Eire to France to spain to pamplona to.....

OK, gonna be a quickie, since theres only 14 mn left on the internet time and noone else at the albuergue (hostel) can find any more one-euro coins to feed the machine... Im leaving pamplona tomorrow....doggie got left in the car tonite for the night so i could sleep inside'--havent slept in a bed since last friday night and dont know when i might be lucky enough to find another one...seems alot of the hostels are closed for the winter, which lessens our chances at staying at in-between places and hopefully talking our way in... the lady where i stayed tonite was adamant that the albergues dont allow dogs. i have a tent but would prefer not to sleep in it, at least not every night... ..alot of posts on the internet make it sound like you can get the key to the albuergues even if theyre closed but that doesnt seem to be necessarily the case... which means you HAVE to walk 20 km a day or else get a hotel. the worst part of my trip was actually the drive to the ferry in ireland. the ferry itself was fine, although i was amused to find out the next morning that the ferry was NOT supposed to be rolling around so much on the waves that you literally felt like you were drunk trying to walk around on it... i didnt know cuz id never been on a ferry that long distance before, but i wondered how people managed to eat anything at all when you could literally watch your whole body moving up and down with the waves. apparently there was alot of wind that day...next morning when we woke up (after sleeping on the floor of the lounge lol), it was calm. trip down through france was LONG. one thing i learned that i could have gone without knowing, though at least i know now, is that my car can go at least 45 kilometers AFTER the gas light goes on.... the gas stations in france are NOT spaced regularly...i wont get caught that short again. came through the pyrenees at night. absolutely beautiful, clear night, clear moon, etc. but made me really glad that i chose to start in pamplona not on the french side of the pyrenees. the guys at this hostel who started on the french side said they walked through blizzard the other day. the drive from france into spain though...well... DARN. i just lost the end of my post... computer shut off cuz no more money...then i discovered one last coin in my bag... so im on to finish it again, BEFORE the money is gone :) anyway.. the drive from france into spain though, it was like first i was somewhere i could communicate (or at least find a way to get what i needed by stringing words together ;p and i knew what words to string together...), then i crossed an "imaginary" line (well... actually a BORDER, but anyway, seemed imaginary to me; didnt even see a sign that said "entering spain"), and suddenly, i could no longer communicate. basically AT ALL. the best i could do was walk in somewhere, say ¨no hablo espangnol," and then start mime-ing (as in the case of trying to get boot water-proofer spray...i.e. say "impermeable" then make spraying motions and sounds towards shoes....) or walking around with my dictionary and pointing to words... or using a combination of french spanish english and oops i caught myself saying ¨"grazie" (italian) as i was leaving places sometimes too... it was really nice when someone would all of a sudden say ¨do you speak english¨ as i was struggling to explain, though as often as not i got more like blank stares when i said "usted habla anglais" "or francais?"
So my first night i spent sleeping on the floor of the lounge of the ferry in my sleeping bag. the second i spent in some little town in france, in a residential area in my car.... thing is that in both france and spain its difficult to judge the safety or lack thereof of the neighborhoods, unlike dc or seattle or whereever. in US cities you get a sort of vibe. here, it seems like everyone just shuts their shutters and goes inside fairly early, so driving around at midnight or after, its like driving through ghost towns.... especially the one i spent 2 nights in in spain..i HAD to get out of pamplona to sleep... i saw only one area that looked safe for parking car and sleeping in and then despite driving around and around for 45 minutes (after midnight)..., i still couldnt manage to find it again...yeah, it would have helped to have had a map of pamplona when i got here... so i ended up just driving out of the city to try to find a village or something that seemed safer. where i ended up ended up ok but was SO quiet it was spooky, and it had all these funny looking trees. so funny how everything just sort of shuts up and shutters up at night...

ok off to publish this before computer eats it again due to lack of sufficient funds. guess we are trying to go to puerte de la reinte (sp?) tomorrow but 20 k a day seems like alot. but seems like theres no hostels open in between during the winter. ah well, tomorrow night will be the real test, travelling with the dog. looking forward to teh walking but not to the looking for places to stay at night.