Pamplona!

We walked 20 km into Pamplona after reserving a hotel the night before online that turned out to be nowhere near the Camino route. Sweating  that out for a while we decided to find a hostal in the old town that was recommended in the guide book. It was full. Next hostal was full. We were anxious to find something because this city looked fun! We were planning on gifting ourselves two nights to give our feet and muscles a break.  We looked up and saw the Dom Luis Hostal from the narrow busy pedestrian street.  John buzzed the door and we were let into the dark hallway. We found the elevator and just pushed the first floor since there were no signs for anything.  When we were met by the man who runs the hostel we had visions of the scene in the movie "The Way", where Martin Sheen's character and the other pilgrims come to a place run by a crazy loon.  Jose's chin length disheveled salt and pepper hair was no indicator of  how extremely nice he would turn out to be. He spoke no English so we were able to practice our Spanish asking for dos noches (2 nights) and help with the wifi code. It. Is becoming such a luxury to have our own room and bathroom and this one was very nice at 40 euro a night.

Pamplona is a fabulous and ancient city and we were lucky enough to be right in old town on calle San Nicholas. Right across from our hostal was a wonderful  tapas bar where we enjoyed the local icy cold brews and pointed at the different interesting looking appetizers.  Our favorite was a round fried ball with some kind of seafood stuffed inside.  We asked for them by saying pelotas fritas, which roughly translates into fried balls. The bartender thought we were funny.

That evening was amazing as we saw so many of our Camino friends and it felt like we were living in this hip cosmopolitan dream life.  Our French friend from the night before, Alan, came into the bar and we were greeted with big hugs.  Amazing what this Camino brings.  It was bittersweet staying two nights knowing the people we had bonded with would be moving on the next day and we may or may not catch up with them.  Our tired bodies won out and I was looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.

We did replace our hiking sticks here at a large modern department store, had the menu del dia which always includes a glass of wine, washed our clothes in the bathtub and hung them out to dry in the window. It all may sound weird to you but we were having such fun.

I would never consider running with the bulls (not speaking for my adventurous husband) but I'm starting to wonder if the Camino may not be a tad more challenging.