We headed out early today. We wanted to get some information on the Portuguese Coastal Way and see if there was a service for moving backpacks for us.

We headed over to Porto and climbed those 230 steps! We started looking for the Cathedral and Pilgrim office.

After getting our new Pilgrim passports we walked around for a couple of hours. The city was incredibly crowded. We tried to capture some of the wall art.

Then the most incredible thing happened. We continued walking and I heard someone say, “hey you two”. It was the couple from Holland we had dinner with at Casa Pepa’s Albergue, several days ago.

We were all pretty surprised. We walked and talked together going back towards Porto.

We stopped and shared a pitcher of Sangria and chatted for a bit. It started getting late and it was their last night in Porto. We left them as they jumped on a tram. Al and I continued walking and once we reached our small apartment, settled in for the night.

I put the link for today’s ramble below, tomorrow we head in the opposite direction, Gaia..until then.. be well.

https://www.relive.cc/view/vMq5eGRyNQq

We had a long walk once we arrived in Porto. I earlier mentioned that we were taking a train, I misspoke, we traveled by bus. Al had said it was just a short walk from here to Porto. I also thought it was just a couple of miles, 2 hours later. Turns out in the 5 years since we had been here, things had changed, imagine that.

We had another nice experience, we met a couple from Oregon who had been in Porto for a month and today happened to be their last day. We walked most of the way with them. They told us about their month and we told them about our Caminos.

We walked along the Rio Douro then had to cross over to Gaia, where our room was. We walked over the Dom Luis I bridge which has 2 levels, the lower level has a sidewalk and car traffic. You could walk over the higher level or take the tram . To get there you would need to either all ready be UPtown, take the elevator , the Lada Lift or climb the 230 steps up.

Finding our apartment and getting into it turned out to be difficult. We have mostly had good experiences so far, there have been a couple of questionable places. We thought this was one. The check in process took about an hour and a half where we stood on the sidewalk with our backpacks on. Not a happy camper at this point. But it turned out to be good once we were in. We had the whole apartment for 3 days, which even had a washer!! It was also extremely budget friendly, ie…cheap!

We went to a grocery store and got things for a few days but honestly at this point I was too tired to even think about cooking. It had gotten pretty late and we still hadn’t eaten since breakfast so we headed down to the area around the bridge. Restaurants back to back, mostly seafood and port wine samples.

We called some of our kids, chatted and went to find some food.