A Day on the Camino de Santiago

 On Sunday, September 11th, we started our five-mile walk on the Camino at the Alto del Perdón, the Height of Forgiveness, where a 1996 metal sculpture shows twelve figures from over the many centuries that the pilgrimage has been in existence.

It was a nice walk, even though the temperature was in the 90s.  We were asked to do it quietly and mindfully, though we ran into a group of Italians along the way!  They were doing the whole trip from St.-Jean, plus beyond Compostela to the ocean, and had just counted the 100th of their 800 kilometers.  They had me carry one of their packs for a few minutes--it was amazingly light.  I think I  could have gotten accustomed to carrying it for 500 miles!  When I gave the pack back they said that now I was a vero peregrino, a true pilgrim.

We made two rest stops along the way, in the villages of Uterga and Muruzabal.  In the latter, Sunday mass was just getting out, so we visited the church, and heard part of choir practice.

Toward the end, we saw a recently burned-over area.  This year, much of Europe has suffered from extraordinary heat and drought, leading to wildfires.

Finally, we arrived at the 12th-century pilgrimage church of Our Lady of Eunate, about whose origins nothing is known.  A man was playing the guitar and singing, beautifully.  It sounded like a medieval hymn, in Basque,

After our walk with our ancestors on the pilgrims' Way, sitting there, with the music, before a beautiful, smiling statue of mother and child, felt exactly right and in connection with the love at the heart of things, even though, as it turned out, the statue is a modern copy of the stolen original.

Time for lunch, at a winery.

After lunch we drove to San Sebastian.  We had been looking forward to this city, recommended by friends and known for its beautiful site on a bay, as well as for its culinary and musical delights.  After the tour, we agreed that we felt a little let-down.  It may have been in part that the weather was mostly dreary while we were there, but San Sebastian is, in essence, a nineteenth-century beach resort and seems less vivid than Pamplona or, especially, Bilbao.

Mary Joy and I went to mass again in the evening at the Cathedral. where we heard the largest organ in Spain, built in 1954.  The church itself is nineteenth-century Gothic Revival.  

We joined some of the others to see the sunset, around the peninsula from our hotel (Hotel Parma).

We went for pintxos, but had trouble figuring out the system at the place we went, until we were helped by another couple on our tour.  Unlike in Pampona, you were seated by a waiter, who gave you a sheet where you checked off what you wanted by its number on the display counter.  Once we figured it out, we had a good, light meal.