A good choice for a down day?

As described earlier here, this was a down day. Perhaps a wise choice given the weather (32 degrees C and intermittent fog and drizzle), not to mention my mental state. I have been hanging close to the albergue to see if Eric can make room for me tonight. There are rooms available up the street, but no one "opens" for registration until 4 p.m., which is 16h00 in metric time. Eric has this robust personality and he absolutely loved my name when I registered ("Frog? Really? I will always remember your name!" he said with a large grin. I always thought "frog" was a derogatory term for the French people, where only French comedians could use the term in public without invoking "the F word" moniker). When he heard the name his attitude quickly changed from "We're already booked for tomorrow" to "We have to find a bed for Frog."

The albergue is a mix of hotel and hostel, part fancy and part "it will do".

Just down the street is the Cathedral where I sat through an entire mass without understanding a word (like the good old days).

I have wandered up and down the historic neighborhood where some buildings display an "established" date, the earliest observed being 1662!

I had "jambon cuit" for lunch, for those of you who thought I would not try new foods, then climbed to the Citadelle to see an overview of the town and read of its history.

I walked to the end of town twice to be sure I knew which road to take in the morning. I had talked to Julian (from outside London) and Pauline (from Lubeck, Germany) this morning about the difficulty of finding the correct route out of town. I walked up to the junction to see the placement of the signs and, thinking I had it figured out (the sign said GR65 went to the right to Roncevalles), had started back to town when I found Pauline, who was heading up the hill. After some discussion and map reading we both walked back up the hill, only to find that the sign I had spotted had the word "variants" in front of the route number, apparently indicating an alternate route. We went another half block and found the preferred route. We knew it was correct because it climbed much more steeply!

And everywhere in town we saw the ever present symbol of The Way

Whether called Saint Jacques or Santiago, the Camino is a major source of tourism here.