Sunday night at the Monastery

 I hope that you are able to find this blog.

I realize it is from 2009, but when I started trying to set up a new one, The site kept referring me back to this one.

So I decided to continue. Now some of you have  told me you are having trouble finding it, and in fact when I went to post tonight, I had to look for five minutes to find it.

So apologies if I’m not getting through.

Today I set out to do 12 miles, but at the 12 mile mark, I still felt energetic, and decided to try to come to a monastery in the mountains. I like to come to monasteries when I am on a pilgrimage, because they have such a tradition of many centuries of hospitality.

In fact, this one is very beautiful and very old, Something I really love in a monastery is a cloister.

At the cloisters museum in the north of Manhattan, they have several original cloisters. At the bottom, I will try to post a picture of their cloister here.

Also, tonight there was a blessing of the pilgrims.And it is just sweet to hear that blessing and to know that in this monastery, they have been saying that prayer probably for over 500 years.

 Also, this afternoon, I said goodbye for now to two new friends, Lisa from Australia, and Nicolette from San Francisco.

They were staying at other places tonight. I will see them both in Guernika tomorrow. So we went to a cafe and had coffee before we parted. Tonight at this albergue are many people who were at my albergue last night. Some walked from the town before that and some probably did 20 miles today. One lady from Russia finished her third day today—-she began in Irun like I did, but she covered in 3 days what took me 5. 

Tomorrow I will be in Guernika, the town that Francisco Franco bombed with the help of Hitler’s Air Force. 

I will try to post some pictures tomorrow. They aren’t loading tonight. Anyway—I had a beautiful day of hiking,  seeing friends from all around the world here to hike the Camino.