Friday, August 28, 2009

About This Blog

Try as I might, I can't get this blog set to come up at the BEGINNING instead of the end. And, since it's a travelogue, I'd like to be able to point people to the planning stages of my trip instead of having them start reading with the end of my story.

This blog is about my travels on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela in Northern Spain during the summer of 2008. It is the story of my pilgrimage across Spain to the Cathedral of Santiago, and afterwards to the End of the Earth, Finisterra, from the tiny hamlet of St. Jean Pied-de-Port on the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains. The blog begins in May of 2008. I began my trip on July 9 and finished on August 11.

The entries are often rambling, and were far funnier to write than they now are to read (at least to me, haha), and many were written at the end of a long day, after hiking about 20 miles with a 30-pound pack through vineyards and fields, alongside roads, through tiny villages, consuming lots of Magnum ice cream along the way. I was often exhausted and somewhat delirious by the time I hit the computer...alternately rushed in the hopes of rejoining my companions in the various bars, and indignantly lackadaisical, knowing that this blog was the ticket to my clearest memories and, perhaps one day, a book on the subject, and therefore determined to take my time and get the story right.

Anyway. I urge you to use the links at the left to begin at the beginning, whether of the planning or the trip itself, and I hope you enjoy the trip.

Buen Camino,

Christine M. Engelen
merlintoes@me.com