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Finishing the Camino – Santiago de Compostela
Finishing the Camino in Santiago - we visited the shrine of St. James, and gave the saint a hug before taking in the pilgrim's mass; then on to Porto!
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Camino Day 12 – Padron to Santiago
Camino Day 12 - Padron to Santiago - a day that started off great, but was derailed a bit by dehydration, but then finished at our goal - Santiago!
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Camino Day 11 – Caldas des Reies to Padrón
Camino Day 11 - Caldas des Reies to Padrón - a beautiful day with a little rain, a friendly church, a laundromat victory, and a feast of Galician cheeses!
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Camino Day 10 – Pontevedra to Caldas des Reies
Camino Day 10 - Pontevedra to Calda des Reies - a day of sun and showers, and highs and lows, and beautiful healing hot springs.
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Camino Day 9 – Redondela to Pontevedra
7.5 hours walking, 23.4 km walked A little later than everyone else in the hostel, we got up and hoisted urpacks on our backs for 7:30am, two bleary-eyed peregrinas making a stop at the lovely O Cafe a Vila, for a coffee and whatever that cakey thing is. I wish we could’ve stayed longer, but the road was calling, and so after about 20 minutes in the nicest cafe, we got on our way. The top middle picture is a lavanderia, spots built in every village so that women could gather to wash clothes in the time before most houses locally had running water. They’re mostly deserted now, except for…
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Camino Day 8 – Porrino to Redondela
6 hours walking, 17.6 km walked(Walking times includes stops for meals and breaks) Because we both got a pretty good night’s sleep for a change, we had a bit of a slow start, stopping a block away from the albergue for a quick coffee and croissant at Restaurante Paso a Nivel, a place whose main recommendation was that it was open, but which turned out to be pretty good. Getting on the road around 8am, we’d only been walking about an hour when we hit another milestone – the Camino waymarker that tell you you have less than 100 km to go before Santiago. The next stages are the most…
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Camino Day 7 – Tui to Porriño
5 hours walking, 19.8 km walked(Walking times includes stops for meals and breaks) Getting up as dawn was breaking over Tui, we took a few minutes as we were gathering our (mostly dry) laundry and getting ready to go back on the road to take in the beauty of this albergue and the views around it. I really love this little courtyard; we’d sat on the stone bench the night before, watching the barn swallows swoop and dive in and out of their nests in the eves of the neighbouring cathedral. As we set out, the sunrise over the Minho lit everything in a golden glow. Breakfast – coffee, fresh-squeezed…
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Camino Day 6 – Rubiaes to Tui
6 hours walking (there’s a time change between Portugal and Spain, so you lose an hour when you cross the border), 22.5 km walked(Walking times includes meals and breaks) After an okay night’s sleep, we got up and back over to Café São Sebastião (where we’d had our beer the night before) for “breakfast” – two pain au chocolate and coffee. It’s such a lovely spot, and so cheerful, and so convenient, that we were glad to spend a little time there again. But before long, the road was calling us, and we hitched on our packs and got moving. Right past Rubiaes, we crossed a Roman bridge, Pont Romana…
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Camino Day 5 – Ponte de Lima to Rubiaes
7.5 hours walking (part of it over a goddamned mountain), 21.9 km walked(Waling time includes meals and breaks) We’d had such a good day on the road to Ponte de Lima, and liked the albergue so much, that we’d gone to bed in a great mood and had anticipated a good night’s sleep. But once again, it was memorably bad. The beautiful wooden floors creaked, and someone got up in the night about every twenty minutes. We were sharing the room with a tour group who were walking together, and they got up before dawn, having conversations, packing, and generally making too much noise. After twenty minutes of that, one…
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Camino Day 4 – Barcelos to Ponte de Lima
15-minute train ride from Barcelos to Tamel train station 7.5 hours walking, 26.2 km walkedThe walking hours are above from 7:30am, when we finished our coffee at the cafe near the Tamel train station, to 3pm, when we arrived in Ponte de Lima, and include stops for a rest and for lunch. It was just before dawn when we woke up to start our day; we were the first ones up, and crept out of the room with our gear to get ready in the common rooms (which is the decent thing to do when you’re sleeping in a room of ten or more). We were rushing a bit, worried…
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Camino Day 3 – Rates to Barcelos
5 hours walking, 20.3 km walked(Walking time includes breaks, breakfast/lunch, etc) With two full days of walking under our belt, and not much sleep the first night, you’d think we’d be ready to sleep through anything. One of our roommates – half of a really lovely Irish couple – warned everyone in advance that he was a loud snorer, and offered ear plugs. But I don’t think anyone was prepared for this kind of snoring – sort of a sound like a dragon fighting with and then consuming a passenger jet as it was taking off. I’d declined the ear plugs, but Sammi had some spares, and so I did…
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Camino Day 2 – Vila Cha to Rates
4.5 hours walking, 20 km walked Our first night on the Camino, we should have been tired enough to sleep like a pair of logs, but no, it wasn’t to be. The latecomers on the mattress on the floor were noisy, on top of being loud snorers, and sometime around 5am our meditations on how annoyed we were with those people were interrupted by the very early risers, who for some reason always have more zippers to zip and unzip and plastic bags to crinkle than anyone else. By 7:30am we were back out on the boardwalk along the Atlantic Coast, another grey, damp day, walking through spray coming off…
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Walking the Caminho Portugues
A year ago today, my sister Samantha and I landed in Portugal, ready to start our 12-day adventure walking the Caminho Portugues, the Portuguese route of the Camino de Santiago, and ancient pilgrimage to the Shrine of St. James. At the time, I updated fairly regularly on Instagram and Facebook, and meant to write about it when we got back, but I got swept up in this civic participation thing that I was doing last Summer and never got around to it. Now that we’re all unable to travel, I’ve been thinking a lot about the trip, and about the many photos and experiences I’ve never shared. So I’m going…