Reunion in Pamplona

Well, to continue the saga of my lone travels and eating, as you saw in the photos of yesterday I did venture out and had a lovely meal at the bar opposite, where I went with Cathy and Margaret in September…very nice, and had a bit of a wander after but felt fairly fuzzy to came back and had early night…so slept early-ish maybe 9-9.30, but woke up at midnight with a bit of an itch and thought not nearly intense enough for a bedbug…but it was ☹️☹️.. I finally got up and found one, and then another under the pillow…so slept the rest of the night with light on and eye shades…so annoying as I get these huge itchy welts…and the room was spotless, and such a great place…but people bring them in.
Anyway, woke really early and finally gave in at about 5.30 and did wordle and fiddled and diddled till about 7-7.30 when I ventured out to see if anywhere open for breakfast…and after a wander and inspection found a jamon shop which made delicious jamon and cheese baguettes and I had one for there and one to take for lunch in the bus (each was 1/2 baguette size)…so got to the bus station - the metro card worked, and the metro journey so easy, but was glad I’d allowed time to work out a potentially complicated estacion de autobuses because it was! Finally with the help of kind people and info people I was on the right bus, left on the dot and arrived on the dot at Soria - very small unremarkable town with, thank goodness, a simple bus station, when we arrived there was just one other bus there which was the Pamplona bus. Perfect. And after about 2 more hours arrived here on the dot. Though I’ve been to Pamplona 3 times before, never the bus station, but found myself underground in complicated complex, with no immediately obvious exit etc…the other bus passengers seemed to have dispersed and was wondering whether to head towards taxis, then saw an escalator leading up to daylight, so decided to see where that led, and as I was sailing up, heard a yell and there were Rachel and Richard sailing down!! They’d come to meet me!! So excited and happy to see them…and what a miracle we did coincide like that - it was meant to be!

So we had a lovely afternoon wandering a little and retracing the real pilgrims route in as they had come in the river route as had Amr and I 3 years ago. We had met about 3.45 so it was late afternoon and at about 6, after a spell back in our rooms which are right opposite each other, we went out and after a bit I led R and R to a favourite place which at that time was crowded round the bar, but tables beyond fairly empty so we took a table and ordered drinks and tapas from the bar…lovely…had a second round of tapas and then I showed our busy but friendly waitress/bartender a photo of me there in 2018 with an amazing ensalada mixta and she said we could have one and brought us the most delicious one (I didn’t think the kitchen was doing meals yet as it was only 7 and restaurants don’t open till 8…anyway, by the time we left at about 8 the place was so full we could hardly squeeze through the crowd and our table was immediately taken. It’s Saturday night in Pamplona…So that is all I can remember. And I think I’ve been very long winded about it…tomorrow we all rest and explore…R&R of course walked in today from Zubiri and had barely checked into their room and relaxed before they came to meet me, so they need a well earned day of rest after crossing the Pyrenees by the high route!

Will add pics, but forgot to airdrop with Rach, so just have mine.Read more