Sunday, May 31, 2026

The morning dawned with excitement, a bit of anxiety, waves of nostalgia and a heavy heart as I parted ways with my family. They were going on in their rental car to the beach town of Cadaques and I had a date with a train bound for Madrid to meet my Camino group.  

I spent most of the day traveling, albeit somewhat circuitously.  I went down into the subway and lost in my emotion of parting with family, hopped onto the first train – realizing just in the nick of time to jump off!  I was on the L1, I needed to be on the L3!!!  

It was a direct route to the station, yet required about twenty minutes of walking before arriving at my platform to queue up with the other forty or so folks who preceded me.  In a short five minutes we were unleashed, and then after finding my carriage 8, seat 8a, only another five minutes until we were underway!  

The ninety minute ride would have been perfect for immersing myself in some Spanish study but dang, of course my iPods were buried in my backpack in an unknown location…  I started a new basket instead and very much enjoyed the scenery!  I also could’ve used the time to research how to get to my hotel yet I made some assumptions (never a practical idea) and thought I could figure it out on the fly. Wrong. I thought we’d be out in the lively and lovely Puerta del Sol area.  No.  Our hotel wasn’t close to anything and after riding a bus that seemed to be going in the correct direction, until it did not (according to my GPS), I got off and called an Uber!  Eventually I made it to the hotel with a forty-five minute window to check in before meeting my group for the first time at 6:00!

We had a Catholic mass led by Father Bernardine, a pilgrim in our group, followed by a welcoming ceremony where we received “camino shells” and day packs.  Then we watched a rather lengthy video about what we could expect (which I’d already seen before) and finally moved to the room next door for a late dinner at 8:30!!  

After conversing a bit with new acquaintances, I headed for the barn. Our hotel and my individual room were very fancy yet mostly lost on me because I went right to bed knowing breakfast was scheduled at 8 am the next morning, bus departure at 9:00.  (3.8 miles)