One Sweet Thing...

My blog friend Stacey posted 14 sweet things in her life.
One definite sweet thing is my love of travel
and traveling with my friends. I have been so fortunate to travel with many of my friends and thought I would share a few of the photos. My friends definitely are high on the list of the sweet parts of my life and I love looking at pictures of places I've shared.

These pictures are from a wonderful trip in 2006 to Santiago de Compostela, the ancient pilgrimage city in northern Spain. We didn't do the total walk from France through the Pyranees, but covered the last 60+ miles...and in the interest of full disclosure, I only walked about half of that. It was an extraordinary adventure through the chestnut forests, the farm lanes and into Santiago. I thrilled as we passed each marker with the traditional sign of the pilgrim, the scallop shell.

I'd hoped to do this trip since college, but hadn't found friends to travel with, so this was the answer to a long-time hope and it was as sweet an experience as I'd believed it would be. Mary and Pat were wonderful traveling friends, thoughtful and funny. I enjoyed the country scenery, the small towns we visited, the Galician music and the architecture we saw, especially the magnificent cathedral in Santiago. Our hotel in Santiago was originally a convent founded by St. Francis, during his pilgrimage. The only downside to the trip was the worst case of blisters imaginable, but I learned to communicate the need for mole skin quite well by the end of the trip.

And so on a not-so-cold winter evening in New York I close my eyes and remember, laughter and history and scallop shells carved a thousand years before, guiding us on our way.