Camino Portugues II

Walked today: 10.1 km No of steps: 13150 Total walked: 21.3 km Last night we went to bed around 7 pm and very quickly I was out.  I woke up at 9:30 am today.  Of course I woke up several times.  I read, I watched a movie but always went back to sleep.  My gadget says I slept 10:30 hours.  My girl was totally out for 14 hours. We had a nice breakfast at the hotel, I mean, they have anything you may want. Then to do chores, we went to the laundromat and we went to the supermarket. After that was tourist day.  We walked down the hill to McDonald's and had a small lunch, really,  then we visited the Igreja de San Antonio where we had time to pray a rosary in front of the dolorosa. We kept walking down towards the river and stop at the train station of San Bento to take pictures of the amazing tile murals.  Down, down, down we got to the Palacio da Bolsa - the old stock market  - it has many interesting things.  The granite stairs were made by hand.  It took 40 years to complete.

Of course of flight was late.  There was a blackout in Brussels airport in the morning so everything in or out of Brussels was late.  We left two and a half hours late. We had time to meet some people, first we had conversation with an African lady on her way back to her country.  She didn't speak any English and we could not speak French. Somehow we did manage to exchange some thoughts. Then a couple from Poland wanted to know if we were going to el Camino.  We talked with them for a while and then a man from Holland also wanted to talk Caminho. Finally we talked with a man from Santarem on his way back to Portugal. We flew overnight to Brussels and we took a 10:40 am flight to Porto. In Porto at noon, we bought a SIM card for the phone at the airport.  We get 500 min talk plus 3 GB data for 10€  A lot cheaper than home. Next we we took the subway into the city and after a short walk we checked in to our hotel. We refreshed ourselves a little and out again to get the bus ti

Distance to Santiago de Compostela: Lots and lots of kilometers Number of steps today: Close to zero We have packed and re-packed over and over again.  Today I took another 1/2 kilo out of the backpack.  Still, with all the last minute things I had to add I am back at 7 kg.  Stuff I'll have to carry on my back for the next month and over 500 km. Day before yesterday I started with a cold, yesterday I rested all day and I am feeling better.  Brenda, Wonder Woman, as always is full of energy running around fixing one more thing before we leave.  He even made me this morning a little bag for my retainer so I will not have to carry the case.  She save me about 20 grams - every little bit counts. Of course I am counting on my Garmin Vivofit to serve as a watch, as a pedometer, and distance meter.  When I plugged it in this morning it froze.  I was afraid I was our of luck but a call to Garmin help me  fix the problem.  Apparently I should use a Garmin charger (I don't have one)

Yesterday evening we went to mass at our parish.  St. Jerome.  Father Jan gave us a blessing and we got the first stamp in our pilgrim's credential.  God willing the next stamp will be from the shrine of our Lady of Fatima. Then, remembering that in previous pilgrimages I had problems loading photos into the blog, I decided to test.  The result is that the app still does not work.  The app reviews have lots of complaints on this issue but Google just has not fixed it. Blogger works fine in my computer but I am only going to have my phone. The easiest thing for me to do is to write here and post the pictures in Facebook. Only three more days and we are off.

This time I was not going to blog but several friend keep asking: where is your blog?  So I am going to try. This would be our (Wonder Woman and me) 4th Camino, this is our history, starting when I was only 70 years old: 1) 2013  Camino Frances; starting in Sarria with Marly Camino.  De Luxe trip, de luxe accomodations, great places to eat, tours around the Camino,and a support bus to start the walk in Sarria  walk only 100km.  When they took us to O'Cebreiro and we saw pilgrims, I mean real pilgrims arriving, I wanted to be one of them. 2) 2014 Camino Frances: starting in Roncesvalles. Around  800 km,  I don't know how we did this.  Wonder Woman had to take me 3 times to emergency.  Northen Spain mountains are so beatiful but sometimes very hard to climb.  It was an incredible adventure and an incredible spiritual experience. 3) 2015 Caminho Portugues: Shorter and easier, Around 650 Km starting in Lisboa.  No doctors this time but lots of blisters and terrib