As our children were born we established some new traditions. Each Christmas I bought a Time Magazine Year in Review, presenting each child when in their 20's a stack of world history since their birth. When I turned 30, C and I celebrated with a bottle of wine from the year of my birth from…

The budget question is probably the most common question asked of us, followed by the weight loss question. As for the latter C lost 3lbs and I'm not weighing myself. The bottom line is you eat like a horse on the Camino in order to keep up your energy. Another woman from Vancouver said that…

We continue to shed the cocoon of our Camino experience. Chuck in Santiago: Chuck now: He concedes that he's more comfortable this way. We did a 12k day yesterday to enjoy the beach and the Pablo Casals museum in Sant Salvador. My mother was a huge fan as cellist/conductor Casals had strong ties to Puerto…

So, you're thinking about doing the Camino de Santiago, or you don't want to do it but you're curious. Here are some suggestions and what I wish I'd have known ahead of time: 1. Almost everyone I talked to on the Way agreed with me – it's harder than they were expecting terrain-wise. The only…

The relationship is a little complicated. Stay with me. We're staying in a house that belongs to a former coworker, whose family were from El Vendrell, a Catalonian town with a population of 36,000. Family members still live here and one cousin recently spent some time in Vancouver. We were invited to that cousin's parent's…

We've had the luxury of a slow re-entry back to regular life. We've arrived in El Vendrell, Spain, where we recovered from jetlag prior to the Camino, in a house generously loaned to us by a former coworker. The familiarity was comforting after almost two months. Coming back to our two suitcases filled with stuff…

I'll be posting on the practical aspects like SIM cards and expenses, but first basic reflections with some pretty pictures of Mallorca. Large touristy cities are not for me, but thanks to a good public transit system we explored the Cueves del Drach (Dragon Caves) and pretty pockets of beaches. It never occurred to us…

This morning C brought me breakfast in bed, which included an ensaïmada, a pastry famous on Mallorca, but supposedly not replicated elsewhere. People have tried but they never seem to turn out well whether it's due to the type of flour, the sea air or differences in the "mother" dough. Or perhaps it's a key…

Cluelessly we took an early bus back to Santiago. Clueless as we thought we were trying to get to the airport for a 5:00 flight and we weren't aware that the bus wasn't an express. Both errors worked out well as the bus took the beautiful coastal route and arrived in plenty of time to…

A beautiful morning walk took us to the lighthouse at Finisterre, where some pilgrims choose to end their pilgrimage three or four days past Santiago. It's generally a place of serious reflection, but today's mood was somber. The area was crawling with National Guard, police and news crews due to yesterday's incident involving a missing…