Caminos Aragonés and Viejo

It was a lovely morning for walking, not too hot with a little breeze. I went straight from the parador back to the Camino, rather than trying to figure out a shortcut. I have had some pretty bad luck with shortcuts, so why tempt fate.

Every little village had a church. Some were originally Romanesque, and there were some beautiful exterior windows or columns around the door. Others had clearly been used in military defense, because the only windows were tiny and way up high, except for some of those slats that soldiers shot arrows through. I learned on my church tour that this entire area was constantly going back and forth between Navarra and Castilla. Castilla finally won out in the early 1500s.

I met a man working in the fields this morning. He was surprised that I couldn’t identify the plant, and first told me it was acelgas (celery). He seemed dumbfounded that I would believe that, when in reality it was a huge field of beets (remolacha). They sell the whole crop to a company that makes sugar out of it. And then he added, “I don’t really care if they make sugar out of it or if they throw it in the ocean, as long as they buy it from me.” Though he had plenty of reason to be grouchy (he was lame, and had one bad arm), he cheerfully told me that he always had to go through the field after they applied the weed killers, because there were always some that escaped the spray. None of the young people in his family would ever deign to do something like this, so it was up to the “cojo anciano .”

The entrance into the city is as uninspiring as I remembered it. Huge apartment blocks one after the other with nothing on the ground floor. I don’t understand this method of building. Spain knows how to make neighborhoods, by having stores and cafés on the ground level with apartments above them. Playgrounds interspersed. New construction like this just create a wasteland. But once you get past it, you are in a really nice city.

I’m in the hotel that my Camino buddy Jenny recommended, the Nirea. Great location, and in fact it’s a stone’s throw from a pintxos place that another friend recommended to me, Perretxico.

I have had a few hours walking around the old part of town and the more modern commercial district. There are a couple of museums I would like to visit, but it’s Monday! I’ve hunted down a few of the painted facades and walls that have become quite the tourist attraction and had some agua con gás on a pretty tree-lined pedestrian street. On a whim, I entered a noodle shop and had a very good meal. Spain is really branching out!

I have some stage planning to do tonight. It looks like I will have an unavoidable 38K stage with a fair amount of elevation, so I think I’ll take a few slow days before that. And as luck would have it, another heat wave arrives tomorrow. Low 90s some days this week, yuck! But now, some pintxos before bed.Read more