Camino Pilgrim

I reached Porto today!!! This city blew all my expectations. It’s amazingly beautiful, has so many stories to tell and feels like walking home. It would take two full days to really appreciate all it has to offer.

Porto is also where a lot of pilgrims start their journey to Santiago. In 10min near the cathedral I saw more pilgrims today than in the last two weeks together. By statistics, there should be ten times more pilgrims from now on.

I call these fresh pilgrims “shinies” because they have no road dust yet on their shoes, funny to see those shiny sneakers reflected brightly in the sun. Some of them even had jeans with them?!? Maybe they like the extra workout. Who am I to judge?

Got 180km covered this week. I survived the heatwave and took good care of my feet. Time to relax and enjoy this shorter walking day. It’s Sunday. I had a nice glass of Portugese red wine in the old Portuguese town.

Still funny how I keep speaking in German to people here. It’s the easiest language to connect with Portuguese people, and lots of pilgrims are from Germany and Italy.

Tomorrow the race with fresh pilgrim hordes to the first albergues will begin. I am taking the more scenic and less known coastal route (also +20km longer). Later, the routes join again. Walking alone the whole day will be a memory of the past now.