Day 00 - Madrid to St. Jean Pied-de-Port

Clearly I did not plan my title numbering system very well.

I am mad at Blogger for losing a bunch of work just now.  Where did my draft go?  We decided such crappy writing should be deleted.

This morning I was up well before my alarm and went out for a walk in the dark.  The airport hotel is in a little commercial/residential area and it had banks and coffee places.  I got money at the ATM and bonus for me, the Euro's value is slightly less than the Dollar.  I got a coffee and 2 fat churros for 3.60€.  I can't remember what the fat churros are called, it's not churros - I think I knew once.  With the current exchange things are inexpensive if you have Dollars.

It's 7:45am before it gets light enough to see.  I will probably be starting in the dark and at a time later than I'm used to most days from now on. 

I took a taxi to the airport at 9am for a fixed 20€ fee and arrived in just a few minutes.  Getting my SIM card took much less time than I allocated.  I went to an arrivals level shop in T4 called The Market and got 100GB of data on a prepaid Orange SIM for 25€.  The girls at the shop had a lot of experience and had the phone set up in no time.  I then had over 2 hours to kill before my noon flight ... the downside of everything going to plan.

MAD T4 is massive.  Very new and spacious but really, really big.  I was looking for a lounge and I was following signs but I ended up going down a level, going halfway around a square path and back up again.  I did this several times.  On the way to the gate I figured out why.  I was going down a level on the stairs or esclator that were always right beside the sign.  They use a down arrow for straight ahead.

The flight to Pamplona was barely 40 minutes in the air.  One nice thing about the older local planes with smaller than overhead storage is all the rollerbags got checked on the tarmac - we actually walked on the tarmac to get on and off the plane.  The plane loads/unloads so much  faster without rollerbags and I have lots of space for my backpack.  It would be nice if for all flights there was gate bag checking and gate bag pickup; who was the genius that thought it was effecient to move bags miles across the airport to/from the plane. Pamplona is a pretty small airport and it was a short walk from the plane to my waiting taxi driver with my name on a sign.  Pamplona looks like central valley California.

The ride to St. Jean Pied-de-Port crossed the Camino path many times and I got a glimpse of numerous pilgrims and ground I will soon know.  We covered 3 days of walking in an hour and 15 minutes.

There were many cyclists on the road and the drivers were very curtious.  Looks like some nice riding.  Maybe next year.

In SJPP I headed straight to the official pilgrim's office, only waited for a few people and had my pilgrim papers by 3pm.  I then went to the nearby pilgram supply store and got some trekking poles and a Swiss Army knife for 60€.  I wonder how I can get the knife home?

My hotel wasn't open until 4pm so I wandered around SJPP.  It is a really pretty town and there were a lot of tourists around.  Later when a parade went by my window I found out this was a festival for all the Basque provinces.  Each region was represented.  Later I could hear performances coming from a small stadium.

The weather was great, sunny and hot but not too hot. I went back to the pilgrim store and got some sunscreen.  Just like my experience 10 years ago, sunscreen is really expensive here.  15€ for a small tube.

I was starving and looking for a restaurant but many were closed.  Probably because of the festival.  I ended up at an open place which seemed to have lot of pilgrims and got seated next to a couple from Texas that I had seen earlier at the pilgrim's office.  We had a good chat.  They were Camino pros and had just gotten engaged this afternoon.  I expect I will run into them frequently over the next while.