Category: Caldas de Rei

Senda Litoral Route – Caminho Português – September 2022 – Day 9

Day 9! Caldas de Rei to A Picaraña!

Our second last day of walking! Unbelievable. It takes so long and it’s so arduous, and it’s over in the blink of an eye. Such a dichotomy!

We were off in the dark of night once again!

It very quickly brightened up this time, though.

Another picture perfect day on the Camino. Spain was giving us the best possible weather! Not too cold, not too hot.

The sunrise and the scattered clouds and big blue sky were giving us all the feels!
Immediately following the glorious sunrise, we came upon a little cafe and it was time for a Café con leche! Coffee is ALWAYS better in Spain!

Does it get any better than this picture of an early morning Spanish sky?

It was a day for soaking up the beauty that is GALICIA. It has a special place in my heart…

A picture perfect day!

Just 33km to go!!!

We’ve reached the part of the Camino where your pains don’t matter all that much and your perspective is clear and the beauty gets in. The world hushes and allows you to stop thinking about the aches in your toes and heels and knees and hips and thighs. Everything around you opens up to you…

We had reached Pontecesures. And we were about to experience culture shock…loud obtrusive culture shock. With every internal trip into serenity, comes its opposite.

Just one pic as we made our way through crowds and crowds of people at a weekend flea market type event that had the town hopping with what felt like thousands of people…

Way too overwhelming an experience for me. I was lulled by the nature we had just experienced and the crowds felt like sensory overload of the worst kind!

We were so glad to make our way back out of the chaos of that town!
We were soon to arrive in A Picaraña. Though we were happy to arrive at our lodgings, this was not one of the great discoveries we were so lucky to score along the way. I don’t even have a picture of the inside of this place.

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Pension Glorioso was…adequate. The 70s furniture was…adequate. The WiFi didn’t even work all that well. It was probably our one fail booking of the whole Camino. Can’t really complain.

Day nine was over! ONE. DAY. LEFT. And a short one at that. We’d be in Santiago de Compostela in the morning!

Click here to jump to DAY 10!

I’m also an author. One of my novels, a young adult story, is set on the Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago. THE CAMINO CLUB. It follows six teens on their journey from Ponferrada to Santiago de Compostela. The teens walk with court appointed counselors in a juvenile delinquent program that will see them free of their records once they make the journey to Santiago…a clean slate. Think of a more diverse The Breakfast Club, but on the Camino de Santiago over two weeks instead of in a school library on a Saturday. Give it a look! It’s available wherever books are sold. Here’s the Amazon USA link.

 

 

Senda Litoral Route – Caminho Português – September 2022 – Day 8

Day 8! Ponte Sampaio to Caldas de Reis!

Somewhere along our journey, we had begun to set out in the dark. Once you start doing that, there’s no turning back. We were now doing it every day. We were now counting on the little torch apps on our phones to guide our way for the first hour or so of our day.

Looking for signs in the dark…

Thankfully, there was still the odd streetlight guiding our way through the town.

Before the sun was fully up on our 8th day, we were walking through nature in complete and utter darkness. It was time to pray we didn’t go over on our heels or trip over the jutting rocks in our path.

Just as the light began to hit, we came across some statues in the woods…

Sunrise on the Camino is always worth crawling your way through the darkness while awaiting its arrival!

Soon it was daylight and our fears were behind us. Nobody fell off a cliff-edge or twisted an ankle. We would live to see another day.

We noticed that the vineyards were plentiful on this day. Whether they stretched across acres and acres of land, or stayed within a tiny well-groomed yard, grapevines could be seen at every turn. It also seemed that, wherever we looked, people were picking grapes this day.

Early in the day, we came across a tiny little church that was built in 1617!

Again, LOVE the artwork found on the Camino! LOVE!
Again, don’t care…love the artwork. Graffiti or not, it’s all good.

We soon reached Pondevedra…a bit of a bustling town after all the small ones we passed through.

Strangeness always has its place on the Camino…

Inside the church pictured above, I witnessed one of the little things that chips away at the magic of the Camino. A busload of tourists actually lined up to get their credencials stamped. I was apoplectic. I couldn’t believe that, one, the tourists and the tour guide would do such a thing, and, two, that the person inside the church would actually stamp their credencials. I hoped against hope that these bussies didn’t do this all the way to Santiago de Compostela and then march in to the compostela office and get their certificate. Surely, the guide would prevent that from happening!

The city name…displayed as city names around the world are now displayed…in that great big Instagrammable way!

Soon, another bridge…

 

Hi, artwork!

After Pontevedra, we were heading back into nature for a while. It was feeling very much like we were back on the Camino Frances. Galicia was opening up to us with its vibrant mossiness and greenery…

We soon found a place to stop for a little rest. The entire patio of this cafe was covered by a hanging trellis of grapevines…beautiful!

Placing a stone on the milemarker…

Every stop sign had a message of one kind or another. “Don’t STOP believing!”, “Don’t STOP me now!”, “Don’t STOP now!”, etc.

graffiti
Day 8 – no shortage of grapevines today!

Picture perfect grapes everywhere!

Many times, we saw multiple generation families picking grapes today!

Today was the first LONG day that didn’t really feel like a long day. Except when you take into account the shape of our feet, that is. We were soon in Caldas de Rei!

This is the town where I finally broke down and bought some new sandals. I couldn’t wear my shoes another second. I put the cheap new sandals on before I left the shoe store. The gentleman who dug through a box to find the slip on sandals that would fit my gargantuan feet will always be remembered as one of my Camino Angels! Thank you forever!

Again, we scored huge with the apartment we booked on Booking dot com. Just what we needed after another long day! With a restaurant just next door!

The restaurant had one of our first, if not our actual first, pilgrim menu options! Caldo Galega was mine!!! I just love the Galician soup served in this portion of the Camino! LOVE!

Day eight over, it seemed impossible that we were just two short days away from Santiago de Compostela and the cathedral at the end of the yellow brick road. We were almost there! Day nine? A Picarana or bust!

Click here to jump to DAY 9!

I’m also an author. One of my novels, a young adult story, is set on the Camino Frances route of the Camino de Santiago. THE CAMINO CLUB. It follows six teens on their journey from Ponferrada to Santiago de Compostela. The teens walk with court appointed counselors in a juvenile delinquent program that will see them free of their records once they make the journey to Santiago…a clean slate. Think of a more diverse The Breakfast Club, but on the Camino de Santiago over two weeks instead of in a school library on a Saturday. Give it a look! It’s available wherever books are sold. Here’s the Amazon USA link.