Distance traveled: 17 km

We got started early given that none of us were really sleeping anyway. We were all grumpy from the sleep deprivation, but pretty soon we were laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the snoring situation during the night. At least we were all in it together! Putting up with snoring is a classic and unavoidable part of the Camino experience.

We had a wholly pleasant walk together all the way to Nájera. We walked among grape vines for quite a while and, understanding that it was okay to do so, sampled a few. The type of grapes used for wine a pretty different from those we typically eat, but they were still pretty good, and it was fun to eat them straight off the vine! (No harm done from ingesting a bit of dust, either.) The landscape afterwards was beautiful.

Around mid-morning, since there hadn’t been another place to stop for a coffee or snack, we took advantage of a few picnic tables next to the trail and had a little outdoor party. Agnes, being the star that she is, had brought along a bottle of what is essentially the Spanish equivalent of Bailey’s Irish Cream, and we figured… why not?

We arrived in Nájera about half an hour before the albergue would start letting people check in, so I took advantage of its location right next to the river and went to soak my feet again. The water was pretty chilly, but it felt SO good!

We all experienced an uncharitable but justified period of anxiety when our snoring roommate from the night before also appeared in front of our albergue. We couldn’t handle two nights like that in a row! Luckily, we ended up in two semi-private rooms split among ourselves. (And while a few people in our group snored, we were all able to deal with normal snoring!)

Nájera has some interesting history and, as I recall, there’s a chapel in a cave somewhere in that red stone cliff that you see in the picture above. I didn’t go to look at any of this, but Kim and Chuck said it was cool. Instead, I sorted through all of my stuff and identified a few things I could afford to part with, which I took to a post office to mail back to Paris.

Agnes, Kim, Chuck, and I had a really great dinner that evening. My meal included stuffed peppers and some type of local fish, both expertly prepared by our waiter’s sister. I should note that the food on the Camino was markedly better during the first two weeks as we approached Burgos. I think almost all of my memorable meals (before Santiago, where the food is outstanding) were in the first two weeks. After Burgos, things become more formulaic… but we’ll get to that later.

We enjoyed a much more restful night, which was good – the next day would be a substantially longer walk than I’d done in several days, and I also planned to start wearing my backpack again. It turned out to be one of the most important days of the Camino in terms of people I met, as well!