On the road to Santiago
A free week in sunny Spain, really!?!? Well sort of, Spain wasn’t that sunny in fact it snowed! and the week was a working vacation.
This was my second time on the Vaughan Town experience and it was as much fun as I remembered. Last time I went in December 2006 to Gredos (Avila) this time we opted for the new venue on the road to Santiago (Paulo Coelho wrote about this in The Alchemist; my favourite book) so it was nice to put a place to what I had read so much about.
If you don’t know the road to Santiago is a pilgrimage from the east to west of Spain, stopping at churches and cathedrals along the way – the route would generally take around two weeks to complete. Also refered to as Camino de Santiago
Back to the trip – we left cold wet London with smiles on our faces and flew into a small airport called Valladolid (it could have been anywhere?!) the airport was tiny and the customs was one guy with a stamp machine – I didn’t get one but Carrie did!
We then travelled to the town and found a ‘pension’ which means hostel. A nice enough place with all you really need for one night, a bed! We briefly explored our surroundings to find some very unusual statues and buildings.
Anyway next morning we caught the train bright and early (too early if you ask me) we got to the station asked for directions and with no urgency the information lady waved to the platform opposite, so we ambled out to watch as our train left without us!
We then waited a further 2 hours before we were able to travel down to Palencia then onto Carrión de los Condes via coach, we arrived mid afternoon to a sleeping village (siesta time) and trekked our way to the monastery and so our week began...
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