Spring glimpses from Gros Morne

Mobile blogging on my iPod...so apologies for the lousy formatting!

In honour of the amazing long weekend of sun and warm weather, I thought I'd post a few shots from the past few weeks. I've joined an online running program (yay Up and Running...check it out if you're female and want an awesome supportive program to learn running!) and usually do my runs around Berry Head Pond, so you'll see a few trail shots!

Tomorrow is the Euro Cup final. Go Spain! So I'm having a glorious weekend in Corner Brook with cousin Rex, having a few gin and tonics and getting ready to watch the match. I hope you're also having a great weekend wherever you are!

-K-

Back in the Game!

Yes...it's been a long time since I've posted here. And yes...I promised pictures of Ireland which I have yet to deliver. But it's a new month, (almost) a new season, and a new start for Take 5 (there's now a jazz combo playing in my head). So...to restart, because it's sunny, because I'm newly motivated and all is right with my little world, here are some pictures from my recent adventures around Gros Morne. And I promise to post some of those older photos too...maybe we'll institute a retro-Friday? Let me know what you think. And maybe we'll see if Cuz will reanimate her photo blog too....

Welcome back, friends!

-K-

PS...so, I posted this original post using Blogger on my iPod...which is problematic, since I can't format or add picture captions.  So, then I tried to fix it using Internet Explorer...which new Blogger doesn't like. No go there.  So, here's hoping the third time's the charm...and I can figure out a way of posting what I want to post without waiting for a week to fix it up.

Girls' Night Out!  We went shopping, had dinner, and saw Snow White and the Huntsman.
Thanks, lovely ladies!  We are definitely doing this again!

I walk this route almost every evening.  And almost every evening lately, it's been BEAUTIFUL!
I'm so luck to live in such an amazing place.  And apologies on the pic....
iPods were not meant for photo taking, especially when walking at a brisk pace.

Also from my evening rambles.  This is just down the road from my house

Prince Charming :D
I saw this little guy while walking around Berry Head Pond.
Actually, I almost walked on him.  I thought he might
be the only one, but then I saw hundreds of his siblings in the pond.
Welcome to Spring!

Adventures in Panorama.  Decided to experiment with the Panorama program
on my iPod.  Mostly failed.  This is the view from the back deck...awesome, right?

Friendly Friday

Hi everyone! Winter has made a return to western Newfoundland (blech) so my thoughts are once again turning to sunnier climes. Today is the last Friendly Friday from Spain! This post features pictures from our final trip on the Camino, to Finisterre. Our lovely travel companions Sinead and Patricia made our last few days in Spain amazing, and gave us a great send off at the bus to Santiago (which we actually missed but rumour has it there were some very appreciative and wavey Japanese tourists on the other side of the bus).

Finisterre was an amazing way to end our adventure- we had a wonderful time with the Lovely Ladies, a few final drinks, a lot of laughter and more than a few tears. We met up with Mark and Ayeleen, who had walked to Finisterre, and got to introduce them to Sinead and Patricia. It kind of brought things full circle!

So, without further ado, here are scenes from Finisterre, as far west as you can walk (or bus) in Europe as once thought to be one of the ends of the earth. And a fitting place to say goodbye to the Camino. Adios amigos! Next week it's on to the land of the shamrock.

-K-

Heading out from our hostel in Santiago. 
Jana and I were heading straight from Finisterre to the train station,
so we have all of our gear with us. 
Yes...this is the extent of my luggage for 40 days in Spain 
Yay for packing light!

The Ladies, splashing in the Atlantic. 
It was cold...
but no colder than Newfoundland in August.

We made it!  And we even all look pretty good in this picture!

Posing with ice cream at the lighthouse...
because every post needs a silly pose!

Angelita made it all the way too! 

Friendly Friday

Welcome back friends!  It's time for another installment of Friendly Friday, and today, as promised, we're focusing on Santiago!  Be prepared for some awful shots...with a lot of smiles!  Since there are quite a few, I've broken them into little groups:

First off, we've got the obligatory "pose in front of the Cathedral" shots- this is where we discovered lots of people we'd gotten separated from along the way.  Sadly we didn't get pictures with everyone (we turned around in our first few minutes in Santiago, and ran into Christian the Viking), but we did manage a few:

We found Marco!

This is Alex from Brazil

See--everyone made it safe and sound from the Cow Town pictured a few entries ago!

Marian, who gave us little salt and pepper shakers (really really little) and awesome supper companionship

Sarah, from Venezuela, walking into Santiago with Praline and Roland.  They made it too!

I may also have kissed the donkey.  There is no pictorial evidence of this.



Yeah...Angelita posed in front of the Cathedral too.  That's actually a horde of tourists, not pilgrims, surrounding her.

  The next batch of photos are from Girls Night Out!  Lindsey left Superdad to watch the soccer game, and we wandered the town.  We even found a carnival with cotton candy!  After weeks of pilgrim meals and pilgrim clothes, it was nice to be sort of dressy and have a few drinks.... This is the section of this post where picture quality goes noticeably downhill...I'm not sure whether to blame our relaxed attitude, or the sangria.

Me, Lindsey and Ayeleen.  There's another comparison shot where we stick our tongues out after eating the cotton candy.  Suffice it to say that our tongues are the colour of Lindsey's shirt.

Drinks and tapas, just the five girls (look closely...Angelita's here too)! 

This may mark the point in the evening where things took a silly turn



Angelita's in her cups

And now, we've got some final shots of the people who made our trip amazing along the way!

Jana's buddy, who asked how she was doing every time we met him on the road...I sort of think that may have been the extent of his English.  Still...totally awesome person!

And here with his travel buddy and Superdad!

Our Kiwis!  Such sweet ladies!

Keith!  You may remember I mentioned Keith in a post awhile back (he was the one hiding his Spanish language abilities and leaving Jana and I to order God knows what from a tapas menu).  Although we actually spent a lot of time with him, this is the only photo we have of Keith--taken at about 9 in the morning, just as he arrived in Santiago.  We took him for a drink.  What you can't see in this photo is the beer and wine that we are drinking at 9 AM, (or the German lady who is sitting with us...I'm clearly not a good documentor of social events).  Don't judge!  It's at least later than we drank from the wine fountain...and arrivals in Santiago need to be celebrated with a drink, regardless of time of day.

And, in my last section, we have photos robbed from Lindsey.  Thanks Lindsey!  Since we weren't so great at getting everything, I've included a few from her photo library to help give a fuller view of the Santiago experience:

Here we have me (hiding behind Ayeleen), Jana, Lindsey, Brian (from Texas--he walked from Paris!), Daniel (the blond boy on the left) and his dad Marco (aka Barefoot Man--see--no shoes!).  This was our arriving in Santiago celebratory drink (as opposed to Girls Night celebratory drinks, which took place later in the evening).  These were the most expensive drinks I think we ever ordered...but it was worth it to sit in the square and meet everyone as they wandered by--later in the day we saw Irish Paul, a number of German pilgrims, the Danish Mother/Daughter duo, and Mark (who is again not pictured, but is English and kept us company along the way until he was derailed by illness in Léon). 

This is perhaps the most unflattering picture of me from the entire Camino.  This is another in front of the Cathedral shot, but at night, and includes Lindsey, Brian, Ayeleen, and Anya from Belgium

It's been so amazing preparing the past few Friendly Friday posts, as I've gotten to remember all of the amazing people that made the Camino so...amazing!  It's also made me a little melancholy though, because I've realized just how many people we didn't get pictures of, or contact information for...people who were memorable, who made us smile, who helped us out, who really made the experience what it was.  People like South African Mike, Ricardo, Jean-Marc and the wheelbarrow tourers, Mr. Sligo (yes, we didn't get his name, but we learned where he came from), the Canadian gals Tatyana and Nicole, Ogden and his wife (whose name is entirely escaping me right now)...and there are so many more!  Already some of the clarity of my mental images is fading (thank goodness for my journal...otherwise, I think many details would be hopelessly muddled).  So, kids, the moral of this post is: the Camino is amazing and life-changing and wonderful...so take a camera and a notebook with you, so that you can remember as many things as possible when you get back...and keep the Camino alive within you for awhile.

And that's it for this Friday!  Next week I'm going to try (third time's the charm, right?) to post some more fun shots of statues, signs etc from the Camino, and will finish off Spain's last Friendly Friday with a post featuring our day trip to Finisterre.

Adios, Amigos!  Go out and enjoy the sunshine!  Or whatever weather you're blessed with today!  After all, as Ogden told us on the Camino, "Life is short, so you should go slow and appreciate every moment".

-K-

Friendly Friday

Happy Friday everyone!  It's raining and dull here...which actually makes me happy because a) I've been able to take my little green car out for a spin-it doesn't have snow tires, so it's been sitting idle most of the winter and b) the snow is melting and warm spring weather is coming (I'm really popular with the skiing set around the office)!  Unfortunately my mid-week post about fountains and the like didn't materialize--I've been laid low by a nasty flu bug, and am just now becoming coherent again, through the aid of many cups of liquids, hours of napping and Advil Cold and Sinus..

So in honour of spring weather, good friends, and excellent cold and flu medication (thanks Trudy!), I present to you more friendly faces of the Camino.  We're almost into Santiago proper, folks!  I've even included a rainy-day picture, to prove that it wasn't all sunshine and roses*.

Here we are, wandering our hostel to the only restaurant in Cow Town* with Lindsey, SuperDad and our Eastern European friend Anicka (I think I have probably massacred the spelling of her name--that's one thing that is difficult on the Camino--you learn people's names by hearing them, but you never see them written down).  When I say Cow Town, I'm serious--it was a town of about 10 houses, 1 hostel, one restaurant and a hundred cows.  Cows wandering through the streets at all hours of the day.  Usually led by one resident of the town (village? ).  Unless they looped the same 25 cows through hour after hour...which I believe I suggested to Jana as a possibility.  The place was so small that you can see our hostel behind us (where the people are sitting outside) which was the first building in town, and we're almost in front of the restaurant (which was the last).  *Actual town name Fonfria, which I'm sure is Galician for Town of Many Cows and Few People.



Entering Cow Town--see?  Cows.  Everywhere.



This is an incredibly unflattering picture of myself and Ayeleen (our New York friend and partner in crime).  But...it does give you a glimpse of the typical pilgrim food break.  Everyone sits together with friends they've met along the way, compares battle wounds (I think we're actually comparing dirt marks from the trail here, actually...) and ingests enough food and beverages to be able to his the trail again. 

This is Barefoot Man on the right!  Aka Marco! He and his son Daniel live in Spain, and were doing just the last hundred kms or so...but he was doing it barefoot!  You can't quite see that in this picture, but you'll have to trust me.  He's done the full Camino barefoot twice, and sections of it barefoot as well.  He's also written a barefoot Camino-themed book if which you should check out.  Also, these are the horseback pilgrims.  They'd ride wildly through town, occasionally stopping to snap a few pictures before moving on.  Very cool.



And here's a slightly more civilized version of us pilgrims, complete with Pilgrim
Casual-wear...ie, the clothes you wear after you've hiked for the day so that you don't have to wear the same clothes for 24 hours, and can hand-wash a few things.  Don't we clean up nicely?  This is Ayeleen, Jana and myself, with an Icelandic friend who's name I've remembered only as "the Icelandic version of Kate".  Yep...the one name I should actually remember, and it's gone gone gone.



This is our extended Pilgrim family, and our last supper together before entering Santiago.  We're in Arcos de los Pinas, and having a ball. Who could ask for anything more?

And finally...See?  Rain!  This was in Santiago, and we were all highly amused by the pilgrims with umbrellas sitting in groups under the larger umbrellas. * To be fair to the Camino, though, we had lots of roses, and only about two days of rain in 34.

And that's it for now, lovelies!  I'll be back next Friday for sure, with faces from Santiago and beyond.  I'm also hoping for a mid-week posting of fountains and all things cool.  Happy weekend!

-K-

Friendly Friday

Happy Friday everyone!  It's a beautiful, amazing, SUNNY day here at last!  This winter it's been so dark that it feels as if the sun will never come back...and it's always so difficult to be cheerful when it's bleak outside.  So, in the spirit of sunny days and happy times, I thought I'd post some more pictures of all the Lovelies we met on the Camino, where my (probably faulty) memory assures me that it was sunny everyday.  I'm still working my way across the Camino, mostly in order (so we're starting once again around the halfway point, and moving towards Galicia in this series).  Here goes!

Voici Praline.  She was awesome!  She walked from Lyons in France with her owner Roland, and made it all the way to Finisterre!  This was a rare break for her--she liked to keep moving even when Roland wanted to stop (she'd wander off then, or start eating cigarette butts from the ground to irritate him). 

See--this is here getting ready to wander off.  Fortunately, she had a good sense of direction, and could follow the yellow arrows.



This is Lindsey again!  She's having her blisters tended to by this AWESOME hosteliera in Mansilla de las Mulas.  The stick is for her to bite on if it's painful...but Lindsey's a super-trooper!  And now ABBA is stuck in my head.  Note the giant bottles of iodine in the photo--the pocket-sized version became my best friend.  Turns out my dad was right all along, and iodine really is good for everything.



Yes, everyone is sitting around watching Lindsey have her feet doctored.  For an hour.  This was the big entertainment of our evening...well, at least until we went out with friends and actually ordered everything on the tapas menu (Jana did the Spanish equivalent of "We'll have one of everything" even though we didn't know what it all was...then it turned out that our buddy Keith actually spoke quite good Spanish and could have ordered...this is why you have yet to see a photo of Keith).

This is Paul from Armagh (with me on the left).  We met Paul in a little hostel in El Burgo Ranero, which translates roughly into the Town of the Frogs (we understood why when hundreds of frongs were calling out to us as we left town in the early morning).  Paulie traveled with us through to Léon, and then met up with us again in Santiago (where he had not such a great finish to his pilgrimage, but we'll cover that later).  We're walking towards Léon in this photo (you can see the other pilgrims ahead), and shortly after this was taken, Paul and I helped Praline walk across a metal bridge.  There's a video of that moment which Paul included in a photo/video display he posted online--if you're friends with me on Facebook, you'll find a link to it on my page.  If not...I think you may be out of luck!

We found a sushi buffet in Léon.  There are many things wrong with that sentence.  Still, since we hadn't had anything but Spanish food for weeks (with the exception of a donair in Pamplona at the Hemingway Restaurant...there are things wrong with that sentence too), we decided to walk back across town to where we'd first entered to enjoy some Asian food!  Paul's experimenting with the seafood portion of the buffet (you loaded up a plate full of raw seafood, and they cooked it for you--I remain unconvinced, and Jana and I stuck to the cold sushi). 



This is Joost.  We met him and his wife Gerda (who live n Ontario) through Bill and Lindsey, and this is our usual view of them, as they hiked on ahead of us :D  We would also meet them in squares where they'd stopped to picnic.  That blur in the road ahead, that looks like maybe a traffic jam?  Sheep.  An entire herd, that closed the road to automobile and pilgrim traffic for about 20 minutes.  And see--sun!

 I'll leave you with a preview for next week!  Enjoy the sunny weather, amigos!

-K-

Next week there will be a post of interesting sights along the Camino.  This is a wine fountain, which I think counts as an interesting sight.  It's also around 7:00 in the morning in this photo, so we had a few sips just to say we tried it, and then wandered on to find ourselves morning coffee and pastries.

Friendly Friday

I've been waylaid by good friends of mine (and I spoke to Jana! Yay!) so this is a bare-bones post which I will fix up when I get home. Apologies! Below are pictures of some more amazingly wonderful people we met along the Camino- Cheryl and Carol (I heard from Cheryl in South Africa a few days ago-soooooo wonderful), the Viking Christian, Jacques and Abel on top of a mountain, Yumi our amazing friend who was traveling the world with that backpack, and Sinead and Patricia, who I'm convinced are strange re-incarnations of Jana and I. More will be explained when I post captions later.
I love and miss you all, Camino family!

-K-

Update: I've added captions!  So now you'll have a slightly better idea of what these photos are all about.  I apologise again for the light post on Friday, but it was worth it--I got to have a great chat with Jana and spend some time chatting:  it seemed fitting that the reason my Friendly Friday post was light and delayed was because of friends.  I think the people pictured below would approve.



Jana and I with Jacques and Abel, our travel buddies for much of the Camino.  We're celebrating in this picture, because we made it up a very very steep hill first thing in the morning (I think it's about 7AM in this photo).  We have not yet had coffee.  Or breakfast, really (the melba toast and super-sweet jam they provide at some of the refugios in Spain is not breakfast).  So, we made it up there on probably a square of chocolate and sheer determination.  For a glimpse at how high we are, check out the photo from a few posts ago where I'm standing at the top of a descent, in much the same pose.  That's the trip back down the hill, which lies about .5 kms from where we're standing.



YUMI!  This is Yumi.  I'm hoping I'm spelling her name right!  We met Yumi on our first night in Roncesvalles (or Ronceveaux, if you're from France--it's right on the border).  She was travelling the world with just that backpack (which contained mostly food, amazingly), with an aim to have explored 43 countries by her 43rd birthday.  She's AMAZING!  She would just click along with those two poles, never going massively fast, but never stopping either.  We lost Yumi on the Camino for awhile, after she pushed on ahead while we lagged behind....but we found her again the day before we arrived in Santiago!  It was amazing to see her at the end of our journey, and spend some time in Santiago with her.  We even travelled through the Cathedral with her (and guarded her visit to the tomb of Saint James from masses of tour bus visitors).



Cheryl and Carol, our lovely African ladies.  We met on our second night on the Camino, in one of the worst hostels/towns known to man (it was Easter holidays, so Jana and I had supper from a vending machine--I'll share that one with you at a later date).  They were our bunkmates, one bed over and next to the Poulets rotis.  We walked together, laughed, chatted, drank shandies...and also lost them when we stayed behind and they pushed on to the next town.  We tried to get in touch, but sadly failed...until last week when an email arrived from Cheryl!  I'm so happy to hear that they did alright, and to be back in touch with them again!



Rest stop!  Yep, this is where we stopped for lunch (or breakfast, maybe?).  In a ditch, by the side of the road.  Parts of the Camino are really not that scenic.  Or convenient...imagine trying to find a secluded spot in this scenery for roadside bathroom breaks.  Here we have an early incarnation of our Camino Family: Christian the Viking (who, although Danish, sounded and look like an American football player...because he'd studied in the US and played football, hiked with a copy of Don Quixote in his bag...all 10 lbs of it...and could lift any of us over his head with one hand...he demonstrated one night, so we know it's true!), Cheryl, a very unflattering me, Yumi and Carol.



And these ladies...wow!  This is Patricia and Sinead, who we met by chance and formed an instant bond with.  They are sort of like our evil twins (but in a good way) and it's hard to find the right words to talk about our time together.  The Camino is like that- some people you meet, you feel as if you've known them forever after walking together for an hour.  These ladies were those people.  Believe it or not, this picture was taken the first day that we really knew them (we'd met them before, but never really chatted)- we were near the midpoint of the Camino, had walked over 27 kms, and had reached three towns with no room for pilgrims-all the refugios, hotels, casa rurals etc were full.  So, we did what anyone would do in our situation- we got a taxi 13 kms to the nearest large town (Sahagun), checked into a private hostel which also did our laundry for us for a fee (best 10 euros I ever spent), then hit the town and drank gin and tonic into the evening.  There's an entire bottle of Bombay Saphire gin in those glasses in front of us, con toniqua, and the waitress at the cafe loved us so much she kept bringing us free food (or maybe she was worried we couldn't hold our liquor, and wanted to keep us from passing out).  We bonded over blisters and walking shoes, U2 and Hape's book on the Camino (for anyone who's read "I'm Off Then", Sahagun is where he gets shot at in his hotel room...we found it a charming spot though).  We laughed, we ate, we drank and we made plans to meet up later in the Camino (we were pushing on the next day, while they were staying put and waiting for another friend).  And we did meet up again...but that's a story for another day.