Friday June 7th the journey to Lisboa

Friday June 7th Walk, Bus, Taxi, Train, Walk Santiago to Lisbon 

We awoke to a chilly but clear morning as we prepared to leave Santiago de Compostela again. A quick read of the news told us that the weather we experienced on Thursday was actually the outer bands of Storm Miguel which struck the area with Winds of up to 147km/h in northern Spain earlier, swirling around the Bay of Biscay and moving on to France. (BBC News)

We have two 2016 Camino friends walking the Camino Norte and probably we’re caught in this storm as they’re north and east of Santiago near the coast at this time. So prayers for Jenny and David Waraker as they are 65 days into their 1700km Camino from central France to Finisterre Spain. 

As we walked to the bus in Santiago we stopped for a café con leche’ and a croissant and soaked in the moments of our short journey. As we were having our café three rough looking pilgrims came in and ordered café and Port 🍷!  We weren’t sure if they were celebrating their arrival or if last night had just come to an end with a toast to the new dawn.  Our walk to the bus station had us on our full Camino gear, but opposite direction from the morning’s new arrivals. We acknowledged each other with Buen Camino and kept our respective treks to our next destination. 

The 3 1/2 hours bus ride to Porto Portugal was a bus full of pilgrims for the most part. Many were German and we suspect they’d flown into Porto to start so they now were going to fly home. In Porto we grabbed a cab driven by former Formula 1 driver Pasquale de Faste’ who sped us through traffic and town in his diesel Skoda wagon taking just 13 minutes for the google predicted 20 minutes car time. Brakes still smoking , bags off loaded and fare paid, Pasquale took off faster than Santa off to his next delivery.   In ample time for the train we went to buy tickets only to be told NO, completo, full. Ok then we’ll take the next one, completo, ok the next one - ahhh ok two seats still available on the slow inter-city stops everywhere train. We eventually made it to Lisbon a bit after 6 pm and loaded up and pilgrimed off to find our room that we’d rented for the weekend. 

Lisbon was hopping with activity when we arrived with cruise ships and tour groups and the apartment manager said it’s a three day weekend so EVERYONE is coming to Lisboa to party for the Pentecost holiday. Our host also was a fount of information about places to go, to avoid, to eat at, NOT to eat at and pickpockets. We stowed our gear and at about 8pm set out to a place that was recommended only to find out it was closed. So we strolled back towards our apartment surveying restaurants and just picked one that looked reasonable. It was ok but cost three days food money for the Camino 😳. Just the two glasses of wine cost what we’d have paid for two bottles that we’d split with Ginny and Benny on Thursday night. 

Back home so to speak and off to sleep. Saturday we have a three hour food tour and then who knows. Pictures for Friday will be posted as able but there are not many. 

Hasta la bye bye for now