My best shot of the day!

Day 1 Photos

Day 1 - Porto to Matosinhos

We left our hotel in Porto at 7:45 am and walked down the hill a half mile to the Rio Douro, then along the river via sidewalks and bike paths for three miles to the mouth of the river at the Atlantic Ocean. We should have been suspicious of the guidebook mileage, such was 6 Km or roughly a mile more than we actually walked, but figured the error may have been because we didn't start at the cathedral. 

We then walked along a wide pedestrian and bike path between the beach and a broad avenue lined with hotels and vacation condos--typical beach resort scene-- for another three miles to the Matosinhos tourist office, where we stopped to get our credentials stamped. We asked the man at the desk where our lodging for the night was, and lo and behold it was just four or five blocks up the street. We were expecting another two or three miles, so our day turned out to be a lot shorter than we thought.

Being only 11:00am, it was too early to check in, so we left our backpacks behind the front desk went off to find a church with a noon Mass. After Mass we stopped at a small sidewalk cafe for slice of pizza and a glass of beer for lunch, then checked in to our pensions to take a nap.

I'll try to post a couple of photos separately.

We begin tomorrow!

We have been to Fatima -- very beautiful and such a blessed place! Today we toured Porto -- very beautiful as well. Tomorrow we begin our camino.

We will begin our walk along the river Duoro (in the background).

Fatima

After a very long and tiring day of planes and trains and automobiles--well, at least planes and buses--we finally made from Denver to London to Lisbon to Fatima, arriving at about 10pm last night. Boy, did that bed feel good! We slept until 8:30am this morning.

We spent the morning at the Shrine of Fatima, and attended Mass at the very spot where the Blessed Mother apppeared to the three shepherd children. Afterward, we found the Vodaphone store and bought a SIM card for my phone, then walked to the village right outside Fatima where the children lived. Their childhood homes reminded us both of Jeanette's grandparents' old house down on the farm in Del Rio.

Tomorrow we catch a bus to Porto, where we spend a couple of days before beginning our Camino walk.

Camino Part 2

It seems inevitable.  Walking the Camino de Santiago gets in your blood, and sooner or later it calls you back.  In 2013, we walked the Camino Francés route--the most popular of the many marked and recognized pilgrimage routes in Spain and literally throughout Europe that lead to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.  If you followed this blog on that journey, you'll remember our experiences as we trudged the nearly 500 miles from St Jean Pied de Port, on the French side of the Pyrenees Mountains, across northern Spain over the course of six weeks.  You can still read about that journey by clicking on 2013 in the blog archive timeline at the right side of this page.

This time, we'll be walking south-to-north along the Camino Portugués route from the city of Porto on the Portuguese coast, across the Spanish border, and on to Santiago.  It's a shorter route--roughly 160 miles--which we hope to complete in two weeks.  Before we begin the actual walking portion of our journey, we'll spend a couple of days at the Catholic shrine of Fatima, paying our respects to the mother of Jesus who appeared there in 1917 to three children.  We'll also spend a couple of days sightseeing in Porto.

When we reach Santiago, we'll have a chance to meet the gentleman known to pilgrims as Johnny Walker (not the popular beverage), the Camino angel who recovered our stolen backpacks at the end of our 2013 Camino, and thank him in person for his role in this minor miracle.  From Santiago we'll bus back approximately 250 miles back down the Camino Francés to the town of Carrión de los Condes.  Because of scheduling constraints, we skipped the 60 miles from that city to León in 2013, so we'll take five days to walk that segment of roads and trails across the Spanish meseta, thereby officially completing the full 500 miles of our Camino Francés.

Because we'll have no need to return to Santiago again, we'll be taking a train directly from León to Lisbon, where we'll spend the next few days playing tourist before flying home on June 1.  Stay tuned as we post a few words and pictures from Chapter 2 of Jim and Jeanette's Camino story.

Test post for mobile app

This is a test post for a mobile app I'm trying for use on our Camino Portugues. The sample photo has nothing to do with this journey.