Etapa 18: Viana do Castelo

Today we stopped quite a few times to get stamps in our Credentials. The first was a small cafe where we had a coffee and spoke to a local man that kept wanting to shake everyone’s hand multiple times. The second was a small pizza restaurant whose stamp had their name, address, email, website, phone number, and coordinates. Every possible piece of information haha

Along the way, we also saw a gate with lots of Camino stickers on it and so we called hit a buzzer. We were told we could come onto the property and walked down a super steep driveway towards a small cabin with a sizable vegetable garden. We were greeted by 2 chill dogs, a Brazilian student and a retired Frenchmen who had served in the military for 22 years. We got stamps and they offered us wine, but we declined and headed back to the path.

We then walked most of the afternoon in a really beautiful forest that had a number a streams and a bridge going over a river.

Later we also stopped for a late lunch ‘La Comida’ at a cafe and got the fourth stamp of the day there and I had a huge omelette.

When we arrived to Viana do Castelo, we found that the Alburgue was part of an old Convent. It was a real maze to get to our rooms. It also had some very thought provoking art on the walls. When we’d settled in a bit we found that Saskia from Holland was also staying there so we all decided to go to a Portuguese Seafood restaurant together. The food was fantastic, especially the octopus! There was also a group of like 20 people that walked in to the restaurant with instruments and sang some Portuguese songs. They sounded very traditional and like I was expected to know all of the wordsLeia mais