Let me tell you about today. Today was a massive bitch of a walk. The days where there're very few towns to stop at make the days seem even longer than they are.
After leaving Viana we walked to Logroño, 10km away.
Logroño was our first experience with walking through a city on the Camino, and we discovered very quickly how strong our hatred of cities is. Firstly, the outskirts seem to go on and on.
As we approached Logroño, we came across this lovely lady who was giving out stamps for pilgrim passports, which was such a lovely thing to do. I also bought a scallop shell from her, the symbol of St James and the Camino de Santiago. I have since learned that people were given them for free from the pilgrim's office in St Jean. WHERE WERE MINE AND NONI'S, HUH?!
Anyway...
So it turns out that this lady's family have been welcoming pilgrims and stamping passports for decades, which makes me even happier to have bought my shell from there.
...even if I should have had one from the start...
But I digress.
Logroño is a hole. There, I said it. For some reason, there is very little signage for the Camino. Luckily, several passers by noticed our confused/lost faces and directed us to where the Camino went, but it was ridiculous how few arrows there were.
We stopped for lunch at a British-style pub called The Drunken Duck. There we ate tortellini and patatas bravas. Very multicultural. I mention this only to say that it has possibly been the best meal we've had throughout our time in Spain. Seriously Spain, get your shit together. I thought I'd be eating nothing but amazing food here! Instead it's been a mixture of 'meh' and 'yeah, I guess it's alright'.
Anyway, back to the hellish part of the walk. Bloody Logroño. Anytime we find we hate a particular town or place, we use Logroño as our benchmark. "Is it Logroño bad, or just crap?"
The thing about walking in cities, at least in small villages with just a few streets and buildings, you know that the distance markers are correct. But in a city, where does the distance between towns start or end? Is the 10.8km that the guide says is between Viana and Logroño go from the edge of one town to the next, or the centre of one town to the next? This is very important because Logroño was huge, and I think it was several kilometres and we were still within the town limits.
The Camino took us through this huge stretch on the outskirts where people seem to go up and down exercising for fun. What even is that? You mean, you go for a huge run or bike ride and don't get a certificate at the end? Look at your life, look at your choices!
At least the scenery was nice, but we were just pretty over it by then.
When we finally got to it, Navarrete ended up being a gorgeous little town. We had some amazing tapas/pintxos for dinner, followed by (of course) patatas bravas. I also had some of the best wine I've ever tasted. Mmm, that Rioja wine.
The church in the town had a stunning, elaborate gold altar.
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