The Starting Point, St. Jean Pied de Port

The Start of the Camino, Saint Jean Pied de Port

It is Sunday, and another day of mostly travel. I went to the Montparnasse train station in Paris to see if would be possible to get an earlier train (so I could get to St. Jean Pied de Port before 10 PM). And one was available to leave at 12:30, two hours earlier than my 2:45 original departure.

I'm sorry, no pictures today. I'll have my camera on the walk tomorrow and I will get pictures. Southern France is indeed beautiful; I do see why artists came here or other places in the south of France to paint.

I exchanged the ticket, and was told it would be with no seat - standing room, and I took it anyway. Went back to the hotel, packed, showered, and checked out. In the area for standees, a man told me that there were almost always seats available after the train started moving, reserved seats nobody claimed. And that was true today, also. The TGV trains in France are very fast. I was told the train we were on was quite old and slow and would only go about 225-240 km/hour (130-140 mph). The scenery was beautiful, lush farmland and vineyards most of the way to Bourdeaux, and much of the way on to Bayonne.

After arriving in Bayonne, I found that the only train to St. Jean Pied de Port left at 9:05 PM, because the earlier 6:30 and 7:30 trains do not run on Sunday. I bought the ticket for 10 Euros, and started to wait. Eventually I went out and saw some taxies, talked to the drivers, made a deal in an odd mixture of French and English, and I was driven the 50 km to St. Jean, arriving at 8 PM instead of 10:30 PM. That gave me some time to have a not-too-great (but not terrible, by any means) dinner, and get everything repacked to start the walk tomorrow. 

So tomorrow I walk, the mixture of excitement and fear is there, but the excitement is dominating. This is so cool!

When I got to the pilgrim's office to check in, I was the only pilgrim, so I got to chat for a spell - these are very nice people, volunteers who are at the pilgrim's office to help other pilgrims. The fellow who checked me in is from the U.S. and uses his vacation to volunteer. They had checked in about 30 pilgrims today who will start tomorrow. Most are from the U.S., Australia was second, and there is a group of about 10 from S.Korea. I met a man named Steve who is about my age, from Seattle, and is walking with his brother. I'm sure I'll see them and get to know others tomorrow.

Next: The first day, the hardest day.