St. Jean Pied de Port, FR

A day of synchronicity and serendipity. Everything that could go wrong...didnt. Everything that could go right, went better. The train ride from Madrid to Pamplona was smooth and on time. The one thing that had been weighing on my mind--my forgetting to pre-arrange our cab to France--worked out smoother than hoped.
After getting off of the train in Pamploa I immediately ran outside to see if I could find a taxi van that someone else had prebooked. Since its Sunday, I wasnt hopeful.

The vans hold 6 passengers and frequently pilgrims will book them ahead for themselves and hope that passengers getting off of the train that are heading for the camino and looking for transportation will jump in and split the cost.
This is what our plan was. This was what I forgot to do.

Outside I found our brand new friends-for-life Jose and Maria with Juan their van driver. They happily added us 4 to their van and we made our way north merrily singing camp songs...well, not really singing, but all of the languages being spoken at once certainly filled the air with joyful noise, and Juan kept us entertained the whole way with his wealth of area knowledge and Camino lore.

It was a day of camino magic.

The camino provides.

After a great lunch in St Jean we made our way to the pilgrim office, got our credentiales, our first stamps and our shells.

Posted by JimRead more