Metamorphosis

If you've ever seen Cronenberg's "The Fly" and watched Goldblum's body transform in utter horror, then you can get a fair sense of what our trail-worn bodies our going through. A metamorphosis. From smooth, pale skin come angry red welts and bites and knots and sun burns. Although we trained for some time, our muscles are already getting bigger and harder. I may get back to the US with calves the size of watermelons and boulders for butt cheeks at the rate things are going. And the feet. Oh the feet! They're widening and building callouses like we were barefoot hobbits on a pilgrimage to Mordor.

Part of the journey is, of course, simply allowing the change to happen. External beauty must take a backseat to the most basic of needs. Like, 'I need to not wear makeup right now because I'm exhausted and lazy'. Or 'I need to wear my hair in a messy bun because who in the world wants to lug a blow dryer 1000 miles'. Mom has since discarded her hair fiber paste and mousse. See ya ounces of beauty product! C'est la vie! And Me, well, I haven't fluttered mascara-adorned eyelashes in a week. I've let myself go so much that I was absolutely mortified last night when in St. Jean de la Blaquiere at the dinner table of the woman who owned the B&B, her gorgeous son (a distributor of French wine and spirits in NYC) sat down at the table to eat with us. I spent the entire evening trying to hide my greasy face and medusa hair behind chunks of crusty baguette.

It isn't easy to let these superficialities go and allow the ways of the road take over, like a sun dappled idyllic cottage being suffocated by poison ivy. How we look so easily becomes part of our identity, so it's strange and even a bit scary to see a wild-eyed, dust-covered, frizzy-haired stranger look back at you in the mirror. It takes bravery to shake it off, as silly as it might sound. And I can say from experience that it also takes lots of moleskin, Bandaids, Cortizone cream, ibuprofen and dark sunglasses and hats to hide behind.

As a special treat, we've included pictures of the worst offenses. Beware, these are not for the faint of heart.





My bug bitten shoulder AFTER the healing started. Just days before I looked like an ebola virus victim.





Mom's reaction to liner socks. Like matching ankle bracelets, no?





The sunburn as a result of wearing bike gloves for the trekking poles. I call them my 'two-toned Popsicle fingers.'





Backpack strap gash.





God bless moleskin for my Frodo feet. Notice the pedicure has lasted. Shout out to Alhambra Nails in Sactown!

We tried to take a picture of mom's lovely waist strap welts but couldn't capture its essence. Use your imagination accordingly.

I promise no more medical pictures. But for all you out there with an odd curiosity for this type of stuff, I hope you enjoyed! We sure didn't.

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Location:L'Atelier du Soulondre, Lodeve, France

L'addition Standoff

If there's one point of contention that my mother and I have come to discover between us, it's the L'addition Standoff - the standoff for the check. No, not to pay the check. We split our meals. Rather, it's the sweat-inducing, nerve-wrecking, patience-testing wait for the check after dinner.

Having traveled in Europe before, I know all too well that you must bravely ask for the check, as they won't dare bring it to you. Otherwise, you may as well pull out your Coolmax Sleep Sac from your backpack, put two chairs together, curl up and call it a night right there in the restaurant. You can wait for eternity, but no slip of paper will come. Problem is my mother and I never know how long to wait to ask for it. We don't want to seem like hurried Americans. So we wait, twiddling our thumbs (above the table, of course, since it's bad manners in France to rest them underneath), and wait, even though our aching bodies want nothing more than to return to our hotel room and pass out.

So the standoff boils down to this... who will swallow their pride and ask for "l'addition, s'il vous plait"? Like Old West gunslingers we stare one another down, eyes narrowed into slits, hands lightly fingering our wallets, eyebrows raised in expectation, refusing to be the one to bring the hammer down on the meal. We have been known to wait nearly an hour, until tears forming in my eyes, I sigh a deep sigh and flag down the waiter. Even then, they look at me like, 'leaving so soon?!', as if it's in poor taste to only wait an hour after finishing the dessert. I mean how long can you drink water and stare at the wall after licking your plate clean? Good conversation has usually been used up on the trail, so the standoff is a silent one. Deadly silent. And deadly serious.

Last night mom won again, using the excuse that she's the one doing all the ordering. And, yes, she's right. But in the game of l'addition standoff, all bets are off.


A pilgrim gate in Grabel village - yesterday's starting point outside Montpellier.





Moving into more mountainous territory.





Clearly marked paths the whole way. Two Stooges no more?


7-mile break. We can't find a patisserie, until I spy people turning a corner with baguettes. Baguette sleuthing leads us to the best pain aux raisins I've ever had.


Coming into Aniane, the village where we stayed the night. But the magical story of La Colombe Verte is for another blog...

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Location:Taverns de L'Escuelle, Saint Guilhem le Desert, France

We Become Pilgrims

When describing a misadventure where does one start? In the movies you begin with the prologue just before things go awry. When sharing an anecdote with friends over cocktails you generally jump right into the thick of things to grab attention. Considering the casual nature of this blog - and I do recommend reading over cocktails - perhaps that's the best place to commence... With the 'merde' hitting the fan.

Imagine, if you will, two intelligent grown women roaming around St. Gilles for two hours Sunday morning with heavy backpacks and tired bodies (would have been nice for the hotel to warn them that an all night block party/concert would be happening outside their window) trying to find a street leading out of town that mysteriously doesn't exist when finally two rather handsome policemen take pity on their confused expressions and bring it to said women's attention that they're in fact reading the trail directions of an entirely different town. Imagine then the look of shame and embarrassment that consumes them for the next several hours after realizing all they had to do to get out of St. Gilles was to take one second to flip the page. One second. Calling us the Two Stooges doesn't even really do our idiocy justice.

If you have ever considered traveling with us, you may want to reconsider.

So we started our 18-mile day two hours late, letting the coolness of the early morning slip through our sunburned fingers. The hike, however, was beautiful. Sun drenched grapevines, olive trees and apricot orchards, white horses roaming nearly every farm, umbrella and Scots pines, rows of stately poplars, sparkling canals, wild irises, Flanders poppies, and that sweet little red ant that crawled up my leg and took a ferocious bite out of my tender thigh. What a splendid plethora of French countryside marvels.

The second hitch - or as I like to call it 'The Two Stooges Strike Again' - was the fork in the road we missed that added nearly two miles in the hot sun onto our walk. By the time we reached the small town of Vauvert, we were so exhausted and disgusting we sat on benches in the plaza and couldn't find the strength to get up. We killed time talking to a young boy named Antonio who wandered over to us and stared in awe at the fact that we'd been to Las Vegas (the TV show is oddly popular here), while stuffing handfuls of cheese crackers into his mouth that made me salivate with jealousy.

When we then looked at our route and mom realized she'd miscalculated the milage and it was actually a 21 mile day, we decided to stay put instead of walking another seven or eight miles to the village where we had reservations. We have nothing to prove. The body wants what the body wants, and all ours wanted was a shower and rest. Some aimless wandering and four failed phone calls later to local hotels, and we finally found a number tacked to a church bulletin that claimed to shelter pilgrims.

And this is how we came to spend the night on cots in an abandoned schoolroom filled with life-sized statues of saints.

Roger, the man in charge, was as sweet and welcoming as it comes. He'd done the entire pilgrimage himself years ago, and this was how he was paying it back. By taking pity on poor tired sacks like us. The schoolroom was huge, the corners lined with old school equipment and furniture. The shower was heavenly. But the cots... The cots... My body screamed through the night wanting more than anything to stretch out and unfurl from this synthetic cocoon. I was happy, though, to get some fellow pilgrim roommates - two French women from Nice - as it greatly increased the ratio of who might be visited that night by, say, a giant poisonous spider or the ghost of a bullied schoolchild seeking revenge.

That evening we also enjoyed our first pilgrim priced meal. Sipping our discounted red wine we clanked our glasses and realized that in our misadventure and our 5 Euro lodging in a Medieval stone building we'd actually done it. We'd become, for the first time, real 'pelerines' - true Camino pilgrims.




















Our schoolroom abode. I kept an eye on our stone friend to the left, what with that sword on his belt and all.

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Location:Aculpulco Hotel, Montpellier, France

Palm Sunday

Kay:

Saturday evening, sitting in the ancient abbey in St. Gilles, after a long day's walk - listening to Palm Sunday mass in French - I imagine St. Francis sitting here. Since this is the medieval route from Italy, and since he took this pilgrimage - it could be.


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Location:St. Gilles, France

Bzzzzz

All my life one insect has plagued me. One insect has stalked me to the ends of the earth. One insect, not even a penny big, has favored me over countless friends and family members.

The mosquito.

Or 'moustiques' as they're known in France, which somehow gives them a slightly sexy air, like the name of some all-girl rock band that wears ripped fishnet tights and smeared black eyeliner. Yet in reality, they're anything but. In fact, I'd go so far as to call them evil.

Once on a camping trip with an ex I was bit 50 times to his one. One! If that isn't favoritism, I don't know what is. My first introduction to these miniature vampires, was when my parents and I would go canoeing in Canada in the summer. We would have to don mosquito net hats, and dad would pay me a nickel for every one I killed, ensuing an insect blood bath that I'm sure the mosquito world holds against me to this day.

When mom and I discussed which of the two paths to St. Gilles to take, we chose the one that skirted the canals, as there was talk of a hoard of man-eating mosquitoes frequenting the water route. Well, I don't even want to imagine what the blood sucking maniacs must have looked like on that trail, as what followed on our 'lesser mosquito route' might best be referred to as a massacre of skin... a blitzkrieg... an ambush attack!

I felt assaulted on all levels, unable to relax or take in the view. I just kept lamenting the fact that in my fever to lighten my pack, I'd left my bug repellent at home. The buzzing beasts were on my head, biting through my hat. They were covering my jacket, piercing through the thick fabric like sliding a knife through room temp butter. They were even accumulating on my behind and feasting like Americans at a Sizzler buffet!

So what did mom and I do when we arrived in St. Gilles after washing our clothes in the sink, taking hot showers, checking our feet for blisters and hunting down tomorrow's breakfast and lunch? We bought the most badass insect spray repellent money could buy.

Moustiques of France, you may have won this round, but tomorrow... tomorrow's another day.






Local color in Arles.



Les Alyscamps Abbey where the Arles pilgrim route begins.


Us at the start!








The last peaceful moment before the moustiques deluge begins. I feed a piece of precious olive bread to a starving mangy dog thinking it will bring good luck...


A hopeful sign as the scallop shell leads the way.


Less rustic signage but equally helpful.


Saint-Gilles-Du-Gard where pilgrims are greeted and get their stamp. I nurse my mosquito wounds at the hotel as mom collects ours.


A fellow pilgrim no doubt turned to stone as a way to deflect moustiques bites. No blood, no bite. Smart man.

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Location:St. Gilles, France

A Story Of An Arles Cat

What follows is a tale (or should we say 'tail'?) based on an eye witness event on the cobblestone streets of Arles this afternoon...

Mademoiselle Coquette, a robust and furry, white feline known to her friends as Coqui (a frog of the Amazon) because of her penchant for hopping along rather than sauntering, was busy licking her elegant paws on Friday afternoon, having just finished a meal of omelette champignon and cafe noir petit. This was her favorite time of day, when the tourists were busy sightseeing at the Coliseum or strolling along the Rhone, and she could enjoy a good wash and nap in peace.

Just as she was about to continue on to her whiskers - and what a sight they were; bread crumbs dangling daintily off the ends - she was interrupted by the most bothersome of street sounds brought into her room by a swift breeze. Apparently, the cafe below her master's apartment was suddenly a hub of activity; humans chatting away without regard for this monastic hour.

'How dare they!' she thinks to herself. 'These humans have no respect'. Her reflexes sharpened by years of narrowly missing cars in the pencil thin streets of Arles, she quickly unfurls her tail and leaps over to the window ledge in the blink of an eye, her voluptuous white body hanging over the edge like honey spilling from a pot.

"Miaou! Miaou! Miaouuuuu!" she yells out as loudly as she can, her jade green eyes fixed on the humans below sipping jus d' orange and cafe ou lait. "Miaou! Miaou! Mmmmmiiiiaaaaoooouuuu!". Finally, she's grabbed the attention of two foreigners walking past - one, an older woman with a camera slung around her neck; the other a mademoiselle wearing jeans that appear to not have been washed in quite some time. 'Let them stare,' she thinks. 'I want their attention'. Mme Coqui decides to let out one last "Miaou" of protest, which appears to work, as the humans below grow quiet. 'At least they listen to reason,' she thinks to herself, hopping back over to her sun drenched nest.

Just as her tiny pink tongue finds its way back to her whiskers, the street noise strikes back up again! Absolutely fed up, Mme Coqui leaps back over to the sill, this time flinging her body nearly all the way off the ledge and yells with all her might a string of miaou's that would put the fear of god in even the most devout of atheists.

A sea of heads turn up to her, as human mouths draw tightly shut. It worked. Sweet silence once again. 'And this time it better stick!' As she turns away, in the corner of her eye she notices the two foreign women attempting to take a picture of her. 'Oh no they don't,' she thinks to herself and scrambles back to her bed before the Madame can even turn the power on her camera.

Bathed in the warm light of the afternoon sun, the crumbs knocked off her whiskers from all the leaping about and shaking in anger, Mme Coqui closes her eyes, tucks in her fluffy white tail and purrs herself to sleep.

FIN

Some pictures of Arles, minus one of Mme Coqui...





The start of the Camino. Just one day away!





Tomorrow's Camino lunch - olive and rosemary bread.





The first stamp in our Pilgrim Credentials. Many many more to follow.





Van Gogh's garden.


















Me outside the pilgrim welcome center in the diocesan office where we got our stamp and some advice to avoid the trail along the mosquito plagued canal tomorrow.


















The left marker is that of the pilgrimage. Hmmm... His backpack looks quite a bit smaller than ours...

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Location:Rue Marius Jouveau,Arles,France

Ducha

There are many characteristics one considers when selecting a hotel. Does it include a free breakfast? Is there a pool? Is the bed firm and the towels soft? Does it have a view? Is the staff friendly and helpful? How close is it to points of interest? Is there HBO?... Yet there is one key criterion I hold above all others.

What is the quality of the shower?

Firstly, is there plenty of water pressure? Not so much, of course, that you feel as if you've been pelted with a BB gun. But nothing is sadder than coming in after a day of touring in the hot sun and milking out only a mere trickle from the shower head. I had a particularly heinous experience one New Years in San Francisco. I woke up New Years Day with a raging hangover knowing that I had to be out of the hotel in an hour. I thought a shower would do the trick, but to my horror when I turned it on water dribbled out of exactly two of about fifty holes in the shower head. And it was cold! I got cleaner from the steady stream of tears running down my face than from the shower, itself.

Which leads me to my second prerequisite: there has to be plenty of hot water. None of this lukewarm business. Or the possessed showers that fluctuate between freezing and scalding at any given moment like bathing Russian roulette.

So if you're ever in Barcelona and fancy a stay at the Hotel Aneto, let me assure you, the coffee may be as thick as mud, the single rooms might be claustrophobic, your feet might hang off the end of the bed, there may be a strange pounding noise that occurs everyday between the hours of 4 and 6pm, and an unknown stranger may shake your doorknob in the middle of the night as if trying desperately to get in, but man oh man are the showers par excellence.

Final Barcelona pics...



Rooftop of Gaudi's La Pedrera apartments.






We enter St. Josep La Boqueria.












Now onto la Sagrada Familia. I call this one "Darkness & Light".




Seriously though? A madman was here.


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Location:Carme,Barcelona,Spain