We finally left for Portugal! We started planning this Camino back in February and it seemed so far away back then. Today we left our front door at 10AM and made it to our Porto hotel door 22 hours later! Quite a trip of an Uber, three airplanes and a metro ride.
22 hours is a lot of time but for our 2022 Camino it took 2 days to get to the starting point so overall not too bad. Of course very little sleep happened this time also. Below see Janice standing in front of the Porto sign. Lots of travel sites say it is a must see photo spot. Sure enough there was a line of tourists waiting to get their chance for a photo.
Porto had a heat wave last weekend and just like California they had a bunch of brush fires. The whole city is smokey and the sky is yellow.
Tomorrow we will go to the Cathedral and get our first Camino stamp and then Friday start the Camino.
We went out for dinner at a place we researched for a month. It is Brasão (the original) near our hotel ( 3 minute walk). Even though this is a tourist area this is a great restaurant. We didn’t have a reservation but we stopped by at 7PM and they said come back at 8:30PM. That’s early for Portugal! Dinner was wonderful.
After dinner (10PM) we stopped at the local corner wine bar. We had two port wines and sat outside. Safe, 75 degrees, great port wine – this is why we come to Europe.
A few minutes later a local couple with their furry friends sat at the table next to us. The couple and their dogs had limited English but my Spanish an Janice’s Portuguese we shared our collective love for dogs. It was great local experience we hoped we would have.
A great first day and night!