Day 35 Canfranc to Jaca, 19 km

What a blessedly easy day! No rush in the morning, slightly downhill almost all day. Wide, flat gravel path for hours. Quieter river! And coffee a little over halfway.

I’ve moved out of the big grey pointy mountains into smaller green ones. They remind me of Vermont but they are a bit more pointed at the top. Nothing in particular to say except that it was a really nice walk. A bit of rain, some clouds and some sun. It’s May Day and the path is really accessible, so there were a lot of people out. For the middle section of the days walk I took the alternate route on the south side of the river. It keeps you off the main road and is basically a gravel farm/forest track. But I am guessing that the other route has an earlier possibility of coffee.

I got to Jaca about 1:30. It’s a fair sized place with a ski town vibe around the edges — 4 story flats, guiding and gear shops and ads, ski shops. Just as I got to my hotel, a small bus sitting in front emptied out about 20 students and their grown-ups and suitcases. So I wandered around the block and came back about 10 minutes later. The lobby was still full of students. I waited another ten minutes and then gave up. The hotel
people were not going to interrupt the process of the one desk clerk registering each student - while the other desk clerk hovered. So I dropped my bag and went for my first Spanish clara (shandy) at a very busy sidewalk terrace outside a cafeteria.

I eventually got my room and spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to sort out return travel logistics. Getting out of Puenta La Reina is not easy! Every option involves multiple steps.

When I’d had enough of bus and train timetables, I walked into the centre of the town where May Day festivities were in full swing. Some streets were so crowded you could not walk through them. Bars playing very loud music. Did not feel like my scene. So I got an ice cream and made my way back to the more quiet outskirts, where I found a place that was serving food around 7:30! As I was finishing, the place was filling up with families and groups of friends in a way that is so, well, Spanish. Partly it’s that the groups are very often multi generational, that the decibel level is a bit higher than normal, that there is a lot of interaction and fun. It feels very different than what you would see in even a very crowded restaurant at home. It’s cool. I like it. But it does make eating by yourself in a restaurant feel weird. I am always the only person eating alone, which I don’t mind, but still!

I think I found a place that will open for coffee at 7:30 though I might have liked to leave earlier. No kettle in the hotel.

Tomorrow I go to the monasteries. For sone reason I had thought it would be a short day. I was wrong. The BBC whole thing will be 28 or 29 km. But some of those will be without a pack. I’ve booked a room in a hotel partway up the hill. I’ll go there, drop my pack, then go up to see the monasteries and then walk back down. It will be the most seeing of particular sites that I will have done for this whole trip!Baca lagi