Getting Ready for the Camino de Santiago (del Norte Route)

Here we go folks....we are going on another adventure to walk 250 miles of the Camino del Norte. This has been 6 months in the making for me and about 3 years for Geoff. We take off in 3 days and I can't wait to enjoy the human experience on the trail. Our plan is to walk from Bilbo or Santander to Camino de Compostela. For those of you who do not know what the Camino de Santiago in short it's The Way of St. James the Apostle. A Christian Pilgrimage to honor the remains if St. James who was martyred. Today it's become a cultural trail and a way for modern day Americans to get off the hamster wheel and contribute to something bigger then themselves. This trip, I am taking on a project of "Capturing the Camino" through photography and to experience the trail and the people who travel this route. I will be taking my Nikon DSLR camera and capturing textures, sceneries, people and the experiences on the Camino. I will upload them when I get home and then publish them for all of you to see. My intention is to have people experience my photographs and ignite something in themselves to do something different. This is the traditional Northern Route and we have chosen this route because we did. It's in our cards. See you in Spain!

The Rhine & The Mosel (wine country)

This area was probably my favorite out of the whole trip. The Rhine and The Mosel River is very well know for their wines. The land has a lot of schale in the ground which warms up in the morning sun and keep the vines warm all day. If you think Napa has a lot of vinyard this place is just littered with grapes everywhere, so much so people have them in their front yards, hotels have their own and even resturants use them as decorations. Thank God I didn't stain any of them clothing. The Rhine is the more popular of the two rivers. The Rhine is more popular because of it's River Boat Cruises which we did at 7:00am- 1:00pm and it's castles. The riverbanks are full of castles. Some of them eleborate and some of them not so much. This area was nice but very crowded with tourist at every stop espically Asian toursist pushing you out of the way to take picutes with their ipads. A little rididulus. But we sat and sipped coffee and had pretzles and enjoyed the ride all moring. OOOOOueeeing and AWWWWwwwing at all of the castles. We landed at Bacharach (stil don't know how to pronouce it). OMG! The cutest town ever! It was absent of tourist and so sleepy. MORE FLOWER BOXES! ANOTHER CUTE VIALLAGE! I can't stand it. So, we took our Rick Steves Tour Book and went to his recommendation to this wine tasting place where they give you 15 different wines to taste and a platter of meat and cheese. Hell yes! It was the most perfect day, a light breeze, sunny, wine, meat, cheese the quitness of the streets and the clanking of wine glasses. more to come.