Pain. Did we mention that, the pain? Traveling the Camino de Santiago as a pilgrim is often not a pleasurable experience, in the physical sense. Heat, cold, rain, difficult terrain, average daily hikes of 26 kilometers (16 miles) — for the whole of a month, if you follow the popular route from the France-Spain border […]

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If Day 1 of our Camino de Santiago was about getting to the other end, Day 2 was about getting comfortable among the other pilgrims. It is a diverse group. Statistics compiled by church officials in Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain, suggest half the pilgrims are not Spanish … that Germans are the biggest […]

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(Above, clockwise from top: Admiring a huge and ancient tree; distance markers scrawled on a bench; the official markers, noting correct direction and kilometers left before Santiago; Taking a break in a farmer’s outbuilding. The sign hanging, above, invites pilgrims to rest as long as they keep the area clean and tidy.) This may be […]

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Tomorrow morning, the three of us begin our walk on the Camino de Santiago — the best-known of the Christian pilgrimage trails to Santiago de Compostela, a cathedral city in northwestern Spain. At the moment, we are in a bustling little town named Sarria, 110 kilometers (68 miles) east of Santiago. Sarria is the handiest […]

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I can attest to the obvious: A day and a half in Madrid is not nearly enough to get any nuanced sense of Spain’s capital city. We could have done better. I never have arrived at one of the world’s great cities having done so little preparation. Not much studying of maps or prominent sights, […]

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This week, the National Hockey League announced it will not be taking a month off next season so its players can compete for their national teams in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. The first reaction from nearly everyone is … “what an awful decision”. The NHL’s players joined the Winter Games in 1998, […]

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Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees was a multiple threat on a ball field. He could hit, hit for power, run, catch, throw — and describe it all in an elegant hand. I am deeply impressed by the Yankee Clipper’s … penmanship. In an era when many of us can barely sign our own […]

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Yes, I was a Gonzaga partisan, in the NCAA final. I tend to pull for the West Coast team, if one is available, and Gonzaga qualifies because it plays in the Pacific time zone. Alas, it a ragged, herky-jerky and poorly officiated game (44 fouls!?!) ended at North Carolina 70, Gonzaga 65 — at about […]

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A newspaper in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, has announced it is giving up publishing from a fear of its journalists being killed for doing their job. It certainly gives American journos reason to pause and reflect on the difficulty of putting out the paper in a difficult economic times … and conceding our colleagues in Mexico […]

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You didn’t ask, but here are the top 24 players selected in the 35th annual Sun Baseball League draft. Probably not much different than your league’s results, but we fantasy ballers like to compare and contrast. And No. 1 …

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