May 9--Pamplona

Oof, another 13 miles today....I just hope my feet adjust quickly.  My legs are fine, but by mile 11, my feet start to HURT! To be fair, today did not start out the best.  Although we are usually in rooms with one or two roommates, last night we stayed in a more hostel-style albergue (lodge) where all of the women were in one room, and all of the guys were in another (except for the professors and their wives who, of course, got their own rooms).  My first thought? Okay, I stayed at a summer camp with 15 girls in a room.  I'll be fine....but I was NOT fine! The beds didn't have sheets, and the only sheets we could BUY were paper ones that barely covered the mattress and pillow.  Too, because we are in Europe, we don't have air conditioning at night, so that room got a little toasty.  All while sleeping on paper sheets.  And to top it off, several people made quite a bit of noise during the night, sleep-talking and snoring.  I went to bed around 11:30 p.m., and at 6:30 a.m., someone BLASTED their alarm in our room (this was after waking up 6-7 times during the night).  And what was SUPER awesome was that there was only one outlet in the room so all our phones were in one spot, so it's not like the alarm got turned off quickly.  No, it rang for a good 15-20 seconds.  And just to make sure I didn't get any more sleep, some girl decided to go to the bathroom and left the door WIDE OPEN to the bathroom area, so light was streaming into the sleeping room as we all heard her go pee, flush, and wash her hands.  Needless to say, I was WIDE AWAKE at 6:30 and wasn't getting ONE MORE MINUTE of sleep.

Then we had to go walk 13 miles :D

I think our first hotel really spoiled us on the breakfast.  The first two days, we got croissants, ham and cheese, yogurt, apple juice, and as much milk and ColaCao as we wanted.  This morning we got luke warm milk and corn flakes (not Frosted Flakes, just corn flakes), TOASTY toast and ColaCao.  Like for REAL? Not even a LITTLE bit of protein? So you know, I was chugging that ColaCao cause that was the only semblance of protein on the table :D

Highlight reel from today:

At the first church where a sello was available, they told us about another church where we could go up and ring the bell :-) So you better believe we were looking out for THAT baby, and sure enough, around mile 8, we saw a bunch of arrows pointing us toward a church on the hill! I was excited to ring the bell, but it was SO loud, I ended up looking scared in the video I took :D It was cool though--you could hear the bell RINGING! 

Other than that, the Camino was just your average day of walking--we went through some smaller towns, got some cool sellos, went up some hills, went down not as many hills (I swear we NEVER go down as much as we go up....suspicious).  

We ended our trip in Pamplona today (the city of the running of the bulls), and WOW, what a cool city!

I think the majority of people in Pamplona spend all their time eating candy, getting tattoos and drinking coffee because WOW, the number of candy stores, tattoo parlors and cafes is INSANE! But we did get some tasty candy from a candy store, and I looked at some fun stuff from a Spanish company called Kuxumusu which was fun ;-) Obviously, we did not partake in the other fortes of the city ;)

We did find the street where they run the bulls, the arena where they keep the bulls, and some chocolate churros to finish the night.  Although I do not think bull fighting is an enjoyable-to-watch or appropriate sport, it is very traditional to Pamplona.  When I realized we were walking right past the arena, I had to go see it even though it was closed.  And since I hadn't gotten chocolate churros in Alcalá (even though there was a place right on the plaza where we were staying), we got a dozen churros, two ColaCaos, and two mugs of chocolate for 17 Euros which I would say is a pretty gosh dang good deal! And of course, for lunch, we found the cheapest food place around which happened to be a kebab place, and MAN, do they know how to do meat well.  And for a good price!

BEFORE:

And AFTER:

The bull-fighting arena:

We also went to another cathedral, but other than the illegal trip to to the second floor of the cloister (in the coolest stairwell ever), it was, you know, pretty much another Gothic cathedral.  It had its many altars, lots of silver-adorned chandeliers, and this ambiance music that I could SWEAR came straight out of a ghost movie from the 90s :-)

 

 

Also, I don't know if I've mentioned this already, but we are in the area of Spain that is considered Basque Country, so we found a cool sign and took some pictures by it.  They speak a different language in this part of Spain--we can't understand ANY of it!