St Jean Pied de Port

23 Aug 2025

This morning I walked around Pamplona a little bit more before catching my bus. I explored the Citadel, a 5 pointed fortress used from 1571-1646 and is now used as a lovely city park and art venue. It is truly hard to wrap a modern American head around something this old in the middle of a modern city.

At noon I rode on a very long bus through some harrowing hairpin turns in the mountains to get to the town of St Jean Pied de Port. “The foot of the Pass” is the mountain pass used by pilgrims for more than a millennia to pass through the Pyrenees. Charlemagne brought his armies through here as did Napoleon centuries later. Now it’s the common starting point for pilgrims around the world to begin the “French Way”. Knowing Spanish and some German was absolutely no help here in France and I felt a little out of sorts not recognizing ANYTHING on a menu! My new friends Janie and Jill from Washington state arrived on the bus with me and we had a nice meal bumbling through the French menu together.

St Jean is a really quaint little town that reminds me of alpine Germany quite a bit. Cobblestone streets and little shops and of course, a stream right through the middle of town. We saw the marker in the cobblestone that “starts” the Camino from here. Of course people journey from far and wide and start anywhere but it was cool to see anyway. Tomorrow is straight uphill for 5 miles. The guide books say the first recommended day is up and OVER the mountain for a total of 15.6 miles but I was too intimidated by that idea so I decided to stop at the only hostel in between and split the trip up into two days. I need to build up my walking legs before I can handle longer stretches like that! Stay tuned!