Day -1

After waking up at 11:30 with thirty minutes to get packed up and checkout, me and dad make our way to the bus stop by the airport, that may take us to the train station, which should take us to St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port where we’ll start our Camino. After we get on the bus we somewhat ask four girls if the train station is on this bus route, after about a minute of asking “train station?” with hand gestures the girls finally confirm we’re going in the right direction. Once at the train station we make our way to the kiosk where we point to a laminated piece of paper with “St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port 10.10€” on it, the cashier gets it and let’s us know that the trains weren’t running and we would need to take the bus right outside at six. It being only one we decide to head out with three tasks:

1. find plastic ziplock bags so our things wouldn’t get wet in the rain
2. find a cell phone shop so I can get a Spanish number for class
3. find food for lunch

This time we complete two of the tasks. After leaving the train station we cross the street and find a burger place with veggie burgers on the menu. Eager to get food we enter and try out the veggie burger and attempt to order a salad in French. Once the food gets out we find out the burgers are all but three slices of eggplant with cheese on top and the salad is actually a veggie sandwich. After finishing the burgers and saving the “salad” for later, We quickly head across the bridge and find a cellphone shop which tells us we must buy a cellphone in Spain to get a Spanish number, so we put that off till we get a across the border in a day. We then find a grocery store which has plastic bags, it only took 20 minutes of looking and help from one employee to find them. After that we still have three more ours and decide to find me a cup of coffee and a place to rest. Once at a cafe I surfed the web while dad read his book. Once dad finished his book he realized he really wanted a winter hat, we then spent thirty minutes of our remaining hour looking for a nice hat cheaper than 20€, we never found it. We headed back to the train station, to find Tracy, Cecelia, Nate and Nicole waiting for the same bus. After the hour and a half long bus ride through the hills of France we arrived at St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, where we were forced to wait at the pilgrims office because I had forgotten my credential and dad never got one. It was nine o’clock when we finally got out and started our search for an open Albergue, which luckily was right across the street. We had missed the dinner but got the last two beds, since it closed at ten we ran out in search for pizza the only shop that could possibly
be open, it wasn’t. We then returned back for a good nights rest before the Camino began the next day.