Truly hated leaving Portugal!

 

But as we’re now back in Spain:  Hola!

We had a very peaceful night, and up about 6 this morning to a fairly cloudy day.  We were all reassembled and down for breakfast at 7:30 am, taking the first load of luggage downstairs.  We have acquired a very large reusable shopping bag from Lisboa, and just keep adding to the stuff!  I am hoping that we will be able to send an If-It-Fits-It-Ships box back from Spain with our extraneous cargo (Portugal guide books, maps, trinkets, etc.) before we leave.  Otherwise, I’m not sure what we’re going to do!

The world's first outdoor laundry!

Back along the Douro river one last time!

Beautiful and deserted countryside!

Spain in sight!

Our lovely room overlooking the mill stream!

I've had hotel rooms smaller than our closet!

Robert's salad!

There was actually a second table set this morning for two, but it’s clear that whoever joined us last night did not wish to get down to eat by 7:30 am!  Repacked into the car and heading out of town by a few minutes after 8.  We took a truly amazing route out of Foz Coa, and Robert had us going over smaller and smaller roads, and at times, it felt we were alone at the top of the world!  Truly, we knew that Portugal didn’t seem to be much of an early-rising kind of place, but today – Sunday – we went quite literally for miles and miles without seeing anyone at all, let alone a car on the road!  The route we took led us first back toward Porto, and then turned north to head back into Spain.

(Quick note here!  We did make it back to the Intermarche to get a photograph of the outdoor laundromat!)

Crossed the border into Spain about noon, and got to our lovely hotel (Thank you so much, Katy & Bob!) A Quinta da Auga in Santiago de Compostela about 1:30 pm.  There was very convenient parking, and we were able to get into our lovely room – room 404 – right away!  It is a truly great room – heated and everything! Yeah!  

As we hadn’t had a very big breakfast, or lunch, we decided to go downstairs to the hotel’s bar to get something to eat.  Katy Zappala had recommended their hamburger, so that’s what I ordered.  Robert, craving lettuce, went with the salad with greens, tomatoes, olives, dried tomatoes and Spanish cheese.  Let me only say that everything disappeared without a trace!  However, once again, we didn’t eat until 3 pm so I doubt that either of us will be hungry anytime soon!  Do hope the hotel has a nice buffet for breakfast tomorrow, that’s for sure!

We did encounter some fog and light rain over some of our route, but as there was very little traffic at any point along the way (and it was something like slightly over 5 hours to get here!) the driving was very easy.  I had read that rain was supposed to move into Porto tomorrow, but it looks like (hopefully…knock wood!) we may have a decent, albeit, cold day tomorrow.  Tonight it is supposed to get down into the high 30’s as well. Apparently, it rains a lot in Galacia (our current part of Spain) so we will just have to pack up our umbrellas and make the best of it!

We will be here two nights, and our plan for tomorrow is to go from the hotel (a couple km out of the center of town) into the center of town and tour the Cathedral and Museum.  Compostelais the culmination point of the great pilgrim road, the Road of St. James, and travels from France and through the top of northern Spain.  The “Northern Route” is traveled in 32 sections, and covers 824 km.  Pilgrims will either walk it or bicycle it, and there are definite way stations along the path to get your credential validated. Final validation and presentation of your “award certificate” takes place here in town.

Other than that, it will definitely be a nice “day off” kind of Sunday!

More later, or not, as it does or doesn’t happen!

Lots of love,

m

xxx

[Addendum from Robert: We just went through a pretty upsetting episode about our computer having been hacked.  Yesterday, we answered an odd email and after that, we had a very difficult time connecting to the internet.  I thought it might be just poor WiFi at the hotel and thought things would clear up in our new, rather high-end hotel in Santiago.  Well, they didn’t; in fact, things actually got slightly worse. After much travail, I finally connected with Nortonto get a good search for malware.  I did this by taking the computer to the downstairs lounge, where the WiFi is good, and – much to my relief – the computer is clean and internet service was good.  It was simply a matter of poor WiFi in the room – two hotels in a row.]