Portugalete

We wake up this morning, have breakfast then head back up to our room to sort through our gear, we are having another shake down, sending another box of gear home and also another box onto Santiago de Compostella. It takes us quite awhile to get this sorted, then we are off to the post office to send our boxes to their respective destinations, we know this will take a while and we have our fingers crossed that we get someone who speaks better English than we speak Spanish, this will aid in speeding up the process. It ends up taking longer than anticipated, so I call the hotel to let them know we will be a little late checking out, they are cool about it and tell us not to rush. We finally finish and head back to our hotel, check out and have just enough time to catch the 1:15pm ferry boat to Portugalete, it costs 8€ and takes roughly 60 minutes. To walk out of Bilbao, the Camino path follows along the industrial area of town all the way to Portugalete, a lot of pilgrims have said it is a very boring walk, so we decide to skip this stage. The ferry boat ride is a much better option. We dock and disembark at Portugalete, this seems like a lovely little outer suburb of Bilbao, this is also where the Vizcaya Suspension Ferry is located, of course we will go for a ride across the river on it. Our hotel is right near where we docked and at the far end of the plaza. It is a fabulous location and bonus it has a bar, so we settle in for the afternoon . We go to a lovely little Italian restaurant just a little ways down from our hotel and we all order garlic bread and pasta dishes for dinner, they are all delicious, oh and a lovely bottle of red. We then call it a night, go back to our rooms and drift of to sleep.Read more