#1 Walking the Camino-Apr 21-22, 2016

The day has arrived!  It is time to go to Spain. We have been planning this trip for about a year ever since the evening when Dad said, "Let's walk the Camino."

Here's the mess in the bedroom prior to fitting everything into the packs. 

Gasp - the weight of my pack. But I have the roll of paper towels and eleven power bars in case we get hungry. I will secretly rearrange some things in our packs, and Dad's will become a bit heavier. 

Here we are in the front yard - so cute.  We have matching packs, trekking poles, and sleeping bags. Also matching shirts but we are NOT going to wear the same shirts in the same day. That would be way too cute.

And our "signature" pose. 

Plane ride was incredibly long and painful. Our knees were throbbing after sitting in one place for 9+ hours with just a couple breaks in the necessary room. We had a three hour lay over in Amsterdam which was accompanied with a bit of anxiety because even though Delta had us booked on the flight from Amsterdam to Toulouse, KLM who was providing the airplane to Toulouse had no record of us at all.  The KLM agent..... who seemed to be competent.....told us not to worry - by the time of departure she would "fix" everything and we'd be on the plane.  She was right. When we needed results, we had the boarding passes!  Arriving in Toulouse we had to wait at the gate for 30 minutes while the ground crew located an available set of stairs so we could get off the plane and then the skyway was broken so to get into the terminal we had to take a 'behind the scenes tour' of hallways and stairways. Finally got to immigration and here we are. 

Switched into our hiking shoes, got on the shuttle, ended up exactly in front of out hotel and across the street from the train station

Our room is one the the ones with the white bay windows

View from our room

Our goal for the day was to create our own walking tour of this part of town - in reality we were looking for a place to buy a sim card for the phone and to choose a place to eat dinner. 

The SIM card search was a bust!  We found several stores that had SIM cards that work in France but none that also work in Spain....unless one is willing to pay a premium high price.   So much for all the internet research Dad and warren did. 

No - this grocery store didn't have them

The " Orange" store (llke an ATT store) on the other side of this double decker merry-go-round didn't have them either. 

We decided to wait another two days until we walk over the Pyranees into Spain where we will for sure and undoubtly find a store that will sell a SIM card that Dad (and Warren) figure will be perfect one for us. 

Our search turned to dinner. There were many places to choose from since the area is so close to the train station. Pizza? Hamburgers? Chicken in various shapes? Plate de jour?  Enters we could neither pronounce nor understand. We ended up with kinda Greek kebabish food. It was delicious!!

 

Today was a good day!  And who knew about Toulouse?  I mean, have any of you ever even heard of Toulouse?

Tomorrow we get on the train and head to St Jean. Still in France but just a day's walk to Spain.