Aug 29: Papa Hemingway

Today, we passed through Pamplona on the Camino.  We actually went off the normal path to do a bit of exploring in this historic city.  We never realized how fortified the city was.  There are multiple levels of ramparts and walls to protect against attack, with many of the work dating back to the 1500's and 1600's (and still standing today).  We also visited a church where some of the original parts dated back to the 1300's.  The history throughout a lot of Europe can be just amazing.  And of course, we visited the bull ring and the street where they do the running of the bulls, which was popularized by Ernest Hemingway.  Pamplona was so thankful for how Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises" made the city and its bull fighting famous that they dedicated a statue and a street in front of the bull ring to Papa Hemingway.  There were also numerous bars and restaurants that referenced Hemingway.  We even found a bar where they had a statue of Papa standing at the bar (from the entrance it looked pretty real, too).  Seems like the economies of both Pamplona and Key West owe a lot to Hemingway.

Today's walk was also more relaxed than the first two days.  As mentioned, we spent some time touring around Pamplona, and even stopped in the main Plaza to savor some tapas of Iberian ham and patas bravas (which are fried potatoes with a red paprika and mayonnaise sauce), chased down by some Spanish sangria.  While sitting in the square, we ran into some more people whom we had met earlier on the Camino.  They joined us for a little while, but then we had to leave because we still had another 5 kilometers to walk to get to our hotel.  Our routine so far has been to arrive at our hotel around 6 or 6:30pm, and then immediately shower to get all the sweat and dust off.  After a little time resting and relaxing (and stretching to try and get some of the lactic acid out of our muscles), we then head out to dinner around 8 or 9pm.  We get back to our room around 10pm and then usually crash by 10:30pm or 11pm (depending on if we pre-pack our backpacks for the next day or not).  Then its usually up around 7am to eat breakfast and get packed the rest of the way before hitting the road around 9am or so.  The next few days should be similar to today in terms of shorter distance and fewer hills.  We can definitely use it after how taxing the first two days were.