The journey has its own rewards

WE MADE IT!! Saint Jean Pied de Port - or SJPP!

What a journey! We got to Spokane International at 10:00am on Thursday, 9/7, and arrived at our hotel in SJPP at 11:00am (Spokane time - 8:00pm France time,) on Saturday, 9/9. So, a total of 49 hours of travel. Phew! We are delighted to be here and looking forward to a day to catch up on sleep and rest tomorrow, before we begin our ascent on Monday, 9/11.

As I shared on FB earlier today, we met our first Camino angel, in this beautiful soul, Alexia! She was working at the front desk of our hotel when we arrived last night in Biarritz, close to midnight. When she learned of our long travel day and the CrAzY amount of luggage we had, she upgraded us to a supreme room rather than a standard, AND made sure that it was on the first floor so that we didn't have to schlepp our bags upstairs! You'd think that alone was enough to put her straight into angel status, but wait - there's MUCH more!

After settling into our room last night, Patrick and I finally realized that we had waaaay too much stuff with us! (This is incredibly embarrassing - it would have been nice if we had realized it in Spokane!) When we were getting ready, we knew that we were going to be using a pack service for the duffle bags with most of our belongings while on the Camino - my medications, C-PAP and raincoat alone, just about fill my backpack, AND, we are going to be tourists when we finish the Camino and go to Barcelona and Madrid for several days - so, we slowly started adding some creature comforts to our bags...an extra outfit here, a camping pillow there, and by the time we were done...WAY too heavy and we were both really out of sorts about it when we were trying to go to sleep! When we woke up this morning, we both said that we needed to SERIOUSLY edit what we were carrying and send it all on to Casa Ivar in Santiago at the end of the Camino. This gentleman has made a business of holding suitcases and boxes of items that pilgrims send ahead to him for the same reasons we are sending our stuff to him. He does very well and just opened another, bigger location near the cathedral. It's nice to know we aren't the only overpackers! 

Anyway, I digress... So, we did a BRUTAL edit of our things this morning and filled a duffel bag to send ahead. I'm not going to say how much it weighed but, lets just say it was more than 15 pounds and less than 30!!! Eeek! Here's where Angel Alexia came to our rescue, AGAIN! Since it was a Saturday, none of the locations from which we could send our duffle to Ivar, were open! The post office, Fedex, UPS, and a couple other companies I'd never heard of, were all closed! After she made a couple of phone calls (in French), and did some research on the computer (also in French) the beautiful Alexia helped us to set up an on-line account with La Poste - the Postal Service of France - and helped us to pay for the shipping (with tracking,) AND, get this - SHE offered to take it to the Post Office for us on Monday! She was insistent that it was no big deal and she would be happy to do it! Can you believe that?? We didn't have it in us to carry our backpacks and schlepp a 3rd bag around with us for two more days. I'm afraid many of our items would have found their way to the garbage can! God bless you, Alexia!

Patrick made the comment that it was the kind of thing I did, so many times, when I worked at Nordstrom. Be a helper! I guess we built up some good karma! Thank you again, Alexia!

After giving Alexia a hug, we hurried off to the train station and our train from Biarritz to SJPP, via Bayonne. We missed our scheduled train by the hair on my chinny chin chin so, we did a lot of waiting in train stations today. 

However, WE ARE HERE and we are so happy to take you all along with us on this journey! 

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Much love and Buen Camino!