Downshift Musings

I got a bit lazy…

I got a bit tired to post all the days, especially towards the end of the trip. Honestly, a number of days I went to bed not knowing if my feet would take the walking the next day. But the kilometers got shorter and I reaffirmed my determination to walk every single step.

So filling in some gaps… after the Waterfall hostel, which, honestly was a bit too rainy and humid (so no clothes washing and a sort of damp bed), we were off to São João da Madeira, which was a big town. We stayed in some apartment-like suites and the highlight was the washer and dryer and having lunch at an Asian restaurant. It was a wet day.

Our final stay prior to the walk into Porto was in the town of Grijó. The hostel there has a terrible rep, so nobody stayed there. We stayed in a really sweet Casa Rural that I had read about and booked late in my planning after having misgivings about the pilgrim hostel. The Casa was really nice, although it was not rural. We had a neat little two story tiny house. There was a small pool and lovely garden. The best was the little nap I got in the sun lounger!

The hostess here at Couto Rutal couldn’t have been sweeter. She didn’t speak English but that was fine and she made us a beautiful breakfast and greeted us with port and beer when we arrived. it turns out our pilgrim friends from Australia, Cam and Claire, were guests there a few days ahead of us.

On our way into Grijó we were really ready for lunch but had difficulty finding the part of town with restaurants. We finally found a likely place, but alas. It wasn’t open yet. The proprietor saw us looking through the door and was really kind. He opened 30 minutes early and provided us with a fantastic meal. Including French Fries, because he says “All Americans like batata frita”. He wasn’t wrong. I ate them all. It turns out it was Portugal Day, a national holiday. We had wondered at the amount of traffic we’d seen on the roads that day. While eating our meal we watched the parading of the troups on TV, mixed in with all sorts of Trump headlines, as I recall.

Our final walking day was pretty nice to start but then we were basically walking in through the city of Porto along busy major roads and light rail tracks. There was an extensive section of Roman road and some of it through a very nice forest.

Lots of shrines to Fatima along the way, and even one or two to Santiago. And some oddities other oddities…

So that’s pretty much it for this Camino (Caminho). We did some sightseeing stuff in Porto. Tasted some Port, went on the 6 bridge river cruise (nice to NOT walk). I will take a while to digest this experience. My thoughts right now are that it was more physically challenging than expected due to the road walking, longer distances and warmer weather. It also didn’t feel that spiritual. Both times on the Camino Frances I had a more emotional experience. I’m glad I did it though. We definitely got an experience of Portugal we never would have gotten otherwise.