Puente La Reina - burned to a crisp.....

Yay!! Walked 23km toady! In the most gorgeous weather. Actually, the weather was SO gorgeous that I realised it too late, much too late when my arms were already burned to a crisp. What can I say? I´ve been walking in rain and snow for the last week - who´d expect such a turn? I actually managed to be on the road early enough and crossed the next mountain top "Puerto del Perdon" at around noon. Up there was an amazing monument depicting all the different types of pilgrims that have crossed the place over the centuries, and the view was something else! (I sent a tweet but found out that all my tweets since I reached Spain never made it to Ireland! Thanks to a certain Shane Carr I´ll be signing up to AG Tweet now and hopefully it´ll work from now on) In the distance I could make out the snow covered peaks of the Pyrenees...., did I really walk all the way from there? The mud kept itself to a total minimum (yay, yay, YAY!) and after my little rest (bread, salami, water & chocolate) I actually walked past a lot of pensioners today (not them past me as before), so I didn´t need to feel humiliated :)) One thing I discovered is that I walk much better when I listen to music. No wonder soldiers have to walk to drums or sing songs! I have a special Camino playlist on my iPod, made out of 18th/19th century walking, drinking, soldier and student songs, medieval Santiago music and the "Into the Wild" soundtrack (eh no,I have no intentions to eat leaves or berries from the wild and end up like the guy), but all of which have great walking rhythm to them, especially the 18th/19th century student songs, which have all to do with drinking and walking - not with studying, wouldn´t you know ;) ANYWAY! I made it to this place today: Puente La Reina, and met the 2 lovliest women! A nun from Hungary, Erika, and a Korean woman from Vancouver, Amy. Both are the craziest walkers ever, Erika having walked about 35km today, while Amy walked close to 40km!!! Both don´t have much time, so they´re on a tight schedule. Which is a total pity, cause they´d be great walking buddies! Full of humour and kindness, but.... tomorrow I´ll loose them to the Camino. At least we´ve exchanged email adresses. I´m pretty proud with the amount I did today. I actually took a detour of 3.5km to see an octagonal church built by the Knights Templars: it was closed of course..... But in the end I manged to let the woman in charge let me and 5 others have a quick look and she opened the gates. You´re supposed to take off your shoes and walk round the church 3 times to feel the energy of the place. Course I only discovered that once we´d left the thing again... Ah well, she´d let me walk round the church only once anyway. The one thing I found really fascinating was one of the entrance doors: the carvings looked so celtic! It could´ve been a door to a church in Ireland!
Don´t know to where I´m off to tomorrow, I´ll decide that over breakfast. Amy and Erika will be long gone by then. Still have to tell you about the ghosts in Pamplona! Drunk people falling into their bunk beds now, guess I better get a move on as well. Still can´t get used to those 6am mornings....