Tag: Lisbon

on returning home from portugal in 2018

wanderessence1025 November 4, 2019

As we got comfortable on our United Flight flight #65 leaving at 10:15 a.m. from Lisbon, Portugal on Tuesday, November 6, 2018, we were told by the pilot that our plane didn’t have the capacity to carry all passengers plus enough fuel to get us to Newark, New Jersey due to stronger than expected headwinds. Our flight was scheduled nonstop to Newark, arriving at 1:50 p.m. As there are always headwinds flying west, and as the airline knew the plane was fully booked, we wondered why they had put us on this particular plane which was unable to get us to our destination!

We were scheduled to take a flight from Newark at 5:10 p.m., arriving at Washington-Dulles at 6:35 p.m. that same day.

Airline officials started going up and down the aisles telling various people they had to get off the flight. It turned out these people were standby flyers. Requiring them to disembark also meant that all luggage had to be taken off the plane and sorted through, in order to remove the luggage of the standby passengers. This took a good hour or more. We were quite worried when it became clear that our safe arrival in Newark could only be guaranteed by a few people disembarking. That seemed a slim margin of error!

After all this was done, the pilot got back on the loudspeaker and told us that removing all the passengers and their luggage still didn’t reduce the plane’s weight enough to make it to Newark. Thus they would have to find an airport that would allow the plane to make a fuel stop. After quite some time, they announced that Gander International Airport, located in Gander, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, would allow the plane to land there for a fuel stop. That meant the pilot had to file a new flight plan, and since the computers were at that point not operational, we would have to wait a while for the computers to work again.

During this time, all the standby passengers were loaded back on to the plane along with their luggage.

By the time we left Lisbon, it was three hours after the flight was due to take off, about 1:15. We then flew to Gander without incident, arriving around 3:30 p.m., equivalent to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Our plane from Newark to Washington would be leaving in about 10 minutes, and we were up in the hinterlands of Canada!

Gander International Airport

As soon as we taxied into the Gander Airport our flight captain announced the good news that we had landed in Gander safely and would fill up with fuel. The bad news, however, was that the flight crew’s allowed hours had timed out because they’d been sitting on the ground so long in Lisbon; thus, they were no longer able to fly. We would have to wait at Gander until a new flight crew was flown in from New Jersey!

our stranded United plane at Gander International Airport

It didn’t become clear to us until we settled in that we’d be stuck in the middle of nowhere for the long haul. It turned out we would be at Gander for five hours. This small airport had no other air traffic while we were there, and when we arrived no concessions were open. Saving the day, the airport officials called the local workers in to open the cafeteria; food choices were limited but at least we could have some food and drink. We indulged in cold hamburgers and the famous Canadian dish, poutine: French fries and cheese curds topped with gravy.

>> Washington to Lisbon / >> Lisbon to Gander to Newark to Washington – as shown on my polarsteps app

Gander may be in the middle of nowhere, but it is known for its hospitality. On September 11, 2001, with United States airspace closed because of the terrorist attacks, Gander International hosted 38 airliners, totaling 6,122 passengers and 473 crew, as part of Operation Yellow Ribbon, which was organized by Canada to handle the diversion of civilian airline flights on 9/11. Canada’s goal was to ensure that potentially destructive air traffic be removed from United States airspace as quickly as possible, and away from potential U.S. targets, and instead place these aircraft on the ground in Canada, at military and civilian airports in the Canadian provinces of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and British Columbia. None of the aircraft proved to be a threat, and Canada and Canadians hosted thousands of passengers stranded in Canada until U.S. airspace was reopened.

Gander International received more flights than any other Canadian airport involved in the operation apart from Halifax.

inside Gander International Airport

There was little to no wi-fi in the airport during our stay. Meal tickets were issued by the airline but only AFTER we’d already eaten, and no refunds for previously purchased food were issued. It was a long and excruciatingly boring wait, and there was nothing to do but wait. No flights came into or left Gander while we were there and thus we couldn’t book another flight. There were no options for escape.

waiting and waiting at Gander

We finally boarded our plane at 8:30 p.m. (7:00 p.m) EST, and landed in Newark at close to 11 p.m.

When it became evident that we would not make the last flight to Washington out of Newark, we decided we’d better take our fates into our own hands. As soon as we got off the plane, we headed straight for car rentals, and rented a car to drive home. By the time we started driving, it was close to midnight. We had been awake for about 24 hours at this point and were exhausted and irritable, but we had to drive another five hours to get home. Luckily at that time of night there was no traffic.

We finally collapsed in our beds at 5 a.m. on Wednesday morning, November 7. My Camino and Portugal trip came to a difficult and painful end, but it was all worthwhile. Mike rested for a couple of hours and went to work by noon. It took him a whole week to recover. We calculated we were either traveling in cabs, planes or cars, or waiting in airports for 28 hours straight.

As for Portugal…

I was less excited about my time in Portugal than I was when I went in 2013. First, the weather was not optimal. It was often cold and rainy in late October / early November. We had beautiful weather in Braga and our first day in Porto; otherwise it was mostly rainy, gloomy or cold. Mike enjoyed himself everywhere other than Sintra, as it was his first time to Portugal and he had nothing else to compare it to.

My favorite parts of Portugal on this trip were: Braga, Guimarães, Amarante (except for the gloom), Óbidos and Peniche.

My favorite place in 2013, Sintra, was a real letdown because of heavy fog and huge crowds. Lisbon was cold, windy and cloudy, and there was really nothing new for me to see. I don’t feel a need to ever return there.

Camino and Portugal as shown on my polarsteps app

Here are posts that I wrote following my creative intentions:

I still have several more posts to write, including another list poem and a poem weaving together six things I encountered in my travels. I have a couple more photo essays to compose: black & white photos, local people, boats & the sea, and colors & stripes, food, and enticing signs and shops.

If I ever do return to Portugal, I would go to the Algarve and the beaches, taking my cues from Jo of restlessjo.

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“ON RETURNING HOME” INVITATION: I invite you to write a post on your own blog about returning home from one particular destination or, alternately, from a long journey encompassing many stops. How do you linger over your wanderings and create something from them? How have you changed? Did the place live up to its hype, or was it disappointing? Feel free to address any aspect of your journey and how it influences you upon your return. If you don’t have a blog, I invite you to write in the comments.

For some ideas on this, you can check out the original post about this subject: on returning home.

Include the link in the comments below by Sunday, December 1 at 1:00 p.m. EST. When I write my post in response to this challenge on Monday, December 2, I’ll include your links in that post.

This will be an ongoing invitation on the first Monday of each month. Feel free to jump in at any time.

hopping on & hopping off through lisbon

wanderessence1025 October 22, 2019

Our last day in Lisbon was a day of morning rainbows and cold winds shoving aside the black clouds. It was a day of walking past Museu Sāo Roque and down the steep graffiti-lined hill, Calçada da Glória, dodging the clanking funicular Elevador da Glória. It was a day of hopping on and hopping off the double-decker red City Sightseeing Portugal bus.

Huddled together against the wind on the upper deck, we drove past Praça do Marquês de Pombal, an important roundabout between Avenida da Liberdade and the Eduardo VII Park, where the Marquis of Pombal, a powerful prime-minister who ruled Portugal from 1750 to 1777, was planted grandly on a pedestal with a lion. The Marquês gazed toward the area of Lisbon that was rebuilt under his direction after the disastrous 1755 Lisbon earthquake, probably thinking about the destruction he had witnessed.

We drove past the Campo Pequeno Bullring, built in the neo-Mudéjar style, a Romantic style inspired by old Arab architecture from Iberia. A woman told us over our earphones that the Portuguese don’t kill the bulls as they do in Spain.

We made it past Lisbon’s prison, Estabelecimento Prisional de Lisboa, without getting locked up. It was hard to imagine what it would be like to be held captive for a lifetime. We then took a turn through the modern part of the city.

We moseyed past the azulejo-decorated Aqueduto das Águas Livres, or “Aqueduct of the Free Waters,” a 109-arch historic aqueduct in Lisbon. Built between 1728 and 1835 by order of Dom João V to bring Lisbon its first drinking water, it is a remarkable example of 18th-century Portuguese engineering. It is also the site where 19th-century mass murderer Diogo Alves pushed victims over the edge. The aqueduct was closed to the public soon after.

view from Pensāo Londres

view from Pensāo Londres

Museu Sāo Roque in Lisbon

Elevador da Glória

Praça do Marquês de Pombal

colorful Lisbon

Lisbon café

Campo Pequeno Bullring

flower pants

Lisbon building

Portuguese flag

Estabelecimento Prisional de Lisboa

modern Lisbon

Aqueduto das Águas Livres

Lisbon

We hopped off the bus near the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Manueline Mosteiro dos Jerónimos and the whimsical Torre de Belém. Sadly we found the museums housed in the Mosteiro, the Museu Nacional de Arqueologia and the Museu da Marinha (Naval Museum), were closed on Mondays, as it seems so many European museums are. We should have known! Mike didn’t want to stand in line for the Torre de Belém. That was fine by me, as I’d seen it on my first trip.

We walked around the Praça do Imperio, where we encountered a statue of horses and enjoyed the serenity of the botanical gardens.

We stopped to admire the 52-meter tall limestone Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Discoveries Monument) on the northern bank of the Tagus River estuary, where ships departed to explore and trade with India and the Orient. The monument celebrates the Portuguese Age of Discovery (or Age of Exploration) during the 15th and 16th centuries. It was built in 1960 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator. At its prow is Henry the Navigator, while behind him stand the greats of the day: Vasco da Gama, Diogo Cão, Fernão de Magalhães, and 29 others.

After our wanderings, we hopped back on the City Sightseeing bus.

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

Museu da Marinha at Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

statue of horses in Praça do Imperio

Praça do Imperio and Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

Padrão dos Descobrimentos

We hopped off in Lisbon proper, where we stopped for lunch at Adega Portuguesa, a pleasant little restaurant. Over lunch, we debated whether to go to the seaside resort of Cascais, but ultimately, after dropping by the train station, we decided not to go.

Instead, we hopped back on the hop-on hop-off bus and continued the tour up through the waterfront Parque das Nações, with its modernistic edifices, public art installations, riverfront cafes, and gardens.

Surprisingly, I found myself coming full circle to where I started my Camino (on journey: launching my camino), at the Gare do Oriente, the space-age train station designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. Its slender columns fan out into a concertina roof to create a kind of glass forest.

I also came face to face, once again, with the Torre Vasco da Gama, a 145-meter high concrete and steel structure, shaped like the sail of Vasco da Gama’s caravel, a small, highly maneuverable sailing ship developed in the 15th century by the Portuguese to explore along the West African coast and into the Atlantic Ocean. The memorial to the famous explorer brought me home to my own adventurous spirit, the spirit that had brought me across the Atlantic to walk over 800km across northern Spain.

Coming back to the beginning of my journey proved the notion that life is a circle, that life offers many deaths and renewals, that the human spirit is born and dies, and something new arises in its place. Nature bursts forth with beauty, the beauty fades and is replaced with more beauty. I felt that this was the journey of my Camino, and our subsequent trip to Portugal. I learned to appreciate that life has ups and downs, and that life is not a straight line but one of being born, dying and and being renewed.

The bus returned to Avenida da Liberdade, and finally deposited us back where we started our tour in the morning, again creating another circle within a circle.

City Sightseeing Portugal

Adega Portuguesa

Lisbon trams

colorful Lisbon

street art on the way to Parque das Nações

Gare do Oriente

Torre Vasco da Gama

park along Avenida da Liberdade

We made our way back up to our neighborhood, stopping into a rather upscale cafe, where we enjoyed cake and Port and entertained ourselves with our reflections in the mirrors.

Chiado

Chiado

park in Chiado

laundry in Chiado

a fancy cafe in Chiado

chocolate muffin and checkerboard cake

a many-headed me

Back in Principe Real, we stopped into my favorite shop, LostIn, where I did a little scarf shopping.

me in LostIn

LostIn

We topped off our day with a lovely dinner at LostIn, where we enjoyed our final glimpses of Lisbon’s city lights. My long journey had come to an end, but I wondered what new might arise from the long road I had walked.

me at dinner in LostIn

nighttime view of Lisbon from LostIn

Fish in LostIn

dessert

*Monday, November 5, 2018*

*10,063 steps, or 4.26 miles*

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“PROSE” INVITATION: I invite you to write up to a post on your own blog about a recently visited particular destination (not journeys in general). Concentrate on any intention you set for your prose. One of my intentions was to use five random verbs in my travel essay each day: 1) ~~prove~~, 2) ~~plant~~, 3) ~~think~~, 4) ~~entertain~~, and 5) ~~imagine~~. √

It doesn’t matter whether you write fiction or non-fiction for this invitation. You can either set your own writing intentions, or use one of the prompts I’ve listed on this page: writing prompts: prose. (This page is a work in process.) You can also include photos, of course.

Include the link in the comments below by Monday, November 11 at 1:00 p.m. EST. When I write my post in response to this invitation on Tuesday, November 12, I’ll include your links in that post.

This will be an ongoing invitation. Feel free to jump in at any time. 🙂

I hope you’ll join in our community. I look forward to reading your posts!

portugal: cabo da roca to lisbon

wanderessence1025 September 24, 2019

After leaving behind the fog-engulfed hills of Sintra, we drove to Cabo da Roca and strolled across the sea cliffs near the lighthouse. Cabo da Roca is the westernmost point in Europe, further west than Cape Finisterre in Spain, which in Roman times was believed to be the end of the known world.

It was a rugged and windswept place, but not quite remote enough to escape the tourists. The tonal sing-song of hordes of Chinese tourists echoed across the high cliffs and among the ice plants. I’m not a litigious person, but I would have sued them if I could have, for disturbing the peace.

Once back in our MINI Cooper Clubman, Mike wanted to get closer to the ocean, so he veered off the paved road down a rutted dirt road that seemed to head off into the sea. The ruts were deep and, sensing we would get stuck if he continued, I insisted that we backtrack out of there.

The next thing I knew, the car began performing roughly, with a thumping noise coming from the front driver’s side. We had a flat tire. We bumped into town and parked, but, to our annoyance, found no spare in the car. We called Europcar to send a repairman or a tow truck and taxi to 3 Gomes Restaurant.

It took a good long while to sort out that incident, with a tow truck and taxi finally arriving and taking us to the closest Europcar office. We were planning to return the car anyway, as we didn’t want to take it into Lisbon, and luckily they didn’t give us much grief. They were partly at fault for not including a spare in the car.

Cabo da Roca

Cabo da Roca

Cabo da Roca

Cabo da Roca

ice plant at Cabo da Roca

lighthouse at Cabo da Roca

We took a taxi into the city, crawling through horrendous traffic jams because of the military parade that apparently had followed us from Guimarães and was now clogging the streets of Lisbon.

After settling into Pensão Londres, we went directly across the street to LOSTin Esplanada•Bar, my favorite place in Lisbon, where we enjoyed fabulous views of downtown Lisbon and the Castelo de São Jorge. Lunch was a a fusion between the East and the Mediterranean: vegetable samosas, red beet carpachio with greens & yogurt, and goat cheese pastry with blueberry compote.

Then we moseyed downhill from Bairro Alto, past the graffiti-covered Elevador de Gloria. Heading uphill again to Alfama, we bowed into Lisbon’s Sé (Cathedral) and wandered among colorful laundry strung on balconies, enticing souvenir shops, peeling and crumbling buildings, trams and tuk-tuks, street art and messy graffiti, colorful tile façades, and festive flower-bedecked windows near Castelo de São Jorge. We enjoyed the sun setting on the blushing roofs of Lisbon and the Río Tejo from Miradouro de Santa Luzia.

In Alfama, we acted as if we were dating and did a kind of bar hop for dinner, stopping first for a happy hour and bruschetta at Canto da Vila bistrô. Further down one of Lisbon’s seven hills, after passing a strange gilded busker suspended illogically in mid-air, we dipped into Bairro do Avillez, where we enjoyed several small dishes: “Linguiça” sausage bread purée with asparagus, tomato and green apple salad and “Portuguesinha,” or Portuguese cooked pie. We topped our meal off with desserts of olive oil & honey pudding with lemon zest and Taberna’s Chocolate Cake.

After our exhausting day, we switched on the TV and watched the end of Forrest Gump, which we watched until we fell asleep.

LOSTin Esplanada • Bar

me at LOSTin Esplanada • Bar

view over Lisbon from LOSTin Esplanada • Bar

Elevador de Gloria

Church

tiled façades

streets of Alfama

climbing to Alfama

church

unknown church in Lisbon

Sé de Lisboa

Tiled facades in Alfama

view from Miradouro of Santa Luzia

view from Miradouro of Santa Luzia

view from Miradouro of Santa Luzia

eyes on us in Alfama

entrance to Castelo de São Jorge

charming window in the Alfama neighborhood around the Castelo de São Jorge

bruschetta in Canto da Vila bistrô

Canto da Vila bistrô

Busker

Bairro do Avillez

*Saturday, November 3, 2018*

*15,346 steps, or 6.5 miles*

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“PROSE” INVITATION: I invite you to write up to a post on your own blog about a recently visited particular destination (not journeys in general). Concentrate on any intention you set for your prose. One of my intentions was to use five random verbs in my travel essay each day: 1) ~~date~~, 2) ~~sense~~, 3) ~~sue~~, 4) ~~perform~~, and 5) ~~echo~~. √

Include the link in the comments below by Monday, October 7 at 1:00 p.m. EST. When I write my post in response to this invitation on Tuesday, October 8, I’ll include your links in that post.

This will be an ongoing invitation. Feel free to jump in at any time. 🙂

I hope you’ll join in our community. I look forward to reading your posts!

the ~ wander.essence ~ community

I invite you all to settle in and read a few posts from our wandering community. I promise, you’ll be inspired. 🙂

Thanks to all of you who wrote prosaic posts following intentions you set for yourself. 🙂

I am traveling from September 1 to October 4. If I cannot respond to or add your links due to wi-fi problems or time constraints, please feel free to add your links in both this post and my next scheduled post. If I can’t read them when you post them, I will get to them as soon as I can. Thanks for your understanding! 🙂

portugal’s gritty street art

wanderessence1025 September 5, 2019

Portugal has a vivid and spontaneous street art scene; it’s one that doesn’t seem sponsored, except in a few cases. It has a certain gritty quality to it; often it is mostly graffiti that is sloppily applied to decrepit and derelict surfaces. Here’s some of the street art I found in Portugal in October and November of 2018.

Porto

Porto

Aveiro

Aveiro

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon

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“PHOTOGRAPHY” INVITATION: I invite you to create a photography intention and then create a blog post for a place you have visited. Alternately, you can post a thematic post about a place, photos of whatever you discovered that set your heart afire. You can also do a thematic post of something you have found throughout all your travels: churches, doors, people reading, people hiking, mountains, patterns, all black & white, whatever!

You probably have your own ideas about this, but in case you’d like some ideas, you can visit my page: photography inspiration.

I challenge you to post no more than 20-25 photos and to write less than 1,500 words about any travel-related photography intention you set for yourself. Include the link in the comments below by Wednesday, September 11 at 1:00 p.m. EST. When I write my post in response to this challenge on Thursday, September 12, I’ll include your links in that post.

This will be an ongoing invitation, every first, second, and third (& 5th, if there is one) Thursday of each month. Feel free to jump in at any time. 🙂

I hope you’ll join in our community. I look forward to reading your posts!

the ~ wander.essence ~ community

I invite you all to settle in and read a few posts from our wandering community. I promise, you’ll be inspired!

Thanks to all of you who shared posts on the “photography” invitation. 🙂

on journey: launching my camino

wanderessence1025 November 21, 2018

For once, it didn’t matter that my flight was delayed. It was actually a blessing that my 10:20 p.m. flight to Lisbon from Dulles International Airport on Friday, August 31 sat on the tarmac for nearly two hours due to thunderstorms and lightning. What was meant to be a 7:15 hour flight was supposed to deposit me in Lisbon at 10:35 a.m. on Saturday, September 1, meaning I would have to wait around Lisbon eleven hours for my overnight train to Hendaye, France.

Before boarding the flight, I met two ladies traveling to Lisbon, Porto and Barcelona. They said they’d send prayers along with me. Two other ladies with quite heavy backpacks were embarking on the 140-mile Portuguese route of the Camino. We wished each other Buen Camino! and boarded the plane to wait for take-off.

Onboard, passengers swarmed around sulkily, like a hive of sated yet edgy bees. Passengers were allowed to leave the plane if they took all their carry-on bags. When the luggage was finally loaded in the cargo hold once the storms passed, the flight crew rounded up the wayward passengers.

Finally airborne, I watched the 2018 Fred Rogers movie, Won’t You Be My Neighbor? Fred Rogers was creator, composer, producer, head writer, and host of the preschool television series Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1968–2001). He talked about how there is something inside us that hasn’t been lost – childhood. On his show, he addressed children’s feelings, such as “I think I might be a mistake.” Or, “I’m not like anyone else.” Besides addressing children’s everyday emotions, he also addressed social issues of the times, such as divorce, war, assassinations and racial tensions. On one notable episode, Rogers soaked his feet alongside African-American Officer François Clemmons in a kiddie pool on a hot day, a subtle symbolic message of inclusion during a time when racial segregation in the United States was widespread.

As our country is in the same predicament today as it was in the 1960s, I promised myself to pray for the state of the world, and my country, as I walked the Camino.

I tried to sleep but when my efforts failed, I watched the in-flight map. At one point we were over St. John’s and Grand Bank, Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada. Later, at 4:27 a.m., the local time in Lisbon was 9:27 and we had 2:37 hours to go. The estimated arrival time was 12:04. Altitude 35,092 feet. Traveled 2,334 miles. The airplane icon onscreen hovered about midway over the Atlantic, northwest of the Azores.

Because we didn’t take off until close to midnight, I arrived in Lisbon at 12:06 p.m., narrowing the window of time from 11 to 9 hours before the next step of my journey.

From the airport, I took the metro three stops to Estacao Gare do Oriente in the Vasco da Gama area of the city. The station had a luggage storage area but I was stymied by the lockers; luckily an Italian couple showed me how to use them. It was miserably hot. Dressed in the long hiking pants and long-sleeve shirt that I’d worn overnight on the plane, I was sweaty and uncomfortable. At the Vasco da Gama Mall, I sat at a cafe and enjoyed a pastel de nata and a cold coffee. I thought the mall would offer some respite from the heat, but it didn’t seem to be air-conditioned, so I escaped to walk on a promenade along the sea. At a place called Sea Palace, I had Dim Sum, but that was just as miserable at it had no air-conditioning either. I sweated during my entire meal. I so wanted to stretch out somewhere and sleep, but that was impossible. It was a miserable nine hours waiting for the time to pass.

promenade

lounging nudes at Centro Vasco de Gama

snack stand on the promenade

Jardim Garcia de Orta

Torre Vasco de Gama

hiking boots waiting to begin

Jardim Garcia de Orta

Alameda dos Oceanos

near the Vasco de Gama mall

Finally, I grabbed my pack from the locker at Oriente and and boarded the overnight train to Hendaye at 9:34 p.m.

Estacao do Oriente

On the Trenhotel, I settled into a compartment on train #310, Car 13, Bed 31. I found it odd the arrangement of 1s & 3s in the various numbers, especially as I’ve always considered #13 my lucky number. I stretched out on the bottom bunk across from a chubby Spanish woman wearing a black & white striped blouse; she had barricaded herself into her bed with several large suitcases. At one point during the train ride, I tried to close the curtains since the lights from the passing stations kept waking me up, but she snapped at me and refused to allow it.

Above me was an 18-year-old German girl wearing a skimpy knit tank dress; she was traveling alone for the first time. An Austrian girl burst into our compartment in the middle of the night and climbed noisily to the top bunk above the Spanish woman. For a long time, the two girls chatted in German over our heads, “Ach so!” flying back and forth between them. The Spanish woman’s perpetual sighs wove through their conversation. As I lay there, fully dressed in my hiking clothes, sleep proved elusive.

The train trundled and rumbled and clanked, and through the curtains, rectangles of light glided and flickered across the compartment’s walls. I drifted in and out of sleep. The Spanish woman left the train in Madrid, taking her sighs with her.

I finally fell into a deep sleep, waking at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. The German girl and I chatted. She wanted to study at university to be a history and geography teacher. She hadn’t had a great trip because she had problems with her Master Card not working. When she called her bank, they said something was wrong with the servers. She was running out of money. A guy in Barcelona followed her in his car one night; he was masturbating, which greatly upset her. She was heading to Paris to stay four days, after which she’d return home to Germany.

I ate a sweet bun I’d bought from the Oriente train station, but I had no coffee. It didn’t matter, I suppose, as I wasn’t all that hungry anyway.

I arrived in Hendaye, France at 11:33 a.m. on Sunday, September 2. After about an hour wait, I caught another 1-hour train from Hendaye to Bayonne. Out the window, I saw charming red-roof and whitewashed towns against a backdrop of sea.

I think I smelled pretty sour from all the sweating yesterday and no shower for two days.

Bayonne

In Bayonne, I waited with a throng of pilgrims for the next train to St-Jean-Pied-de-Port. When it finally arrived, people jammed onboard. It was so crowded, we could hardly move. Luckily an additional car was arranged and half the people moved to the other car, giving us a bit of breathing room. On the train, I had a long conversation with Ingrid from Minnesota.

My Camino shell

pilgrims awaiting the train in Bayonne

We arrived in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 2. Pilgrims scattered to their albergues in the old town. I trudged up the main street in search of Beilari, and Ingrid went off to her albergue. It turned out that Ingrid and I would stay in Beilari on the night before we began our pilgrimage (our second night in St-Jean) and we’d walk together our first two days over the Pyrenees. I would meet her numerous times on the Camino, but eventually she would leave me behind, as most people did, because her pace was faster than mine.

St-Jean-Pied-de-Port station

Ingrid from Minnesota

walking from the station to the old town

St-Jean-Pied-de-Port neighborhood

We walked through the city gate, Porte St-Jacques, into the old town.

The city gate, Porte St-Jacques

I was quite tired and disoriented from my long and convoluted journey as I climbed up through the old cobbled streets to find my sweet spot for the night.

streets of St-Jean-Pied-de-Port

After I checked in at Beilari, I wandered a bit around the old town. As I wouldn’t begin walking until Tuesday morning, the 4th, I knew I’d be able to explore more fully the next day.

St-Jean-Pied-de-Port

old town of St-Jean-Pied-de-Port

the portal, Porte d’Espagne

the Nive River

door to Notre-Dame-du-Bout-du-Pont

house in the town

pilgrim

Pilgrim office

cozy lights

At Beilari, I shared a room with Molly from Michigan, Erika from Sweden, and Ferri from Indonesia. At 7:30, we were invited to apertivo. We tossed an invisible ball to each other. When we “caught” it, we shared our names, nationalities, and a brief sentence about why we were doing the Camino. I said I wanted to learn to have faith that everything would turn out all right.

As Beilari doesn’t make a full meal on Sunday nights, they offered a free meal of vegetable soup and bread. On Monday night, we would enjoy a full meal. Two hearty Irish guys told our group they planned on walking the whole Camino in 26 days!

Pilgrim meal at Beilari

wine for toasts

Molly and Ferri planned to walk all the way to Roncesvalles in one day, whereas I’d made a reservation in Orisson for my first night, meaning I’d get to Roncesvalles in two days. They said they were sending their backpacks ahead because of the long walk. I considered whether I should do the same because I was seriously afraid of not making it over the Pyrenees with my heavy pack and my bad knee.

It felt so good to get into a comfortable bed. Beilari turned lights out by 10:30, encouraging a peaceful night for all pilgrims.

**August 31-September 2, 2018*

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“ON JOURNEY” INVITATION: I invite you to write a post on your own blog about the journey itself for a recently visited specific destination. If you don’t have a blog, I invite you to write in the comments.

In this case, I wrote about my experience of the long journey just to get to the start of the Camino Frances in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France.

Include the link in the comments below by Tuesday, December 18 at 1:00 p.m. EST. When I write my post in response to this challenge on Wednesday, December 19, I’ll include your links in that post.

This will be an ongoing invitation, once on the third Wednesday of each month. Feel free to jump in at any time. 🙂

I hope you’ll join in our community. I look forward to reading your posts!

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