Planes, trains and automobiles…
Hola from Pamplona! It is 1:30am here and I can’t sleep so I thought now would be a good time to catch you all up on how it is going so far.
Our journey started with a mind boggling “cab” ride to Detroit Metro Airport. Our driver pulled up to the bottom of our driveway and we were standing at the top of the driveway with all of our luggage. He proceeded to look at us, then literally sat there and picked his nose for 35 seconds. 35 seconds is a long time to watch some digging around their sinus cavity with their pinky. Especially when it is a pinky attached to a hand that is presumably about to handle your luggage. After an uncomfortable staring contest, of which there were no winners, we wheeled our luggage down to the van and he opened the back and a pile of ratty boxes fell out. We managed to get our stuff in and then made our way to the back seat. The word “filthy” doesn’t even begin to describe it. I am pretty sure Rich and I need a tetanus shot after that ride. Thankfully we got to DTW and the weirdest cab ride is now a distant memory. (Will amend this post if we do in fact wind up with tetanus).
We flew United and our route was DTW to Washington Dulles to Barcelona. If all had gone to plan we would have landed in Barcelona at 8am which would have given us ample time to get to Olga’s, unload some travel items and repack our gear and then make our 2:30pm train to Pamplona. Well our flight from Washington was delayed by 3.5 hours and it was a comedy of errors. First the gate agents kept saying that the plane was at a another gate and would be towed to our gate “in about fifteen minutes”. They made this announcement about 8 times. Once we got on the plane, the pilot told us there was a small “mechanical issue” that would be fixed in “about 15 minutes”. She made this announcement 3 times. Then she says “well folks, nothing is going to happen our way today. The mechanical issue is fixed and we are ready to go but there is now a computer problem and we can’t print the required paperwork for takeoff”. After an hour of this they opened the cabin doors and let people off if they wanted, which is never a good sign. We stayed on the plane and at one point a crew member was trying to explain to us how it was a simple IT problem and they were working on hand writing the necessary paperwork. I found the explanations to be quite ridiculous. Kind of like the stories kids make up when they don’t want their parents to know exactly how dumb they were. All I could picture was a blinking “PC LOAD LETTER” error and some IT dude standing there looking perplexed.
We made it to Barcelona by noon and had to move pretty quickly to rearrange our gear and then get to the train station. We made it and 4 hours later got to Pamplona and checked in to our hotel for the night. Tomorrow we take a bus to St. Jean Pied de Port on the other side of the Pyrenees mountains in France. That is where we start our Camino.
I am going to try and sleep now. Sending you all lots of love ❤️
