Remy’s 2023 Travel Notebook

Made it to St Jean via train from Bayonne. Spent a few hours exploring Bayonne during the day. Went to the pilgrim office at 6:00 pm to pick up my shell and got a bunch of instructions in French that flew right over my head. I knew going in that I would start in France but was mentally unprepared to not be able to speak to most people. It’s the deep south of France, and English is not spoken or taught much. That’s okay, tomorrow I will cross from France into Basque Country Spain, going over the Pyrenees mountain range. I will wake up at 6:00, get breakfast from my hostel and likely try to start my day with some others from my 7-person dorm. So far, the population is from Italy, Germany, France, Canada and USA. One Italian helped me get a reservation for Roncesvalles where I will sleep tomorrow in a public albergue with 200 beds. For €31, I will get a bed, dinner and breakfast in the morning. Not bad! I got dinner at a local restaurant and had pork skin with beans and salad, with a basque cider. All was quite good. I am already running into friends second and third times walking around town. The german man I met has been walking since mid April. He did one Camino from the south of Spain to Santiago, and flew to Geneva to walk from there to Santiago again. I look forward to walking with him and around 250 others starting from Saint Jean Pied De Port tomorrow.