BLAH, BLAH, BLAH

After three days of walking the Camino de Santiago Portuguese Coastal Route (32, 28 and 28K) I must default to letting pictures be worth more words than I have the energy to write. (Donna’s FitBit records flights of stairs and today we climbed 92 flights.)

It. Is. Hard.

It. Is. Demanding.

It. Is. Beautiful.

Our walking notes for today used the word “steep” way too many times. I thought  I had mentally prepared, and, in fact, Donna and I both enjoyed the trek over two mountains, through villages, in forests, along a gorge and roaring river. Continue reading “Yes, it is a Camino! Days 1-3 Summary in Pictures”

I first heard about the Camino de Santiago de Compostela from my friend Mark LeBlanc. He took about 30 days to walk the 500-mile trek across northern Spain in 2008, and I helped him write a book about the experience, ​Never Be the Same. My daughter Kelsey read the book, and in 2014, she walked the same 500-mile path known as The French Way in about a month. Mark walked it a second time that same year, missing Kelsey on the steps of the St. James Cathedral only by a few weeks.

On May 21, 2017, I will be walking the Camino with my friend Donna Halker. We’re taking the Portuguese coastal route, starting in Porto, Portugal ending in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, about 200 miles. We will miss seeing Mark complete his third Camino by two days. (He flies out June 3. We arrive June 5.) My husband and his friend Don McMillin will meet Donna and I on the steps, after having explored other parts of Spain on a Tauck guided tour. The next day all four of us fly to Budapest for a Tauck river cruise down the Danube, returning to the U.S. via Prague on June 19. Continue reading “Can we really call this a Camino?”