Ponferrada Hospitaleras and Beyond

Ponferrada is a town deeply rooted in medieval history.  The original gate to the city was built in 1249 AD and is still standing today.  Take a look. One of Ponferrada’s prominent features is the Castle of the Knights Templar.  The castle was constructed between the 12th and 14th centuries and is a heavily fortified…

6:00 – up, open gate of albergue and chapel doors.  Help pilgrims depart by 8am. 8:00 – start cleaning all of albergue- rooms, baths, kitchen, outside. Wash/dry/fold laundry. Sweep/mop floors & stairs. 10:00 – coffee with parish priest (make his toast & cocoa). 10:30 – free time! 1:00 – open albergue & start registering pilgrims,…

An amazing thing happened today.  We registered a young man from Romania last night.  He came to our hostel to sleep for the first time in over a week inside a building.  He has been sleeping in the forests because he has only 12 Euro left to get to Santiago, which is 124 miles away. …

Clearly what we needed was a day to ourselves in the hostel to become a team.  Today, Wedneaday, was starting to feel “normal” as much as it can when interacting with 75 or so  people from everywhere with unexpected problems.  I spent 30 minutes fishing a Euro out of a washing machine.  And did we…

It’s been busy today!  Up at 6:00 AM, getting people out of the albergue, helping a peregrino get a bus to the next town, closing up the albergues, cleaning, prepping for re-opening at 1:00 PM, a trip to the grocery store for supplies, laundry, then taking turns registering all the peregrinos showing up today. We…

We have been in training all day with the crew who is leaving their service here tomorrow.  They are amazing and taught us so much.  Tomorrow, we are flying solo as hospitaleras/os at St. Nicolas.  Take a look at this place… Much more later after we have gotten a couple of days under our belts. …

Karen and I applied to serve at St. Nicolas de Flue alburgue for two weeks in October.  We were so excited to get this appointment! Here’s a bit of information about St. Nicolas de Flue albergue. This large albergue is a part of the Spanish Federation of the Friends of the Camino de Santiago. It can…

The first part of this post was written yesterday,  Sept. 27.   The mystery of the missing suitcase continues.  It’s been over 72 hours since we have been here, and the suitcase is still in the wind.  The airline told me to go out and buy whatever I needed to replace items in the bag, and…

Today we are doing a day train trip to Toledo, the early medieval capitol of Spain before Madrid. This is Karen sinking into a cup of Cafe con Leche, nectar of the gods.  Still getting the run-around from Iberian Air, you would think they’ve never lost a bag before. This is Brenda.  We spent a…

Good morning from beautiful Madrid!  It was a big travel day for both of us yesterday.  But we are here safely and starting to acclimate to a nine-hour timeshift from home. There is one little wrinkle that popped up yesterday.  Karen arrived here completely ready for this adventure, as she always is!  I thought I…