Thursday, April 19, 2018

Spring 2017 Camino


Looking back at my blog I realized that I didn’t write about my trip to Spain in 2017,  which was the last 100 km from Sarria to Santiago.  It was a wonderful time and I learned a lot during that trip. 

Pilgrim Shell at Tour Saint-Jaques
 A few years back, after I had heard about the Camino, my sister Donna visited me and we got to talking about the Camino and how we wanted one day to walk it.  She had plans to walk with her daughter and I was going to walk with my friend. 

In the fall of 2016 I had a dream and woke with the feeling...a certainty, that God was telling me I needed to help Donna see her Camino dream come true.  Since there were already plans for her and another of our sister's to come to Europe to visit, adding a trip to Spain seemed easy enough.  So I went about putting the plan into action.  After some effort and a change in flights, we decided that we would walk the last 100 km during Holy Week, walking into Santiago on Easter Day 2017.   

Before we headed on our Camino adventure, we first had a wonderful vacation with our sister Audrey, in which we traveled to Paris, France.  While in Paris we took the time and searched out the Tower of Saint James, Tour Saint-Jacques, an historical meeting place for pilgrims in the French capital.  It was here at the Tower that many pilgrims through out the ages began their pilgrimage.


Tour Saint-Jacque
After our wonderful time in France, we headed back to Germany to spend time with family and pack for our camino. Then we were off to Munich for our early morning flight to Santiago. We were excited that our trip was finally here, and yes, were also apprehensive as to what adventures awaited us.  This was Donna's first trip to Spain, and that did add to the apprehension as well.  

Cookie on plane tray
Our plan was to fly to Santiago and then take the bus to Sarria and begin our walk from there. We were able to get a direct flight from Munich.  When we boarded the flight we were given a German style cookie, which was quite large.  We did our best to translate what was on the cookie and then the flight attendant let us know that this was the first non-stop flight on Lufthansa from Munich to Santiago!  We saw this as the first of many surprises on our journey! It was a wonderful souvenir, especially with the date on it, but with one draw back. The cookie was very heavy! We also were concerned how we would keep it nice.  These cookies are more to look at than to eat,  so we did our best to pack it away. 

We were now officially on our way to making our Camino Dream a reality......








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