We Made It To Porto!

It was a nice day to walk into Porto.  The weather was beautiful and some of the walk reminded us of Spain.  Some of the trails were Roman country roads with rocks you could tell were laid for horse carts.  We stopped at the top of a hill for lunch and we could look out over the Atlantic ocean for the first time.  There were ships on the horizon which was very cool.  The suburbs of Porto were laid out in front of us.

We started at the small town of Grijo with a huge monastery.  Across the street was an equally huge cemetery with thousands of graves and crypts.  Some of them were bigger than the smaller churches we saw in the last week.  We went thru medium villages and we saw fewer gardens today than in the last week.  We also saw no corn fields.  The first cafe had twin cats which were very cute.  We usually take a break every 2 hours when we are walking to rest our bodies and our feet.  Dianne usually has a Coke lite and Jack had a cafe which is a single shot of espresso.  If the cafe has pastries we usually split one.  

We had a great dinner tonight at an authentic Portuguese restaurant.  The food was great and the service a lot of fun.  We are headed to bed with a late wake-up tomorrow since we are not walking for 3 days.


Comments

  1. Janet ZimMay 8, 2023 at 7:43 PM

    Tonight Todd and I are dining at Granite Bay Chinese. It was delicious. (Hehe)
    We have enjoyed reading your blog together. It’s quite a lovely adventure you two are having!
    Three days of exploring sounds delightful. Miss you both!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Almost Done

Image
We went from Pontevedra to Padron which was about 13 miles.  The weather was hot with a high of 82 and sunny.  A lot of the track was on gravel trails and the first sections had alot of shade - but for the last sections we were in full sun to finish.  We saw some horses today which was very fun and most were white.   We saw more gardens and people working in them.  Some of the gardens were already in full bloom and others were still getting planted.  We saw a husband and wife with the husband using a how to make the holes in the dirt and the wife dropping seed and filling it back in.  We didn’t get any church stamping yesterday and all of them were closed - this was pretty unusual.   We wanted to talk about our morning ritual.  We awake at 7 and get moving pretty quickly.  Dianne stretches and Jack checks the news.  Then we start going thru the steps. Sun screen followed by new skin followed by bandages then tape.  And finally ...
Read more

Bus Tour To Finisterre

Image
We had a nice day in a bus to Finisterre today since we were not interested in waking another 3 days out to the ocean. The day was a lot of fun with 5 stops including the end point down the Finisterre Camino out at the lighthouse.  We saw some wonderful countryside without having to walk each step.  We saw a beautiful waterfall in the mountains that they called Olympus.  We went to the ‘end of the world’ which was one of the westernmost points beyond which people believed the world ended.  We had a wonderful lunch in Finisterre listening to a terrible singer.   We visited a beautiful church dedicated to sailors who were lost at sea.  Our last stop was at an old Roman bridge and the river below was important for grinding grain.  We finished the tour in a thunder and lightning storm with the rain coming down in buckets as we got off the bus.  We marched a few blocks to a cafe to wait out the heavy rain then headed home.    It was a nice ca...
Read more

Windy Day On The Coast

Image
Our hotel was two blocks from the beach and we slept with the patio door open and it felt great.  It was a short walk to get on the Camino trail and the ocean was right in front of us.  We headed north along streets and then we headed down boardwalks for many miles.  The wooden boards are easier on your feet compared to concrete or stone.  After 4 miles we stopped at a cafe for Diet Coke and an espresso.  We also got out is the wind. Today we saw alot more Camino walkers from many different countries. We continued down the boardwalks with the ocean on our left.  Eventually we veered next to a golf course which was neat.  We saw many golfers as we marched next to the fairways.  They don’t use powered and everyone walks here.   We went down some nice lanes including dirt tracks thru forests with some eucalyptus trees.  We also saw some big commercial gardens with greenhouses.  Then the wind picked up as we got closer to our final dest...
Read more