Trail of Crumbs - Feeding Body & Soul on the Camino de Santiago (Part 2)

On the Camino, what each day provides you in terms of difficulty (foot pain, blisters, chafing, your own thoughts, an unexpected intimacy with Spanish toilets), it makes up for in beauty. The vistas capture your spirit in such a way that you are impermeably changed because of what you see and how you feel when you see it. The feeling is one of such intense gratitude for being alive that at times you burst into tears at the next cafe stop, snotting into the fleeced shoulder of the closest pilgrim (whom you may or may not have met before). You might burst into uncontrollable laughter shortly afterwards, because you've realized an old Loreena McKennit album has been playing dramatically in the background the whole time.

Trail of Crumbs - Feeding Body & Soul on the Camino de Santiago (Part 1)

You could say I walked 800km for a slice of cake. My backpack and I spent late March and all of April of 2013 walking from the tiny French town of St. Jean Pied-de-Port, across the entirety of rural Northern Spain on an ancient pilgrim route - the Camino de Santiago. A generous wedge of Santiago Cake greeted me at the end of each special pilgrim's meal as I got closer to my final destination of Santiago de Compostela. The tell-tale almond-y crumbs on pilgrims' plates were as good a sign of nearing the end as the diminishing numbers on the kilometer markers dotting the path, which is marked by yellow arrows or scallop shells to guide the way.