Final Visit to Lisbon

We spent the last 5 nights of our vacation visiting sights in Lisbon.

View from the Castle de Jorge.

Drawbridge of the Castle de Jorge.  We found out later that this is actually the SIDE door.

View from the tower of the keep, the highest point in Lisbon.

Day trip to Belem, along with most of the tourists and at least one full cruise ship.  The lineups were too long so we didn't actually see any of the sights.

Monument to the discoverers.

Lighthouse in Belem, stripped like a cork tree!

This sign attracted our attention, but then when we got closer we just felt cheated.

View from the main plaza in Lisbon.

Day trip to Sintra to visit the Pena Palace.

Crowds at the Pena Palace.  It is a converted monestary, the older (monestary) sections are red and the "new" palace sections are yellow.

Guardian at the Pena Palace.

Getting cold and windy!

View from Sintra - if you quint you can make out the Moorish Castle up on the hill.

Market in Lisbon.

Pastel de Nata!!!

Putting the "fun" in "funicular".

Day trip to Cacilhas.

Tons of abandoned building porn in Cacilhas!  The whole shorefront was abandoned.

Car park (?) in Cacilhas.

More abandoned buildings and graffiti in Cacilhas.

Last night in Lisbon, "chin-chin"!

Some Post-Camino Travels

Since we finished out Camino we've reverted back to normal vacation form.  We spent a couple of days in Santiago, took a bus to Porto where we stayed 3 nights, train to Coimbra (a.k.a. "Little Lisbon") for 2 nights, and now we are back in Lisbon.  It rained overnight and the rain is just dying down this morning.

Some photos from the past few days:

The view from our Santiago Airbnb.

View of the Duoro Valley.

Port flight at one of the wineries we visited in the Duoro Valley.

Duoro boat cruise.  We are on a boat similar to the one in the background.

Casa de Musica in Porto, designed by Rem Koolhaus.  We saw a flamenco show there in the evening.

Visit to Taylor port house in Porto.

This rooster was just running around while we were doing out port tasting at Taylors.

Cobblestones!  Small/even on the left (good for walking); large/even on the right (good for driving).

Our Airbnb in Coimbra had a stovinkerator!

View of Coimbra from across the river.  Our Airbnb was up the hill (but not all the way up).  The university is on the very top.

Old monastery in Coimbra, built in the 1300's, abandoned in the 1700's due to flooding, and excavated abut 30-40 years ago.

View of Coimbra from the university.

Old library at the University of Coimbra.  It houses 60,000 books from 1755 or earlier.  No photos allowed, so I bought a postcard and took a picture of that.  Checkmate, suckers!

Just a plant growing randomly on a 500 year old wall.

Section of an old aqueduct (we think) in Coimbra.

Small coffee, in Spain they call it a cortado.  In Portugal it might be a pingo (Porto), a pingato (Coimbra) or a garrato (Lisbon).  We've never been able to successfully order one of these without a big discussion.

Day 7 Padron to Santiago 25 km

We did an early 7:30 am start to make sure that we could get to Santiago by lunchtime (it's all about the food), so we did the first hour or so in the dark.  The route was well marked all the way, that is until we actually reached the outskirts of Santiago, at which point all route markers seemed to vanish!  I guess they expected God to guide us in from that point (however we turned on google maps instead).

Here are some video snippets from the last day of our Camino, you can walk with us virtually:

A lot of the Camino was through small Galician villages, this was my favourite part of the camino.  Beautiful laneways, the terror of seeing cars racing at you from around tight corners, etc.

We crossed a few major intersections, highways and industrial areas, but not a significant amount.

The wooded trails were easy on the feet, however the dirt trails were often uneven and muddy.

A plaza full of sweaty pilgrims!!!

And some pics:

Some nice trails.

An auspicious distance marker.

Sonya calls these things "infidel shacks" and she says this is where I will need to stay if we ever move here.

10 km to go!

A nice view.

Arrived at the end of our pilgrimage!

We Arrived in Santiago!

More details to follow later.  First order of business is a shower and a drink!!!

Day 6 Caldas de Reis to Pedron 19 km

95 km under our belts and 25 km to go!  Una dia mas!!!

Today was painful but not as bad as yesterday.  All my bits were hurting (feet, knees, etc) and between Sonya & I we are down to 13 toes.  Tonight we are in Padron, which is a small town but has an extensive collection of ancient artifacts (church from the 1500's etc) that we are much too tired to appreciate!  We had dinner in our Airbnb (chicken wings & salad) and are planning for an early 7:30 am start for our last day.

Some pics from today:

Today included a lot of trails, but also a lot of cobblestones!  This is the road out of Caldas de Reis in the morning.

Does anyone know what these plants are?  I thought maybe brussel sprouts at first, and Sonya said maybe kale, but I think we're both wrong.  It's a very common plant here!

More cobblestones!

Some random church along the way.

Here we are at km 34.390 stopping for a rest and a snack.  (Cookies with dark chocolate that I snuck into our grocery cart.  Sonya doesn't normally like buying snack food but now she sees the benefit!)  Interestingly we stopped at a pop-up cafe a couple of km back (at around the 37 km mark) that was advertised (and even had stamps that said) 34.584 km, but this was the closest to that distance and there was nothing around but trees and more trees.  So we stopped anyways.

More damn cobblestones!

Some factory off in the distance, punctuating the view.

Another church, just outside of Padron.

We THOUGHT we were walking into Padron, but it was a small town just before Padron that was placed there just to fool us.  We were still 2 km out at this point.

Tomorrow is our last day of Camino-ing.  We're hoping our various body parts hold up for one more day!  We have 2 nights in Santiago (a full day to recover and maybe get a pedicure (Sonya)) and then we've got a bus booked back to Porto.