Day 21: Santiago de Compostela, Spain to Lisbon, Portugal
The bags are packed, checking to make sure we didn’t forget anything and we are waiting for the taxi.
We got up early after starting to plan our Lisbon trip last night. A Spanish friend we invited to join us at lunch yesterday told us a week in Lisbon was “too long.” We take that as a challenge. Time allows you to delve deep into a place.
Similar to what they say “There is no such thing as a bad weather, just bad clothing.” I sort of think that about travel, “There is no such thing as a bad travel adventure, just a bad perspective.”
We start the morning looking for breakfast. We go past the now (nearly) empty Cathedral square and find the one open place by the pilgrim’s office where we had picked up our certificate just three days ago. We notice one pilgrim has the recognizable hobble of one who has just arrived and we strike up a conversation. We find out he is from western Spain and their group of eight almost 30 year-olds decided at 1 am (and after a few rounds of tequila) to keep going and they did 30 miles all in one day and just arrived. Ouch.
He freely talks about the recent birth of his daughter, his hopes for his future family and his small community, and that he is walking for the first time to honor his parents who recently passed and this city was special to them.
He wishes us well as we finally have to go.
The bus station is a great people watching adventure. So much activity, all the languages, the anticipation of so many and the little (a lot) of confusion of which bus is the right one. Siri finds the right one while I manage our few bags. Over the next three hours, we retrace our steps of the last two weeks. The countryside brings back many recent memories, such as walking past hanging grape vines and people caring for their gardens.
We are back in Porto for an hour, where we landed just three weeks ago. It seems like a lifetime ago. We manage the transfer to the fast train and enjoy seeing the rest of Portugal from our seats.
One thing we notice is the pouring down rain bus ride as we came back into Porto has been replaced with sun and blue skies on our train ride. Yes, the weather did factor into our plans a bit to go south longer. Lisbon is supposed to be in the 70’s and 80’s while we are here. We even have plans to hang out at the beach too. The ponchos and raincoats can now be safely stowed away.
There is a lot of history in Lisbon, which we plan to experience first hand. My first impressions as we are greeted by the cable cars and then walk to the golden gate colored suspension bridge, is of course to compare it to San Francisco, which is of course a dis-service to Lisbon, since Lisbon has had a couple thousand years head start on its sister city in the “new” world, and was the head of the largest world empire in the 16th century.
Our place is in the heart of downtown which should be a great hopping off point as we plan our next few days. Tomorrow we currently palm to start with our unusual walking tour to help orient us, then check out the Tile museum (yes, that really is a thing, remember the Azulejos?) and maybe finish with a Fado music – the national music genre that makes me think of the blues – I will see how wrong I am tomorrow.
We will see how plans compare to reality.
Siri and David Adventures 