When a terminus isn't.

Hello again.

I'm sitting in a quiet hostel and trying to be disciplined and write.  So many possible distractions: watching beautiful young girls pose and vamp for the camera, re-checking the backpack, working yet another crossword, checking FB...you know.

So here goes.

When I made plans for waking the Camino I had very little confidence in my ability to walk with that darned pack farther than 5k.  Remember, starting out slow and tapering off.  So with that in mind, 112km was going to take a LONG time.  22.5 days.  As it turned out, even though I WAS walking incredibly slowly, I walked that distance in 8 days.

Suddenly I was left with tons of time and no plans, and no changes could be made to my flight.  So, this is a learning journey, right?  Well, that's how I think of it.  So, since I'm here, perhaps no should go investigate and explore, do research about other places.

It was a quandary which I found hard to sort out. Immediately two people I met along the way, Erin and Trudi,  posed possible options.  Nice, huh?

I wound up heading to Porto with Trudi.  So much pleasure in meeting and making new friends.  Neither of us had been to Portugal.  We bumbled along together and while we were intrigued by how different Portugal is from Spain, we got to learn our common interests and insights.  The world is a small place.

So we showed up in Porto, neither of us know Portuguese.  We needed to learn thank you and a few other phrases and fast.  But first we needed to find lodging.  Sitting at a sidewalk cafe, taking off those heavy packs, sighing as we sat back and enjoyed our cold beverages, with the aid of Wi-Fi (pronounced we-fe) and my smart phone, I set to finding lodging.  Fun task with no knowledge of places.  Our guardian angels were working for us big time.  We booked beds at the Magnolia hostel.  Setting out liking for it was an urban Camino experience...lots of guessing, a little round about, but then we found it.  We'd kind of walked the long way around.

Anyway we found it, and what a gem!  The hostel was in a 300 year old bldg which the owners have been lovingly renovating.  It´s clean, it´s in keeping with the period, it´s simple.  But it´s the staff, John, Rose, and Adriana who are the heart of this, and they are fantastic!  We each had numerous chats with each of them.  We learned lots of interesting things we would not have otherwise learned.  So convivial and fun.

So the learning continues, just as the journey continues.  I have more to share, but I need to stop hogging this computer.  More to come.

TTFN