The Camino is extremely popular in Europe, but apparantly not that many Americans do it.  Other pilgrims often commented that we were the first Americans that they had met on the camino.

This blog is a typed up version of the journal we kept while hiking and the pictures that we took along the way, supplemented with some pictures and info from the internet.

This is a map of all the routes across Europe

Here is a map of the Camino Frances.  We started in Burgos.