Our route on the Camino - el mapa

Hola!
Behold the map! (I regret it is not the most elegant copy - scanning can be tricky. If you click on the map, it should open up in a new window and be a little bigger and more readable.) In Spanish, el mapa -- ah, you say, those of you familiar with Spanish, why is there a masculine article "el" in front of this word? Most words ending in "a" in Spanish are considered feminine and take the feminine article "la." Because, gentle readers,"mapa" comes from the Greek, and in Greek the word is masculine and his gender transferred to the Spanish. I remember learning this in one of my high school Spanish classes and being uttering fascinated. Basta.

This bit of cartography shows eastern Spain and the border with France. We start in France at St. Jean Pied de Port and climb up over a col or pass in the Pyrenees, then descend into Roncesvalles, Spain. I hope this map helps orient people. We would like to get as far as Santo Domingo, but we shall see what the road brings us.

(And thanks to Rick Steves for giving me permission to use the map from his book, "Rick Steves' Spain 2010" - what a guy!)

Friday morning, October 8, we leave for London and will see Shakespeare's "Henry the IV, Part 2," which I am dutifully re-reading. Hasta luego!