An uneventful flight into Porto, we got collected by an Uber. The driver was so engaging, we got a lovely lesson on Port wine. His family has a vineyard that goes back several generations so we were more than interested to hear his point of view on the industry. I’d chosen a compact Airbnb which is right in the city centre, as soon as we arrived we dumped our gear and went out to explore, I mean we explored as we found our way to a supermarket to top up on food! Ha!

What a cute as little city and hello Portuguese tarts! Glad to be back with you! 

Paid €1.20 per tart at an expensive bakery with the best google reviews, then bought more at the supermarket for 50 cents and to our untrained taste buds…couldn’t tell the difference! Supermarket ones it is kids! 

We’re only in Porto for a couple of days so it was out the door mid morning to explore. There’s one thing I needed to achieve here in this city. Pilgrim passports!!!
So as we explored we headed past the Porto cathedral. Some friends are coming later in the year to do the Portuguese Camino so along with my 4 pilgrim passports I needed I picked up another 8. The lady selling them at the cathedral thought I was absolutely crazy asking for 12! What she didn’t know HOW crazy it really is that I now have to pack those 8 passports through the Camino and into Santiago de compostela, then fly them home to New Zealand JUST for them to fly back over here to Portugal again and be packed along the Camino again….I left that bit out, I just asked for 12! 🤪

We walked along a bridge called Luis, some times it’s really odd what becomes a well known thing to do in a city and that was one of those moments! Never mind there’s another 5 bridges in Porto. The view FROM the bridge is significantly better than the view OF the bridge.

It’s such a compact city that after a couple of hours wandering we’d covered Google’s top 6 things to do in the city.

The rest of the time was spent milling around. Saw a beautiful bookshop, had an ice cream that looked like a flower, saw a nice park with great views of the river.

BK popped out to do a port wine cellar tour and tasting, the kids and I rested, we needed as much rest as we could get!

We then caught a bus to Vigo in Spain, only knowing we’d crossed the border when my phone stopped working, a quick flick of flight mode on and off again got it reconnected to a new cell tower and I was back on the grid. I love the whole EU roaming thing. Handy! 

Vigo, we achieved no sight seeing. It was all logistics so the following 5 days would be as smooth as possible!  4 loads of washing done – and I got it all dry in an afternoon, GO ME!

I organised the daily transfers of our luggage for when we walked the Camino, not at all interested in carrying it!

Found our favourite supermarket chain, Lidl, round the corner. Stocked up on lollies, I mean chocolate….ok ok, so it was actually biscuits and fruit/nut mixes! 

And with that we taxied to the cathedral in town to start walking our Camino, 103km to Santiago de Compostela…let’s go! 

Till next time,

Claire