Camino de Santiago Walking Equipment: After Action Comments

Hello, everyone.

I woke up this morning before the alarm with my mind thinking about what I would say on this subject. Why disregard inspiration? The pictures of our museum visits in Madrid will still be there tomorrow. 

Some things I took and how they worked out:

My Kindle: I'm very glad I had my Kindle. Books I used on it were: airplane novels (re-read a couple I had on there by Jack Campbell;) Kelly's Guide to the Camino de Santiago (this wasn't just a map book, it had directions to the albergues in the villages and other useful information;) Gitlitz & Davidson's _The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago_ (wonderful, informative book--I bought the Kindle version because the paperback we had already purchased is too, too heavy.)  My Kindle is not the fancy Fire version with the internally lit screen. It's one of the classic models that requires external light. My son gave me a 1" long tiny flashlight which I attached to the zipper pull on the case.

Headlamp style flashlight: Not useful for me at all; shipped it home from Leon. I did see a man using it to go through his pack after bedtime once. The rustling had kept me from falling asleep right away.

Boots: I had the Merrell half-height ladies' boot, purchased at REI.com, in a half size larger than my usual tennis shoe size. I didn't realize this when I bought it, but this boot is a water-resistant style. It didn't keep out any water on the day of flooding rains. Nothing could have that wasn't a pair of fishing waders! But it did keep any moisture inside the boot with me from evaporating out. Like, say, sweat. Of course it had trouble drying out when it was soaked, but I could have helped that along if I'd had a clue. 

This was the second pair of boots. The first, in my regular tennis shoe size, gave me mauve toe on our first 10 mile training hike. But it didn't slide on my heel! This one had room in front, but it slides on my heels sometimes. Female feet, feh!

Shower sandals: I had bought a pair of cheap rubber flipflops at Wal-Mart. They are thong-style. The paint on the top surface began to peel off and stick to my foot toward the end of the trip. The thong gave me new blisters when I wore them all day long while tramping around Pamplona. If I were buying new sandals today, I'd buy a pair that doesn't have the toe strap, so I could wear them with socks. That way if things were just impossible (I am thinking of the day of floods here) I could take the boots off and hike in the sandals. When I wear rubber clogs to to gardening, if I get wet and have no socks, I get blisters. When I wear socks with the clogs, even though the socks get wet, I have no blisters. You absolutely need to have shower shoes of some kind, since you really don't want to go barefoot in the albergues. Too many feet with too many possible fungal spores! As you can tell if you stand downwind from the shelf of Botes. ;-)

Tummy meds: I took Pepto-Bismol. I also took Loperamide generic gel pills. The Pepto is my go-to answer to the bloating that turns into trouble if not attended to. You can take it when you feel the bloat starting and it will help fairly soon. The Loperamide you really need to take the night before. But how do you know in advance that you will need it? The airport in Dublin had no anti-diarrheal stuff at all in the airport shops. (This fact mystifies me still.) The Spanish pharmacies have never heard of Pepto Bismol and don't have anything similar that I was able to find. And I asked for it by the generic name: bismuth whatever-whatever. 

Pain meds: We left with 2/3 of a bottle of Bufferin. We ran out. The pharmacist had never heard of buffered aspirin. She sold us packets of Ibuprofen powder (really strong stuff!) to drink with water. Later on we got a tube of Ibuprofen gel for my sweetie's feet. This stuff is good, but they don't have it in the States. For some kind of equivalent here, you have to see a doctor and get a script. We bought Compeed while we were over there. This isn't sold at all in the US. (I have no idea why not.) It's a gel stick-on that you apply to the (unpopped) blister to protect it, make the pain go away, and help it start healing. In Spain you can get many, many sizes and shapes of Compeed. It works wonders for the top or side of the foot. Not the sole. On the sole it gets hard and is like walking on a shelf all day long. The gauze bandage with the stickum on the sides (fairly wide) that you cut to length, which was sold in the pharmacies, was good on the soles of the feet. I did cover it over with tape sometimes. (Adhesive tape) Scissors are useful and used. Take a pair that you can cut bandages with and trim toenails with. If you're taking a sewing kit, take another scissors that only cuts thread. (Unless you don't sew and don't care that you have to make three tries to cut the strand!) Speaking of sewing kits, you will be glad if you take a medium sized hand sewing needle and a bobbin of thread. You can repair your mesh laundry bag if you brought one--the mesh loves to let go at the side seams. I had a big needle but never used it. I had a screwdriver for glasses and needed it. You don't want your earpiece to fall off when you're three days from the nearest place to get a new screw.

Charmin To Go: I had about two-thirds of a roll of this on hand before we left, and I supplemented this with a three-pack of Camper's Toilet Paper from Wal-Mart. I am very glad I did. I put 2 rolls in my sweetie's pack and kept the Charmin container and the 3rd roll in mine. He sent his two rolls home in Leon. I kept mine. And since he didn't realize that it's a good thing to have, I took to saying "Charmin To Go for the win!" whenever I came out of the bathroom after needing to use it. Fellas, I gotta say this: we ladies have entirely different plumbing setups and surrounding areas, so we need to at least pat off every time we go. It's as important as being able to sit down is...though in desperate necessity we can hover, it's not fun. End of embarrassing digression. 

Socks: As I have mentioned before, socks became an issue for me. I took thick, soft, purpose-made Hiking Socks with me, and at the last minute I left home the Liner Sock pair that I had intended to pack because I was trying to get my pack weight below 20 pounds. (That is about 9.5 kilos for all you metric folk.) That weight includes the pack itself, by the way. So there I was with 4 pairs of socks, and when there was a washer and dryer to use, I used it. Mistake! All those "feels like buttah!" socks shrink like nobody's business when the hot dryer air and tumbling hit them. I should have taken 3 pairs of thin socks, most likely, and a pair or two of medium thick ones. They would have dried a lot faster (well, the thin ones would have) so I wouldn't have been all wound up on putting them in the dryer. The Altus socks I bought just before reaching Virgen del Camino are good, and I still have them. The Nike running socks that wick and are blister-resistant, that I bought at El Corte Ingles in Madrid are good and I wear them still, too. (They have separate right and left socks! And feel wrong if you put them onto the incorrect feet.) You can put a Liner sock inside of another thin sock if you need more fabric between your feet and the boot. You can't thin out a fat sock if your feet have gotten bigger than they were to start with.

Undies: I took the fancy Ex Officio panties, which are made of mesh. You don't want to sweat on your rump while hiking in these panties. They chafe. I wish I had taken my tried and true Breathe by Barely There ones--I can't even find this brand any more, but they're wonderful!--as I think they would have dried just as fast, and they aren't scratchy mesh, they're some jersey-like knit instead. Bras became an issue immediately. And I had taken two of the same model, a sturdy sports bra with Velcro-adjustable straps. The bra straps put up a territorial fight with the pack straps, hurt like the dickens, and were working on making a pressure sore on one shoulder. I had to quit wearing a bra. I can't say that "free-boobing" across Spain was the most comfortable thing I ever did. (And I'm not huge.) But I skipped the bra starting on about day 2 and didn't start wearing a bra again until we got to Santiago and I could leave the pack sitting by the bed all day long. Shipped one of them home from Leon, even. You probably want something with thin straps that won't make a miserable lump under the weight of the strap on your shoulder, but I don't know which brand or style to suggest. Anyone who has solved this issue is welcome to chime in in the comments!

Thin, lightweight, quick-dry shirts: One would have been sufficient. I had a long-sleeved "fishing shirt" that had straps to keep the sleeves rolled up and also a short sleeved one. They're not hot, really, but they don't retain any warmth at all on the cold days. And spring in the Pyrenees is not like spring in Texas. It's about 20F degrees colder! Or more. We plant our tomato sets in February in South Texas, and we don't need to put caps on them. The days are generally warm then. (Sometimes we have a late frost and cover the transplants for a night.) In May in Spain, we saw new tomato sets in the gardens and they all had clear caps on them to build a little warmth in the day and keep the frost off at night. You should probably look at the latitude of your home and compare it to the latitude of northern Spain when considering the clothing issue. I bought a fleece long-sleeved shirt in Pamplona at Caminoteca and it became my best friend for the next several days. The last week and a half or so, I didn't need it at all. But that is what happens when you walk during the change of the seasons.

You can see the pink fleece from Pamplona here. Also, the camera is hanging from my chest strap. The hat is tucked into my belt, with its stampede string looped around the strap. These are the zip-off pants. They were fine. By this time, I had begun carrying my water bottle in my waist pouch. I can't reach it when it's in the side pocket of the pack.

Jacket: I got a little don't-hit-me-green rain jacket from the clearance rack at the San Antonio REI store. My sweetie got the packs-into-its-own-pouch rain jacket from Sports Authority in the next town over from us. We layered these over our other shirts. Sometimes over more than one shirt.

You see the green jacket here, and the sticks. This was on Day One, the Route Napoleon. The pants are a pair of gray exercise tights, that got a hole in the back of the leg when I sat on the grass that day. They were PJ pants after that for a while, and then I tossed them.

Hat: I got a green hiking hat from Amazon and my sweetie picked up a bone-colored fishing hat from either Academy or Sports Authority. We wore them a lot! They had adjustable strings, so we could tuck them up under our chins against the wind snatching them, and they were squashable if we wanted to fold them or stick them into the pack.

Pilgrim water fountain at Estella. My sweetie's camera case is much smaller than mine. He's wearing a "fishing shirt" and zip-off pants and his hat.

Climbing the 12-degree slope to the top of the mesa after Burgos. The "fishing shirt" with the sleeves rolled down here, the hat, and that bright green bit is the rain jacket, tucked behind as it got too warm. Stick in carry loop on pack.

Rain poncho: We both had blue taffeta rain ponchos, the kind that have extra length to cover our packs. They have hoods with draw strings. The taffeta rustles. When I have it on, and the hood up, I can't hear anything behind me. I think this was a frustrating thing for faster walkers behind me during the early days. (I often stepped to the side at the next wide spot in the path to wave the faster ones on. It's just neighborly, after all.) I wore my hat under the hood of the poncho to keep the rain off my glasses. That worked out well.

Leaving Roncesvalles, with poncho, hat, and sticks. The monastery had a molded-concrete walk leading to the path.

Sleeping bag liner: This was useful. I didn't always tuck myself into it, because it was a bag and I had to worm myself into it after getting into the sleeping bag (which unzipped) and then straighten out the sleeping bag afterwards. But it did serve nicely as a pillow, and because it had a pillow extension at the top, it covered the pillows on-hand in albergues. I didn't sleep on the pillows without something. Often I pulled th sleeping bag up enough to cover the pillow. Then I tucked my camera and waist pouch into the foot of the bag to keep the weight of the sleeping bag from pressing on my toes. (Purple toes make you think of things like that.)

Sticks: My sticks paid for themselves the first two days. But after that, I concluded that they were too much for me to coordinate and were slowing me down. I had to find firm footing not only for my two feet but also for my two stick ends. People differ on this issue. But on the first day, buffeted by the tropical storm force cross winds on the steep downhill paths, the sticks paid for themselves. I'm glad I had them, even though they spent much of the trip in their little carry-loops on the sides of my pack.

Camera: My sweetie's camera fit into a pocket. Mine didn't. I probably should have had one like his. Mine was basically a cube shaped blob in its case. You can see it sometimes hanging from my chest strap in the pictures. 

Batteries: I brought swap batteries for our cameras (one each) and if the charge ran low in a cathedral, we swapped out to the fresh battery. We then charged the empty one that night or at the first opportunity with the 3-outlet travel plug. (I got that from Amazon for about $7. And then I wrote my initials on it.) We only carried one cell phone and its battery, in case we should fall and break a leg or something drastic like that, and we didn't use it from when we left the US to when we got back there again. And because my touch screen Storm BB kept trying to turn on inside the pack--jostled by stuff--I took the battery out of the phone and kept them together in their Ziplock bag in the bottom of the pack. After the second time I had to recharge the darned thing. I also used the travel plug to recharge the Kindle battery. I just plugged the proprietary charger into the travel plug. My sweetie had brought camera cable (the USB thingie to get the pictures out with) but we shipped that home from Leon, too.

Ziplock bags. Yes! But if you use it for your travel-soap bar, it will get worn and torn from all the opening and manipulation at the shower. So have an extra. The groceries in Spain do sell sandwich sized plastic bags, but I didn't notice whether they have waterproof closures or not.

And this post is really long, so I'll stop here for today.

Madrid Food

Hello, everyone.

As you can see from the title, I am combining the Food subject with the Madrid series. I can do that, because since we had several days to explore the old part of Madrid, we ate new food there, too. :-)

We walked around the the area of our hostel--I think the floor we stayed on was an allied hostel managed by Hotel Marlasca--we smelled the most wonderful smell coming from an open window at a corner. What was that?!? Yum! We had already gone past, so we tracked that corner down later and discovered Casa del Abuelo. Which actually has two locations, covering two sides of this tiny intersection.

And the wonderful, delicious, garlicky smell? Gambon al ajillo. We went in. We watched the old man making it, right by the open window, on the small gas stove. We bought a couple plates of it and enjoyed it immensely. And we decided to figure it out when we got home. Even though our stove is electric, not gas, and we would be guessing on the lovely seasoning that he added. (The garlic mixture.) I'll save further detail on that one for a future cooking report, because I don't have a picture to show y'all.

We also tried tapa with "eels" which were tasty. We found them again in the Mercado San Miguel and discovered to our surprise that the gulas aren't actually tiny eels. They're specially prepared pieces of a larger fish. The stand selling them at the Mercado had a whole explanatory sign bragging about how they only use the highest quality cod for their gulas.

I do have pictures of some of the yummies (totally a word!) at Mercado San Miguel. First, the reason it's called that:

I didn't get a lot of photos in this church, because that was the day I'd zipped off the bottom half of my pant legs. I don't feel comfortable just waltzing into a church in shorts like that, resembling somebody on the way to a picnic. It feels disrespectful. But about a block or so later we encountered a large pavilion-style modern building in a stone plaza. It bore the title Mercado de San Miguel.

I supposed you could call it a tourist attraction. It might be more correct to call it a "food court" that had been added to the ancient plaza area, all glass and decorated with awnings to keep the sun off. Inside it we found lovely glasses of gazpacho--perfect for walking on a warm day--and lots of other booths with good food. We tried the mixed olives plate (I love olives dressed simply with olive oil!) from the olive both and a glass from the wine booth. Met nice tourists from the US, of all places, to share our olives with. On another visit we tried the fresh cheese tapas (there was a cheese tapa booth) and that was lovely also.  I want to go back to Madrid some day and eat all of these at least once:

While strolling Madrid,  I also tried the summer wine punch Tinto de Verano. It is lovely, red and cool with some fruit to it. It is lighter than straight-up wine. In some bars, you ask for that and they give you another wine based punch (Sangria?) that isn't so light, but it's all right too.

I will have more on Madrid tomorrow (museums, I think.) And my sweetie has hinted that he might do a guest post, as we two have serious disagreements about the famous painting "Guernica."

Spanish food

Hello, everyone.

It always seems like one of the big highlights of a trip is trying out new foods. The ones I like, I try to figure out how to make.

On our Camino, we tried a lot of Spanish wines. The tempranillos (a red grape variety) were good. I also enjoyed the Spanish albarinos and verdejos. (Apologies for not putting the curly-cue enye character in there. I have no idea if it can be done in Blogger.) These latter two are white wines.

Generally our day schedule, once we figured out what we were doing, was to crawl out of bed really early and walk for an hour or two. The first bar or restaurant that was open got our business: cafe leche (hot milk, whipped, with strong coffee in about equal proportions) and bocadillo. Later on we'd have more coffee. And when we stopped for the day, we'd find ourselves having a glass of wine and tapas.

We heard a lot about Menu del Peregrino and Menu del Dia before we went, and we tried a number of them. We finally concluded that it was just too much food at one time for us. Sometimes we remembered to take pictures of the food.

Pretty chocolate cake in Burgos

Galician-style cheese, Serrano ham slices, and bread. The cheese is very creamy.

Torta de Santiago (tastes a lot like marzipan,because it's made mostly with almonds and sugar)

Fresh sardines, grilled and salted, were wonderful with slices of bread and a glass of white wine

The breakfast at Ages albergue (shown before)--this was a huge one, but otherwise it was typical for a Spanish breakfast

And on to Madrid

Hello, everyone.

We enjoyed our night in Salamanca very much. It would be neat to go there again someday. Final Salamanca pictures:

This was the music stand in the choir of the church. All the choir members gathered around it. The wood in the background is the carved seating for the choir. All of this is at the back of the church. The big cathedrals all had these, some in the middle and some at the very back.

This is one of the old music books. They all had to share the one, so it was really, really big.

We got on the express bus to Madrid for our final stop in Spain--this time for several days. There are huge tunnels going into Madrid. I didn't realize there were that many steep hills surrounding the city area. After the tunnels, we rode for a while longer before we got to the bus station. Then we started walking toward the center of the city. It didn't take as long as we expected, even though we were on midday sidewalks the whole way. We wore our hats to keep the sun off.

We thought this building looked neat.

Oh boy! Hams.

We stayed in Madrid the remaining days until our departure from Spain. I will break the pictures up between multiple posts, as we saw several museums and other neat things. We stayed at a pension in the old city area--but very close to the Plaza del Sol. There is a subway (metro) station there that is rounded and made of glass pieces and looked to me like nothing so much as a giant queen ant. Unfortunately, we don't seem to have been carrying a camera when we were near it!
I will do more Madrid pictures in my next post. After that, I might take a break to talk about food before concluding the Madrid series.

The train, the train

Hello, everyone.

When we (finally) got to the bus station in Santiago, we didn't really have a plan anymore. We had known that we would have a few days at the end, but it seemed best not to tie ourselves down. We didn't know when we'd get to Santiago. At first, we hadn't even known for sure if we'd go to Fisterra afterwards, and if we did, whether we'd walk there or catch a bus ride.

As you all know, we rode the bus, both there and back.

And we located the train station in Santiago, while looking for a place to stay. Then we found the Hotel Horreo, on the street between the Old City area and the train station and settled our packs down for the night.

We went to the train station and talked to the Information desk man. "How do we get to Salamanca?"
He hmmm'd and said, "most people, what they do is to take the train to Zavala, then take the bus from Zavala to Salamanca." So that's what we decided to do.

I thought the wood stacked up for loading at the station was neat.

The Spanish train was very comfortable. I sat in the wrong seat, because my brain wasn't working well, but my seatmate wasn't all perturbed about it. (Each of us slept most of the way anyway.) When the train got to Zavala, we were the only ones who got off. We walked about a block to the bus station and bought tickets to Salamanca.  I saw parts of the Camino trail alongside the way during the day's travel. That would be the Via de la Plata I think. It's a different walking route to Santiago. (There are about 8 different routes. They all have names.)

Just because!

The main plaza. At evening, the restaurants all put big screen TV's out so their outside patrons could enjoy the game along with their tapas.

Salamanca is the home of the oldest, or maybe the second oldest, university in the entire world. It was started by Catholic religious.  The city is still a college town. The library is in a centuries-old stone building that has been continuously used for that all along. They have internet-connected computers for the patrons, too. As you might have expected, the main square has about a dozen ice cream shops.

We got a room very close to the bus station--twin beds and very cozy, but pleasant. And I had some fantastic tapas at one of the restaurants on the square. Serrano ham, fig, cheese--yum! Also some chipirito squid tapa, with the ham for an accent. Yum!

And of course my sweetie went up into the bell tower and climbed every single ladder that was open so he could take pictures. Check out the cool bells!

We took a bus this time

Hello, everyone.

Bright and early on Tuesday morning, we left the key in the apartment and walked over to the bus station. It isn't far, expecially if you have just come off of about a month of 10-mile-plus days. Food, drinks, papers? Maybbe a little, but not much. Ticket sales? Yes. Bathrooms? Well, they weren't anything to jump for joy at, but they were there. 2-hour express bus to Fisterra? You got it.

And we got it. The road the bus took to Fisterra isn't quite like a backwoods Ozark 2 lane "highway", but it's close. We saw parts of the Fisterra hiking trail too--there is a recognized extension to the Camino going there, and one going to Muxia as well. (It takes about 4 or 5 days to walk from Santiago to either of these places.) There were lots of towns, and the bus stopped at them, if anyone wanted to get off. We passed lots of salt water inlets and observed large wooden square frames floating on the surface. We later learned that these are mussel farms. The mussels grow on ropes hanging down in the cold Atlantic water.

About 10:30 we rolled into downtown Fisterra. Well, as downtown as a cute little fishing village on the Atlantic coast gets, anyway. There was a crowd of people when we got out, gathering hteir luggage from the belly of the bus, handing out pamphlets on lodging, waiting to board the bus, or just being there. I felt some woman handing me a pamphlet and said "Gracias" and pocketed it, then another hand gave me another and I did the same thing. Then I was at the opening in the bus and taking my pack.

After we had our packs, we sat down to drink a coffee in the restaurant across the street and look over our travel information and the pamphlet collection. We settled on the first one I had gotten, a green one, and set out to find it. There was nothing that looked even close along the harbor front. We tried wandering up a side street and gave that up for hopeless. Then we went back to the bus stop area in hopes that we'd see the woman who had handed me the pamphlet and could ask directions. Nobody was at the bus stop. As we wandered along the street and passed by the grocery store, we saw a lady standing outside it. She looked over at our hands and said, "este es mi pension." Then she walked us over there, telling us about the town points of interest as she went. One that she mentioned was the tiny fishing museum.

The museum has a fishing boat, with actual nets and a pair of manikins dressed in fishing clothes.

The man at the fishing museum told us how the nets are treated and how the fishermen catch octopus (in traps) and sardines. He had a conch horn and he demonstrated how the families would blow it to get the fishermen's attention. It was fascinating. He told us that Sardine Eating Season had begun that day, and the sardines would be at their best, fat and tasty.

Of course we had to try the fresh sardines after that.

We had a plate of sardines (sardinias de Fisterra, so they are really fresh!) on St. John's Day. They were great. We enjoyed them so much, we forgot to make a photo until we had half of them eaten!

The town has a small tidal beach. It's not a sunbathing area, the water is much too cold and the beach is only there when the tide is out. We were astounded at how clear the water was and how many fish of all sizes could be seen swimming in it.

Low tide at Fisterra. Boats resting on the beach,
waiting for the water to come back.

High tide at Fisterra. The ocean water is crystal-clear here.

The zero marker.

 We hiked out to the lighthouse at the point to see the zero-kilometer marker. There was a small but steady stream of people going there. (They even had an RV parking lot!) We saw tthe little souvenir stand, but we didn't feel like adding any weight to our packs.

The lighthouse at Fisterra. It still works.

At the very tip of the point, below the lighthouse, some people come and burn clothing.

We spent one, restful, night in Fisterra. The next morning we caught a bus back to Santiago. This time, we weren't on the express bus. It took three hours and stopped in every collection of more than 5 houses on the way. Lots of people got on and off, too. When we got back to Santiago, we located the train station and a hotel. After renting a room for the night, we walked to the train station and bought tickets for the next stage of our exploration. This post is getting long, so that will have to wait until next time.

Santiago exploration

Hello, everyone.

We took a few days to rest in Santiago.

We got our Compostela certificates right away, of course. And we strolled through the downtown area and looked around.

We saw buskers (musicians playing with a basket--these ones did NOT want their pictures taken) and we saw a few costumed characters. Not many of either. We saw the tourist tram.

View of the Cathedral plaza with tram. Note that some in picture have just gotten into town on their feet, and are still wearing backpacks and shells.

We gazed at the many religious statues and carvings.

Santiago Matamoros

The Adoration chapel

Our Lady

We had begun having sandwiches instead of restaurant dinners--less fuss and bother, fit better with our eating and sleeping schedule. And we found a little grocery store and bought cheese and Serrano ham and bread and wine.
Tomorrow's post will be about our visit to Fisterra.