Nothing left to do but walk

The Camino gods were on my side for this terrible plane trip. Plane left Champaign 45 minutes late, meaning I had to run to catch my plane to Boston, which then sat on the runway in Chicago for almost an hour, which meant I had to get to Terminal E rapidamente as soon as I landed in Boston. Luckily, the AVIS bus driver was very nice and took pity on me, let me hop a ride over to Terminal E. I got there as the plane was boarding. Whew.

Then everything got smooth and worked like clockwork -- I´ve spent the day doing all those pre-Camino things like buying a phone, buying food and water for the walk, getting my credencial stamped at the Church of Santiago in Madrid. This church was not exactly an inspiring place to start a pilgrimage, as it was filled with images of St. James the Moorslayer. But I did find one large statue of St. James the Pilgrim, and spent my time near him instead of his alter-ego.

I walked about 12 km today, made it to the northern point of Madrid where the Camino takes off. So I´ll take the metro there tomorrow and start walking. Madrid seems prosperous and frenetic as usual, lot of newly refurbished old buildings, beautiful well tended gardens in parks everywhere. But there are a few signs that not all is well. The number of panhandlers is much greater, and they seem more aggressive. This morning a man and his teen-aged son came into a metro car, and the dad let loose with a long impassioned speech about his two years of unemployment and the evils of the system and the despair it brings. I´ve never seen something quite so "in your face" on the metro before.

One thing I was unable to do because of my frenetic plane chasing experience yesterday was buy a book for the Camino. But as all the peregrinos/pilgrims know, St. James tends to provide, and lo and behold, on my way to the Santiago church, I passed a used English book store (Calle Campomanes 15 for future reference). I bought two books, ignoring my inner voice telling me to not add more weight to my pack -- one, The Remains of the Day, I´ve been meaning to read for a long time, and it´s small and light. Then I went on a hunt for a fat book with small print (to get the maximum words/weight of book ratio possible). I don´t even remember the name, it´s some chick lit book that was No. 1 on the NYT list, so it will probably be just the thing for reading after a long day´s walk while resting the tootsies.

See the arrow on the bottom right side of the above picture?  It's the first arrow on the Camino de Madrid in Madrid!

So, here my long and babbling post ends. I hope to be on the Camino by 7:30 tomorrow and reach Colmenar El Viejo, about 27 km away, for the night. Only thing left to do is to go to the beautifully renovated Plaza de Olavide and sit in a cafe with my Camino friend Yolanda and eat some of the world´s best tortilla de patatas. I haven´t done that for at least 20 years!