Felgueiras to Guimarães (20? Km)

When I got to my hotel the room wasn’t ready so I did some touring and forgot to turn off my GPS till I checked in. That means that my tracks also include going up to the castle, the Duques de Bragança palace and the museum.

When I left town this morning it was very foggy, and the fog didn’t lift until about 1 km outside of my destination. It wasn’t unpleasant, but the walk itself was nothing too special. There was a short stretch of Roman road leading up to a Roman bridge, which was nice. And for whatever reason there were very few people out and about this morning so I couldn’t chat them up and practice my Portuguese! There were a couple of towns that seemed totally hemmed in by elevated Autovías on both sides of them. Living so close to huge highways would not be very pleasant. Walking into town I went by a strange looking set of tanks with some kind of a mechanized wheel next to them. The people who were there trying to figure out what it was concluded that it must’ve been some thing used to soften up animal skins. At least that’s what I think they were saying.

This is the first town I’ve been in that feels overrun by tourists. Not even Salamanca felt so mobbed. There were at least seven huge groups in the main squares when I was walking around there at noon time.Two or three were from the US, one was French, one was German, and the other was some Slavic language. I was really surprised. The guy in the hotel says that things will clear out in the late afternoon so I’m planning to go back in a little while.

The Guimarães castle is a postcard perfect castle. 10th century no less. I wonder if it has been used as a movie set very often. I believe that this town is regarded as the cradle of the Portuguese language, and it was the country’s first capital city in the 12th century. The central area is really charming. All in all, it’s a very nice place to spend an afternoon. And now that I’m showered and have on clean clothes and no backpack, I’m good to go!Read more