Camino de Santiago

Check out today is at 12, an area in which I feel strongly that the European approach is superior to ours - you don't need to be in your room between 2 and 4pm so it makes no difference as long as you can drop your bag. But rolling out at 12 instead of 10am is an incredible, wonderful, VIP experience. I shall stage sit-ins at all major hotel chains in Australia until I achieve this change. My legacy. #YesWeCan.

I took a moment to reorganise my bag, riveting stuff, had another incredibly (to a frankly unsafe degree) hot shower, set about eating as much of my food as I could, and then toddled back to that brunch place from yesterday. Hallo, I chirped, grinning dumbly, and plonked myself down in the singularly most inconvenient spot I could have chosen, next to the, admittedly very disguised, storeroom door. At this point I realised I wasn´t hungry in the slightest but I´m also not a quitter, so.

I was to regretti spaghetti this on the 1.25pm bus trip to Porto. I´ve always been Not Great when it comes to motion sickness but it turns out if you travel at a max speed of 5km/hr for five weeks, going 100km/hr on a six lane highway will actually nearly kill you. I tried looking out the windscreen but that was distractingly trisected by two enormous cracks which gave rise to decapitation paranoia which wasn´t very calming either.

The good thing about travelling 100km/hr is you get there bloody quickly, so after 45 minutes I tumbled off, green, and set about my challenge. I was trying to navigate from the decentralised bus station to the centralised hostel without using my phone. I got within 600m, which we´ll probably call a win, and had a beer and an OP SHOP VISIT on the way, which we definitely will.

On my post check in walk I discovered this neighbourhood is absolutely riddled with that chain of op shops, and they aren't very good, but there are also quite a few vintage shops and I am in the market for new pants, let me tell you. My walking ones are exceptional and I would and probably will buy them again, but its time for a change.

I´m working out that some parts of the Camino approach are more transferable than others. Sorting accommodation same day is far more stress and admin than I am willing to trade for the flexibility. But as long as I have a bed, I'm cool with winging the rest.

As an excessive planner (in recovery), I genuinely enjoy putting itineraries together because for me it is like getting the holiday twice, same as online shopping - there are two dopamine deliveries.

However what I found surprisingly liberating on Camino was the constraint on my time in each place. You'd get in early afternoon, and you'd need to eat and shower and do laundry and journal and go to bed early, so you'd see what you see and then bounce before the sun came up. There was no Top 10 Things in XYZ.

I´m bringing that to Portugal. I know the city I'll be in on each day, but within those days I just walk around, pick left or right on vibe, go through a door when I'm interested, sit on steps, lean on fountains. I'm having a wonderful time with that. I felt so agile today.

I will definitely miss things, and there's a little voice that quietly suggests I'm not doing this properly, and then throws around the 'should' word. I shush them by pointing out that I will no doubt stumble across some of it, but I'll also do and see stuff that I might not have if I was at the Top 10, getting the same pictures I can see on the first page of Google.

After another evening walk, sat cross legged in my top bunk (nice ladder, curtain!), I had a quiet epiphany. Sometimes an idea that has been floating around as a gas just solidifies suddenly and drops into your lap. This one was a question I am now ready to ask myself, in need of an answer. I'll be working through for the next little while I reckon. Might need some more plods in the Hundred Acre Woods. Think think think.Read more