Day 3 Making lemonade.

We got off to a good start. Nicole fell in love with the cats just outside Case Baztan.
We stopped for coffee in the next town, Maneru. Then I realized I had forgotten to leave the room key from last night. So I had to call a cab to go back to Urtega, and while waiting for the cab, the café had finished making the first tortilla of the day, and it was warm and delicious! It's probably the best tortilla of our trip! After we took the cab back to Urtega, I had the driver take us to the Eunate church at Maneru to make up for lost time.

Most of the walk was through fields and shaded areas except around Puente De La Reina. The highlight of the day for me was stopping to see the Eunate octagon church in Maneru. No one really knows the origin of it. Some say it was the Templars who built it.

Puent de la Reina means Queen's bridge. The bridge there was built by a Queen of Navarre in the Middle ages. It was for the pilgrims walking the Camino. Nobody remembers which queen, though.

We mistakenly thought all the tough up hills were behind us, but the walk up to Cirauqui was tough! We stopped in the town just before to rest and have a well-deserved beer.

Cirauqui is on top of a not so little hill itself. At one point, we saw a sign that said Casa Maralotx was 200 m further away. After waking there, I think it meant 200m vertically! Literally, it was at the top of the Camino in town. Dinner again was great. Joanne and Paul stayed at the same place, and we met a bunch of other wonderful pilgrims, both before and during the communal dinner. Dinner was vegetarian: chick pea stew and may have been the best communal meal of the trip. I made a sketch, too!Read more