It's amazing what one can see traveling

Hello, everyone.  Recently DD and I were in the airport in Harlingen and discovered some really cool art pieces.

As y'all can see from the caption photos,  they have made a scavenger hunt out of the viewing experience. This is fun, and it makes the baggage collection experience much more pleasant. I also enjoyed noticing the Duplo bricks and other toys, and the many unmated sandals, that they included.

Memories from the Camino del Norte

Hello, everyone.

Someone we know is going to walk along the Camino del Norte ("the Northern Road") to Santiago, and it brought back to us memories of that walk in 2018. 

The morning after we slept in Tapia de Casariego--at the very scenic but very basic municipal albergue in an old school house--we walked along beaches and stopped for breakfast coffee at a small hotel. As we didn't stay there, we probably forgot to get a sello in our credencial to remember the visit. Thus, we didn't know the name of the lovely place with the gorgeous beach view! Until today, that is, when I was prompted by the memories of our walk to look into Gronze.com and study the detail maps. 

Then I found it! The giveaway was the porch fence visible in the window of the photo on Google Maps.

One of our photos of the beautiful Playa de Penarronda, lots and lots of sand with a collection of interesting rock outcrops

On the porch of the Hostal with a glass of Aquarius sports drink

Someday I want to go back to that little place and spend the night there, enjoying the serenity and the views.

The hostal is exactly along the walking path of the Camino del Norte.

A little bit more about Merida, and leaving the city

 Hello, everyone.

Earlier posts about the day of the very long walk talked about the church in Aljucen, and a bit about the monks in Alcuescar.

The very beginning of the day was very different from both of those subjects, and we enjoyed the things we saw and learned.

At right, a detail of the aqueduct at Merida. The storks have nests atop the stone construction.

At left, a photo of more of it. The sun was just coming up.

The information sign about the over-2,000-year-old dam. This dam was built to supply, via the aqueduct pictured above, the city of Augusta Merita. Which is now called Merida. The dam still holds water, but the aqueduct is a ruin, so the water doesn't go to the municipal water system anymore.

A view of the waters of the Embalse de Proserpina. There are pretty walking trails along the edge, some of them being sorta-kinda beach accesses. For beaches that are just the native soil of the area, not the sort of artificial sand piles that St. Thomas, USVI, has.

About mid-morning, we passed through El Carrascalejo. The village's community-center bar was just opening, so we stopped and had a bit of rest and cafe con leche.

We did notice that the village seems to be trying to have an albergue for pilgrims to shelter in. If someone had spent the night in Torremejia, and didn't decide to stay at Merida (I don't know why, but some people aren't interested in the historical aspects of the Camino) they might find that El Carrascalejo falls just at the time of day they would like to stop for the night. Though I'm not sure what food availability the village has. Probably someone thinking of that would want to find out, in case they need to pack a picnic dinner from the grocery store in Merida.

If they did stop at El Carrascalejo like that, they would find that the next day, while long, would probably be less than 30 kilometers of walking. They could breakfast at Aljucen and be fresh when walking the Via Pecuaria through the long dimension of the nature area.  

Cool weather has arrived in South Texas

Hello, everyone. After a reasonably warm winter mostly, it's February and the cool fronts are showing up. This morning it was mid-40's in this area.

We've been walking, mostly on the Hike and Bike, where we did 4 miles on Monday and 6 miles on Tuesday, plus taking the critter for her survey of the neighborhood beforehand.

Last week we commenced on buying new trees for the place: avocadoes to keep the one we have company and improve the fruit set.  While we were out and about hunting them down, we were near South Padre Island, drove over to the end of the paved road and strolled a bit on the dunes in the chilly weather.

South Padre Island National Seashore view

The other direction had a few hardy tourists, also strolling, and all of us wearing jackets and long pants and sometimes headwear.

I've gotten no interesting bird pictures on the Hike and Bike this season, there was construction where the water ditches cross (one over the other) and the birds haven't come back to that place yet, plus there are a lot of folks these days walking, running, and biking on it.

There appears to have been a bot posting comments with a link in several of the posts in the last few months, I know my readers will know better than to click on the link and so I merely mention it as an advisory.

The twelfth day of walking: to Santander

Hello, everyone.

Returning to the series about the Camino del Norte in 2018:

We got up and were given (European-style) breakfast before departing from Guemes. The coffee was hot, there were tea bags for those of us who don't start with caffeine first thing in the morning anymore, and there was bread. There was probably butter and jelly as well, but I don't remember.

Some of the paths of the Norte route go alongside steep cliffs. It's important to remember that nature doesn't come with grab rails.

This was our third ferry ride of the pilgrimage. It was a little bit longer than the other two. We passed a cruise ship in the harbor at Santander. When we got to the church there, we found the cruise ship tourists. They were crowded into long lines, gabbing away inside the church, and generally acting like they were there to see a side show act. 😞The Tabernacle was there and they all acted like they were out in the public street. The lines led to the reliquaries of San Celedonio and San Emeterio, the patron saints of the diocese.

We stayed in the albergue there. There is a washer but I don't remember a dryer. There are clotheslines outside the window of the dormitory...two stories up, reached by opening the window and reaching out to pin the clothes onto them...but hey, a bunk in a dorm beats no bed at all.  And the sleeping was fine. Pilgrims give thanks for what we receive.

The tenth day: Laredo to Noja

Hello, everyone.

Returning to the Camino series, on the tenth day we walked the length of Laredo to the beach at the very tip of the land and boarded the ferry across to Santoña.

This is the sign at the ferry landing. (Well, it's actually a section of beach and you walk across the sand, but it's the landing.)

The ride was pleasant and uneventful.

The other photo, below, is of a primrose that was growing in the sand along the way. It looks a lot like a similar primrose that grows at South Padre Island, Texas, but it may be a different species. It is still lovely!



After we arrived at Noja, we found a pension to stay at and loaded up our laundry for the walk across the small town to the laundromat. While we were there, the heavens opened and dumped down strong rain. There was also lightning and possibly even a bit of hail. All very exciting! Especially as we dashed back across town with newly dried laundry. We did duck into a bar to wait out the worst of it.

Day 9: to Laredo

Hello, everyone.

Returning to the series of Camino 2018 posts, we revisit the ninth day of walking, from Castro Urdiales to Laredo.

This day was a lot of seaside walking along the bluffs. The weather continued cool. There was a fair amount of scenery. We did remember to take a few pictures.

The hills and bluffs seem to gather convection to themselves. There is a possible rain event building up on the mountain in the distance. We were walking in sunshine when the picture was taken.

By the time we arrived the the outskirts of the city the sunshine had been replaced by clouds.

 Laredo has a long beach.

There is a ferry ride here, not quite as short as the ferry in Pasajes but not long either.

We stayed with the Trinitarian sisters in their convent albergue. The alburgue had beds and warm blankets. They had evening Mass in the church. At the end of Mass the sisters gave all of the pilgrims paper stars to keep. They were very sweet.

Camino del Norte day 8: from Portugalete to Castro Urdiales

Hello, everyone.

As mentioned in the last post about the Camino, we rode the metro to Portugalete. This is basically getting to the edge of the city. Once there we found the trail, which follows a dedicated bicycle path. The path is controlled-access: periodically there will be an exit for a village or town. After that, we continued on.

The way down at Las Arenas. It was still pretty brisk on temperatures, especially for us Texans. There was a little bar and we had tortilla and coffee there. Then we continued on.

This part of the coast was a mining region at one time. The trail even went through an old mine tunnel!

The walking was fine, but I did manage to trip over a rock on that day and get a bit of "road rash" on one knee. It is important to pick the feet up!

At Castro Urdiales, the person who has a sello for your crdencial is the lady at the tourism office. We stayed in a pension room above a restaurant. We did walk around the old church-castle complex and saw nesting seagulls and flowers. The church wasn't open that afternoon. The castle had some art displays.

Second day's walking, May 18

Hello, everyone.

May 18 was chilly just like May 17 had been. In fact, the weather during the entire time we walked along the coast can be summarized as cool, with intermittent rain, and not that much sunshine. Local people said it was abnormally cool this spring.

We left Getaria around 6:30 or 7 in the morning and were grateful to have done our "get out of town" climb the night before.

At breakfast time we arrived in Zumaia--well breakfast time if you like to eat around 9:30 that is--and had a bite with cafe con leche at a bar. Then we wandered around town finding the scenic route out of town.

This scenic route is a part of the GR9 hikers' route. It is closer to the water for much of its way and the hiker who takes it gets to see some scenery that isn't visible at all from the other route.  On the other hand, we discovered, it is more strenuous.  We took this part of the GR9 and when it split off again later in the day we stayed with the main Camino trail. Others, who had skipped this part, took the GR9 later and said it was quite demanding for them. As this part turned out to be for us!

 Looking back from the start of the GR9 segment, we saw some of the famous flysh rock layers. We also noticed that the church is on a cliff that is being undercut by the waves. Presumably it will be quite a while before the top falls down.

The trail here follows the cliff top on some goat trails. It was very up-and-down, but very pretty. By the time it connected back up to the main Camino trail, we were, as it used to be said, "tuckered out."

Farther along, we noticed that the local farmers have helpers to attend to a little bit of trail maintenance. Billy, here, appears to have been assigned to weed removal. We said soothing things and walked past him, and he was a very amiable old goat so our close up visit went smoothly.

We got to the outskirts of Deba and discovered that they have paved over some of the steep rocks approaching the town. They have added a red non-slip stripe on one side to help people negotiate the descent in wet weather. At the end of the red stripe, we saw a billboard celebrating their carefully conserved piece of Roman road and a steep asphalt road going into town a different way. We followed that way and found the famous elevator! Actually, there are two elevators, installed by the town for the people to get from their homes on a very steep slope down to the main part of the town. We enjoyed the elevator ride very much!

We have had two beautiful walking days in a row

Hello, everyone.
We have indeed had good walking mornings, actually for the mornings. I am coming to think that spring in northern Spain has daytime heating rainstorms. So if you are out walking just after sunrise and it's great weather, you should get your kilometers done before around three in the afternoon. After then, you might be caught in the daily drench.
Yesterday we walked from Villapedre to Tapia de Casariego, a smallish resort town on the coast.
I will admit that the online comments about the scenery blinded me. The municipal albergue at Tapia de Casariego does indeed have great views of the ocean, the rock beach, and the sky. It also has at most one washtub to do laundry. The clothesline is under the sky. Remember what I said about the afternoon rain? I ran like a crazy to get the things inside when it started!
Today we took a short day and are staying in Ribadeo.

No pictures today because Blogger put my pictures into limbo.
Tomorrow we turn away from the coast and begin angling southwest toward Santiago.
Ultreia.

Cañero, a lovely spot with a beach

Hello, everyone.
Tonight, after accidentally walking 6 km too far, we are staying at the friendly and cozy Hotel Canero. It is in the tiny village of Cañero, and if it weren't raining we would go down to the beach.
Unfortunately the day began with rain and has kept it up most of the day. We didn't realize what the weather would likly be when we left from Soto la Luiña this morning, so we headed up to the scenic mountain route to our day's destination. Famous last words as they say! We found many low muddy spots on the trail, and then it took off through some cow pastures. The trail, being the lowest spot around, was a running stream. But eventually we came down, missed the turn to our destination, and ended up here instead. But this is a delightful place!
These are two of the items in the menu del dia for today.

 Homemade chicken noodle soup was the soup of the day. Eat your hearts out, Campbells!

This was the dessert, a house made fresh cheese sprinkled with sugar--it's a Spanish thing I guess--and drizzled with honey. I forgot to photograph the little peppers stuffed with fish and accompanied by potatoes. We ate them too fast for pictures.
Ultreia.

Santander

Hello, everyone.
We left Guemes about 7:30 this morning. After Father Enrique and his volunteers worked so hard to put out bread, some kind of nut bar (?) And trimmings like jam, hot milk pitchers, hot water and tea bags, and coffee, we had to spend a minute in the dining room with them.
Father Enrique's stories about how the albergue came to be, and some of his family history, were very interesting. He also showed route information on the map to everyone.
We mostly took the coastal walk today--didn't get the tablet out to make path pictures, sorry--and most of it was lovely. Only a couple of muddy bits. Then we walked on the sand of the beach of Somo for maybe a quarter mile or so, until the beach access just before the last house. There was a bar there. In my opinion those folks have a license to print money. They certainly sold us some coffee and tea and a slice of tortilla with tuna and tomato on top. There are no other bars on this beach, and it looked like that was the only beach access, too.
We took the ferry ride across to Santander. This city is reasonably big.

What do you do if the connected building in the middle of the row is wrecked? The others were depending on it. Answer, you leave a bunch of beams in between and add some metal braces to keep it all up. We have seen this solution in other places, too, here in Spain.
Tomorrow we will head towards Santillana del Mar. As it will be Tuesday I hope museums will be open. (Today no museums in Santander were open. It's Monday.)
Ultreia.

Noja

Hello, everyone.
We took a short day today. The last two had been tough and we had gotten in too late to take care of things like laundry. Today we perched at around 1, got directions to the laundromat (lavanderia in Spanish) and headed over there with almost every stitch we're carrying. The walk was a kilometer, but  after you put the pack down it feels like you're floating so we didn't mind. We looked out the window while the cycle progressed and saw dark clouds gathering. "Hmm," we thought. After the clothes finished we went out to walk back and discovered that the clouds had Noja in mind today! We hustled. And we almost got back before the heavens opened in a deluge.
Fortunately we were in front of a bar when it got really thick and we ducked inside until it stopped. Then we went to the room.

Later we walked around a bit.

The beach at Noja, after a storm, with rainbow

Tomorrow we will head towards Guemes.
Ultreia.

Returning to our days of Camino walking this year: leaving San Sebastian

Hello, everyone.

While it's obvious that there are not a lot of days to talk about, it occurred to me that we did learn some useful things in the days we did walk, which others would possibly want to know about. Thus these periodic posts about our walk this year.

The last post on this brought us to the city of San Sebastian. This is a good-sized city, a beach town, with a bridge over a river in the midst of it. Once you hit the beach area on the way into town the shells seem to vanish. Apparently the folks in S. Sebastian feel like it's not that hard to find your way through their city. (They do give out maps at the tourist office.) Turning left and going along the beach, there are some really gorgeous flower beds to pass, and as you go along you will find occasional signs for the Turismo office. Obviously, those are something to follow. The short version is: go along the beach and cross the bridge, then go a ways farther. The Turismo is past the McDonald's and in the midst of some other tourist agencies. There are some public benches for resting outside and some ornamental trees. The ladies at the Turismo are very helpful. After staying in a pension in the area, and having some pintxos and wine for dinner with a fellow that was also walking the trail, we got up in the morning (not quite as early as the sun!) and started walking in the lowering, dribbly clouds. We passed the harbor area and then passed the lovely manicured garden/park with the stone statue of the Infanta, and then found a hotel bar that was open and serving coffee. They also had little bocadillos and pastries. The rain came down for real for a few minutes while we were having our bit of breakfast. By the time we left, the rain had pretty much stopped. We continued along the beach, looking at the map and wondering where we were supposed to go next. (No shells yet! Nor yellow arrows.) We came to the end and found ourselves at a tee junction.

At the tee junction, not being sure what to do, we went right. We found ourselves looking at the Funicular building a few minutes later. Just as we were about to do the absolutely wrong thing (climb the stairs next to that building) DH noticed a lady in a third story window waving and pointing back the way we came. We took her advice. And as we approached the tee junction again from the side direction, a gentleman  came up along side of us and told us that we needed to go straight for a little while. He also accompanied us up to the corner we needed to turn at and pointed out the shell sign on the pole. (God bless both of these kind folks!) We turned right at the corner and followed 3" square blue shell stickers on sign poles until we found the path across the headland.

The Camino path over the headland. Note the yellow arrow on the pole.

The map of walking trails in the province (?) next to the trail cutoff.

This trail is a mostly-gently sloping set of switchbacks that climbs steadily until the pilgrim is looking down at multi-story apartments, and then comes down again. There are no scary moments and the main difficulty for me was simply that I had not gained my climbing legs yet. (It takes several days to get one's fitness up at the beginning of the walk, and especially so if one hasn't done much hill climbing before the trip.)

The remainder of the day was a lot of walking past beautiful farms, villages, views of the ocean, and so on. Much of it was on bitty little trails. I really felt for the bike riders who were pushing their bikes past us on the one-butt-wide rocky trails to reach a place they could actually climb aboard and pedal again. The trail does not go past any facilities to speak of, rather like the day before, but near the end of the stage one does enter a lovely fishing town that has bars and possibly also places to stay. We elected to cross over and stayed in Zarautz, as it was only another few kilometers uphill and down past some pretty farms.)

Returning to our first day of walking in Spain

Hello, everyone.

The last post left off at lunchtime. One would think that lunchtime was only half or maybe three-quarters of a walk day. But if the pilgrim doesn't elect to stay the night at Pasajes/San Juan--some do, and after the difficulty of the first half, it's probably far from a bad idea--the route carries on into San Sebastian. (Sorry, the Basque name of the city escapes from me at the moment. Anybody who knows and wants to put it into the comments, feel free.)

There are a couple of marked ways out of the little port town of Pasajes-San Juan. At least, that's what the guide books say. One is said to be easier (meaning less steep) and the other is said to be scenic.

We followed our noses and didn't look around to find the easier way--even though we'd talked about not wanting to climb the very steep stairs to the lighthouse, that was what we ended up doing. There are some pictures we took, early on, on the stairs. Later on there were more decrepit steps, some with rebar poles to steady the risers...and some of the steadied risers and even treads had disappeared over time. This is not a staircase to run up!

Before the stairs began: the water is so clear, the rocks are so neat!

Near the bottom of the endless stairsteps

You can almost tell here that the size of the treads and risers varies. It varies more later on. At the very top of the steps, there was a picnic table. I'm not ashamed to say that we lay down on the benches to rest a minute before continuing on.








There were some really pretty views. There was a bit of paved road, and then the trail went off pavement and continued on along the sides of the hills.

Looking down at San Sebastian, just before the trail began its steep descent into the city

Just because

Hello, everyone.

Last weekend we drove down to South Padre Island. It was "between the Easters" and there were neither the clogged crowds of Mexican Holy Week vacationers nor the mobs of Spring Break students. It was, in fact, refreshing.

This is inside the city limits of South Padre Island, the part of the barrier island that is not National Seashore, and because cars are not allowed on the beach inside the town, the city has installed board accesses with pocket parking lots. (The public has an enforced right to access the public beaches. Which are all of the beaches in Texas.) The loads of green vegetation in sight is the area that the local property owners try really hard to keep green--anything below the permanent vegetation line belongs to the State of Texas as part of the public beach.

We didn't even wander around doing a big walk and keeping track of birds, bugs and flowers. We just enjoyed the fresh breezes for a few minutes. (There are, of course, seagulls along here like nobody's business.) On the other side of the barrier island, where the water is calmer, we saw some hermit crabs and regular crabs crawling around in the water near wooden piers, and oyster shells clinging to the wood.

Vila do Conde

Hello, everyone.

Returning to our series of pilgrimage posts, the end of our day of walking on the boardwalk along the lovely beaches of northern Portugal ended at Vila Do Conde.

Vila do Conde is close to the beach, but not really spread out all along it. The place we stayed was on the plaza, which was decorated with symbols of different parishes. It turned out that this particular Sunday was the day of their Marchas de Sao Joao. DH got right out there to take a picture or two--yours truly was in the middle of washing dirty clothes.

Procession for St. John the Baptist in Vila do Conde on Sunday afternoon.

Ancient Monastery in Vila Do Conde area

DH views the Roman aqueduct ruins in Vila do Conde.

The weather that day was cooler than it had been, and it rained on us a little.

Y'all may remember comments about the great beauty of plants in Portuguese gardens. This flower escaped! It's a calla lily and it's growing out in the middle of trees.

Your humble blogger with the Barcelos chicken statue.

View of downtown Barcelos. Note another chicken on the building.

At Barcelos, at the Capuchin church of St. Anthony, we were blessed after Mass by the priest. This was the first pilgrims' blessing we received on this trip. One of the servers, a young man studying to become a Capuchin, spoke English. We were so grateful for their kindness and friendly welcome!

We stayed at Barcelos for two nights, as we planned on a little side trip here: a bus ride over to Braga.

Matosinhos and the Boardwalk

Hello, everyone.

Passing along from Porto, where we stayed for two nights, and picking up with the walk, we rode the bus to Matosinhos. (Reading the destinations on the glowing light board while hearing them read aloud by the automated announcer was always a trip. There was no correspondence that we could see between the letters appearing and the sounds heard. Though the pilgrims who already had French language skills did a lot better than we did at following what they heard!)

We got to watch a ship go under the moving bridge at the port. 

One of the many beaches--they were all coves like this one, separated by rocks and little peninsulas.

This is the boardwalk that we walked for most of the day on. The cool breeze from the Atlantic operated like an air conditioner, taking much of the heat out of the bright sunlight.

Some of the boardwalk was still in process. (Note the path alongside.)

Ancient salt works, either Roman or older.

This was the day we saw a McDonald's. That was all we did, though, because it was around 9 in the morning and the sign clearly said that the McDonald's would be open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.! No coffee, breakfast, and facility for you, traveler! Fortunately, even though they open somewhat late, there are a lot of coffee shops along the Atlantic coast.

Gorgeous

Hello, everyone.

Today we started walking again. First we caught the 0640 bus to Matosinhos, a port and beach town at the edge of Porto. Then we walked across a drawbridge to the north side of the ship channel and began walking along the beaches.

This is just a taste. There are tidal pools, dunes, blue water of unbelievable clarity and it looked like they don't have rip current along there. There were boardwalks most of the way, too.

Miami, with more about Gesu church

Hello, everyone.

We arrived in Miami for the whole point of the exercise: graduation for DD1 and baptism for GS1.

There was a short stroll in the South Beach area, where we viewed one of the new fashion "things": open lace used as pants over a swimsuit. This is laughably called a "coverup" although there isn't anything covered. (It will look okay if your swimsuit doesn't match so much that you look like you went out in just undies and the open lace. The first one we saw, the lace pants completely matched the color of the girl's two piece swimsuit. She looked like she was strolling the streets in bra, panties, and the lace pants. No top other than her swimsuit. Not a good look, in my opinion. No, I didn't take photos of people, they didn't  go out with the idea that they'd be all over the interwebs in whatever I saw them in.)

Sea-grape as I've never seen it before. (At South Padre Island, this plant is usually a small to medium sized shrub.)

Really yummy calves' liver, just before we snarfed the last bit up!

We ate lunch at a lovely Turkish restaurant called Babylon. The liver is to die for! They also had lovely hummus, eggplant, and so on. If you go to South Beach, you should definitely eat there.

The baptism was my second time to visit Gesu Church. (Y'all may remember my posts from a couple of months back, when I went to help out with GS1's arrival.) With DH on hand to help take pictures, and the kind explanations of the priest about the teaching scheme of the art, I have more to show you about Gesu.

Tympanum (?) mural showing things connected to the parish: St. Phillipine Duchenne, nun on left side, a missionary to the Indians, St. Francesca Cabrini, nun on right side, founder of hospitals and teacher of many immigrants to the US, military members representing the Army training camps during the world wars, representative Indians and farmers--and at the far right, the actual neighbors of the parish church when it was built, all joining the angels in adoration

Rose window in the choir loft. Musical angels surround the central figure of Mary. During the era of Gothic cathedral building, the rose window was a representation of the beauty of Heaven. 

The new Christian being presented to the Blessed Mother by his parents and godparents. (The family said a prayer at the statue, similar to the way many marrying couples greet the Virgin at the end of their wedding ceremony.) Above the altar, in the apse, many symbolic paintings around the edge. One is of a Eucharistic pelican.

View of the sanctuary area and the baptismal font. The font base has lovely ceramic statues of saints. Large statues in front, from left: St. Therese of the Child Jesus (the Little Flower), Mary, St. Ignatius (?), Jesus displaying His Sacred Heart, St. Francis Borgia whom I am not familiar with. Attentive readers will note that, like St. Paul's in Mission, Gesu has a painting of the Divine Mercy image of Jesus. 

Windows on the right depicting moments from the life of Christ. The windows on the left depict moments from the life of Mary. (I didn't get a good photo of them.) This picture also shows the elaborate, edifying Stations of the Cross in the church nave.

 In the March Miami post(s) there are a few more pictures of the church, showing the Last Supper carving below the Tabernacle and other items.