Today we arrived in Irun and the official start of the Camino del Norte. We were only in Irun a couple minutes when we were wished Buen Camino from a fur riding a bike pulling a trailer on his way back to Britteny, France and o other guy walking by from Irun. It made us feel good. We walked thru town to the town of Hondarribia where we booked a pension for the night. Hondarribia is a beautiful town where the old town is a walled city and the newer part is along the ocean. The main industry is fishing. We were happy our pension was in the center of the walled old city.
We heard that Day 1 of the Camino Norte is difficult so we decided to have one of our packs transported. We booked it online with Correos, the Spanish post office. They emailed us a luggage tag which we had to print and attach to outr pack. We went down and found the person who checked us in and tried to explain what we wanted. She didn’t understand. I used google translate from English to Spanish but still no luck. We later found out most of the people there speak French or basque even though we were in Spain and that was the case with the woman at the pension. We headed to the visitor center and they directed us to a print shop and luckily we were able to print for 10 cents. We looked around town and checked out the church at the docks. It was very cool all in a fishing theme with fishing vessels hanging from ceiling.
We heard that Day 1 of the Camino Norte is difficult so we decided to have one of our packs transported. We booked it online with Correos, the Spanish post office. They emailed us a luggage tag which we had to print and attach to outr pack. We went down and found the person who checked us in and tried to explain what we wanted. She didn’t understand. I used google translate from English to Spanish but still no luck. We later found out most of the people there speak French or basque even though we were in Spain and that was the case with the woman at the pension. We headed to the visitor center and they directed us to a print shop and luckily we were able to print for 10 cents. We looked around town and checked out the church at the docks. It was very cool all in a fishing theme with fishing vessels hanging from ceiling.
After dinner of tapas we headed back to Pensión and decided to sit outside and have a beer. I noticed a guy with a backpack and asked if he was doing the Camino. He was not but we started talking and we invited him to join us. We found out his name was Allen and that he was a retired bus driver from Montreal who spends the winters in Laos driving around on a motor cycle. He just came back from Laos and was stopping in France and Spain for several weeks to visit friends. He told us how Laos is a great place to winter away from cold Montreal winters and very cheap. His motto is no wife …no kids…no house…no problems. He also traveled around US in a camper during Covid and found most Americans are actually nice. This was good to hear as he was not happy with current state of politics between our countries. He said he always had the idea that most Americans were rough and not very nice. His camping trip changed his v