Day 1: Lisbon to Santa Iria de Azoia

Our first day on the Camino. 22 kms down and a lot of kilometres to go. Last night when we were looking at accommodations for our first day, everything seemed to be booked or was filling up fast. We ended up booking rooms at the VIP Executive Santa Iria Hotel, a 4-star hotel that is hardly an "albergue" but we were lucky to get the rooms because when we checked in, the front desk told us they were fully booked for the night.

We started walking at 8:00 am this morning, beautiful blue skies, maybe even a little too warm once the morning chill burned off. Our first stop after the Cathedral Sé was for coffee, our second stop was to use a washroom which meant pastries. I can see when Roch joins us, he's going to go home with a little "pastel de nata" belly.

Overall, an easy walking day. When we turned off the trail to go towards our hotel, we saw something I didn't expect to see on the Camino: an ostrich!Read more