(Not) Walking the Camino: Day 24
Travel day, redux! Headed home from the Bay area via this ridiculously civilized airport at San Jose. If LAX is the bathroom at CBGB’s, SJC is the Singapore rooftop party in Crazy Rich Asians, although I got a lot less drunk here than they did.
But I did have that customary airport beer that Amanda wishes she was here to watch me drink.
Before my departure and after a lovely breakfast with the fam, we headed to the nearby kids’ zoo filled with the kind of exotic animals I’d have to travel as far as my backyard at home to see:
Nah, they also had these:
A nice cap to a three-day visit that included breakfast pie, martinis, fancy Italian food, fresh baked cupcakes, the baseball men, droll trolls, good friends and adorbs family.
And let me remind you, I walked the real Camino.
Thanks to Dad and Celeste for taking care of Stella.
MEANWHILE, on the Camino . . . the ladies went their separate ways for now, and Amanda landed safely at her hostel in Malide, with this swank stone entryway and rooftop patio. Things are definitely more upscale on the last leg of the Camino, as the locals cater to the flood of pilgrims dropping in just ahead of the finish line like Rosie Ruiz at the Boston Marathon.
They put out this fancy breakfast spread featuring cured meats and tomate, where Amanda met Laura from Andorra — an actual, real country of about 80,000 people between France and Spain. (Go ahead, look it up.)
Laura speaks Spanish, French, Catalan, and English, because the primary lesson of the Camino is that every single European is better educated than any American.
Also proving its Euro-superiority, Spain still has cigarette machines! I just hope Amanda brings me back a pack of Chesterfields.
Four more days of walkin’ the Camino! Five here, with the travel day . . . Not sure I’ll make it. And in case we’re not feeling bad enough, one of us has a birthday.
TOMORROW . . . stepping up and winding down.