Pause and Wander

Dates: October 19-25, 2025

Place: Pontevedra Estuary, Spain (Between Marín and Bueu)

After forty-eight days of walking across Spain, we finally stopped. No backpacks, no daily distance to cover, no early alarms to beat the heat. Just one week tucked between the quiet Galician towns of Marín and Bueu, in a tiny Airbnb that looked straight out toward the Pontevedra Estuary.

The house was humble—two bedrooms, a small loft, a single bathroom, and a kitchen that could barely fit one enthusiastic cook at a time—but it had everything we needed. The moment we decided to stay put for a stretch, something in all of us exhaled. No more moving from one town to the next. No more decisions about mileage or albergues. Just home-style living, at least for a week.

And home life, as it turns out, meant cooking.

The nearest restaurant required a bus ride, so we declared ourselves self-sufficient. On our first day, we braved a rainy Sunday grocery run into Marín—four overstuffed bags, two five-liter water jugs, one backpack, and a family sprint that ended with us diving onto the bus just as it pulled away. The locals stared. We cheered. “Teeeeeammmmmm SHARXEEEEEEE!” echoed through the bus as we dripped rainwater and victory in equal measure.

That grocery haul became our anchor for the week. Max turned into the house chef, rediscovering the pleasure of slow cooking in a space that demanded creativity. The kitchen didn’t have much—two working burners, one temperamental pot, and a collection of mismatched utensils that looked like they’d survived several decades of summer rentals. But with a little patience (and a lot of improvisation), great meals started to appear.

Soups, stews, and one-pot wonders became the name of the game. There was a chorizo-rice skillet that vanished before anyone could ask for seconds, a slow-cooked pork and lentil soup that filled the whole house with comfort, and a bolognese pasta that proved impossible to make quietly—apparently sautéing onions at full enthusiasm is an art form. Arya and Finlee took turns chopping, stirring, and inventing “official kitchen roles,” though their definitions of “official” tended to involve more taste-testing than labor.  They were always quick to recommend a quick trip to the nearest “bodega” at the gas station up the road, a 20 minute walk away. It would be  a stretch to be called a grocery store, but they stocked most things we often needed to restock: fresh bread, eggs, wine, and of course chocolate croissants. 

Even the water situation became part of the story. Our host warned us the tap water was “on the brink of potability,” a phrase that immediately entered family legend. We never quite figured out what brink we were on, but it gave us an excuse to keep the fridge stocked with bottled water and the kettle constantly boiling for tea.

Cooking became more than feeding ourselves. It was how we settled back into life together. Each day began with Max poking through the fridge, planning what could be remade or reimagined. Lunch blurred into dinner, and dinner sometimes turned into a homemade dessert—like the apple-blueberry crumble or the chocolate mousse, both of which might as well have been Michelin-star moments. After the Camino, this small domestic rhythm felt luxurious. We weren’t chasing sunrises anymore; we were chasing the perfect simmer.

As the days rolled by, another project took shape—our first official week of homeschooling on the road. Arya and Finlee cracked open IXL, our new digital sidekick, and dove into math diagnostics that lasted longer than anyone expected. The program mapped out their strengths and weak spots in fractions, geometry, and algebra, adjusting as they went. It was strangely satisfying to see learning quantified in real time—tiny blue progress bars replacing the usual report cards and gold stars.

We quickly found our system. IXL for structure, Khan Academy for depth, and YouTube for the fun stuff—science clips, social studies stories, and history shorts that sparked lively debates over breakfast. Each day had just enough schoolwork to feel purposeful but never rushed. The girls learned, we cooked, the rain fell, and life found a gentle, manageable tempo.

When the rain stopped, we’d break for the beach. Arya sprinted ahead, Finlee hunted seashells, and Max would inevitably draw something in the sand—this week’s masterpiece was a giant mandala, carved just deep enough to survive until the next tide. Back at the house, we curled up around the pellet stove for games, movies, or books. James Bond made his way into the movie night rotation, followed by Harry Potter, until we decided on a heated multi-day introduction to the board game Risk that revealed surprising streaks of world domination in both kids.

By the end of the week, we hadn’t seen much beyond our little stretch of coastline, but that was the whole point. The Camino had been about motion—kilometers, elevation, miles underfoot. Here, the journey was internal. We were learning how to stop moving without losing momentum, how to find joy in the ordinary: the smell of soup simmering, the sound of rain on the roof, the sight of Arya sprinting up hills just for the fun of it.

We came to rest, and in that rest, we rediscovered a simple truth: travel doesn’t always mean going somewhere new. Sometimes it means staying still long enough to feel at home wherever you are.

Next stop—probably the market. We’re running low on bread and tea again.