Reverted to "classic Blogger" and now photos work

Hello, everyone.

I tried again with the new Blogger setup. The photo upload was still not working. How these people managed to tangle up photo upload with google docs is beyond me. Maybe they should try proofreading their work.

I reverted the blog to the older format, which worked.

Now I can upload the photo of the two new Camino walking guides. They contain maps, suggestions for lodgings, brief descriptions of towns and areas of the path.

In this case, the path is the Camino Frances, which is the second-oldest of routes taken by pilgrims that begin roughly near the western Pyrenees. We walked it in 2014, going over the high route in the Pyrenees, called the Route Napoleon. (Blog posts from 2014 discuss this walk.) We would like to return to it and walk the lower route through the Pyrenees, called the Valcarlos route.

The very oldest Camino route to Santiago is the Primitivo, first taken as  royal progress/pilgrimage by the court of one of the Kings Pelayo when the relics were first rediscovered. It began in Oviedo, where his court was, and took a mountainous route to Santiago. We have not walked this route, but would like to in the future.

The oldest route from the Pyrenees (at least I think it is the oldest!) would be the Camino del Norte, which runs along the edge of the ocean. The villages are in little fjords and the path goes up and down a lot. Steeply up and down! (We walked this in 2017 and 2018, and blog posts from that time period discuss it.) The older routing connects to the French route at Arzua, and that is the way we walked.

I am not sure of the age of the Camino Portugues--interested readers can chime in their advice in the comments--but it used to run from Porto north to Santiago. Lately quite a number of people have been starting out in Lisbon. Like the Spanish routes, there are various walking options that allow one to either go inland or along the sea. We walked this in 2015, and blog posts from that time period discuss it.

Another old route is the Via de la Plata, the way of the platted road. (These days everyone remembers that "plata" means silver in Spanish and some call it the Silver Road.) This one is longer. We hope to walk it in the future.

As y'all can see, the go-slow retreat/pilgrimage on foot becomes an addiction. Also I have been privileged to visit Our Lady of Covadonga, the cathedral at Oviedo, and many other edifying churches.

It is not too much to say that I long for the days when we can walk the Camino again.

Rest day in Bilbao

Hello, everyone.

We have been enjoying a rest day today--defined as not wearing packs while walking. We did stroll about the city some.

Ate berejena stuffed with bacalao for lunch--this was part of a Menu del Dia. (Menu del Dia is said to have been pushed by Gen. Franco's government as he is said to have insisted that a working man should be able to buy his main meal for a decent price. They are also found in Portugal.) The starter course for me was caprese salad: tender goat cheese slices between tomato wedges with assorted green bits as a base. And for the chaser a milk pudding, creamy and with little or no sugar the way I like it.

We also strolled over to the famous Guggenheim modern art museum. The outsides were interesting but I confess to having no interest in modern art so we just enjoyed the outside and went on our way.

I do like the flowered puppy out front.
Ultreia.

Playing with decor

Hello, everyone.

I tried out a new look for the foyer of the house...it may still change but this is the current draft.

Yes that vase had a prior life holding wine. What was that trendy saying? Oh, yes: "Reduce, reuse, recycle. "

Photo is of the Portuguese historical site at Valenca. (Please excuse slight misspelling!) This fort sits at the border with  Spain. We passed through there on the Camino Portuguese in 2015. The river there is the actual border.

A photo from the Camino Portugues

Hello, everyone.

As we're coming up on the 100th anniversary of the visions at Fatima, a picture of the older basilica from 2015:

Detail of the Rosary mysteries on the wall behind those columns

Happy Easter

Hello, everyone.

A painting for today:

"And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen. And they were saying to one another, "Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?" And looking up, they saw that the stone was rolled back--it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee...."  Matthew 16: 1-7

Besides the blazingly obvious, that this is from the account in the Gospel of Matthew of the discovery that the Lord had risen, another thing occurs to me. Did y'all notice that *every* Mary has a surname or other descriptor to tell the reader which Mary we are talking about now? That says to me that Mary was one of those bog-standard names that appeared in so many families that you couldn't walk without tripping over a gal named Mary. Mary of Magdala is not Mary of Bethany (sister of Lazarus?) is not Mary the wife of Cleophas is not Mary the mother of Jesus. And that's just the Marys that I can roll off the top of my head.

Sometimes when I read spiritual meditations or Bible commentaries it seems like the writer has it in their head that there are only maybe 2 ladies named Mary in the entire Holy Land of Jesus' time. But it is there in the text, if one reads with attention, that there are LOTS of Marys. Also there appear to be lots of men named Jesus--why else does Jesus have a surname?--and lots of James and Jude and Simon as well. Possibly other given names in the Gospels give evidence that their holders had fairly common names. Having advanced the thought, I will leave it to the interested readers to explore for themselves.

This painting of the Resurrection of Christ was in a Portuguese church, but without digging a lot into the things from a couple of years back I can't remember which one. It was after Coimbra, I think. And certainly before Tui in Spain.

Another picture from the Camino Portugues: Fresco at Tomar Templar Castle

Hello, everyone.

As long as I'm revisiting the (large) stock of pictures from the 2015 pilgrimage, I thought I'd put up  another one.

This fresco (I don't think it's a framed painting.) is in the chapel at the Templar castle in Tomar. It depicts the second Glorious Mystery of the Rosary, Christ's Ascension into heaven.

You will note the feet suspended in the air, with angels in attendance. This is actually one of the more standard old-style ways of depicting the Ascension. It's found on Eastern icons as well. The crowd of exclaiming people has their backs toward the viewer, because they're not the point of the operation. Their purpose is to direct our attention to the rising, vanishing feet, the open entrance to heaven, and secondarily to the angels.

A memory from the Camino Portugues: Forte de Nossa Senhora das Neves

Hello, everyone.

Today, a picture from the day we bussed out of Porto to Matosinhos (on the outskirts of the city) and started walking from there along the beach.

This fortification was near the path as we walked through the town of Matosinhos.

As you can see by the light in the photos, it was too early to expect to visit and see it. (This was, after all, the day we encountered a McDonald's that wasn't going to open for the day until 11 a.m.)

It was meant to be blogged on last year but didn't happen: orange top

Hello, everyone.

The orange top of the title has been mentioned in passing more than once. It was made to use up stash and to have a shirt to wear on the Camino Portugues.

The fabric is a nylon Taslan crinkle type, very light weight, and there is a mesh panel in the upper back for breathability. (Is that a word?)

attaching the mesh inner yoke

the mesh needed an edge, so a strip of the Taslan was added as reinforcement

"Feeding" the bronze chickens. Love the Portuguese street sculptures! 

The fabrics: the mesh was bought along with a red mesh, to patch a pocket in DH's pack that had been slightly torn on the return in 2014. A little snip of the red took care of that handily--and there was a yard of this salmon mesh just lying around, blending into the mass of stash. The orange nylon was bought at the same time--both from Fabric.com--and a Burda blouse pattern was used. (Link goes to a Pin of the pattern.)

The yoke seams have reflective piping, which is light gray, and there is an AB finish button at the front neck: a blue fish.

The light crinkle Taslan ravels quite a bit. It has a DWR coating, so moisture basically doesn't pass out of the top. Thus the mesh yoke!

Bearing in mind that the technical fabrics were all bought in late 2014, for the pack repair, and then the various 1 yard pieces were just sitting there, I call the entire project a stash buster.

It works OK for evenings but doesn't let out heat well enough to hike in during a hot day. 2015 had a lot of hot days. This top came out in the evenings.

It wouldn't be a pilgrimage without at least one steep climb, right?

Hello, everyone.

We left Ponte de Lima after having the (totally unexpected) experience of drinking coffee at 7 in the morning. This was the on this trip that a coffee shop or bar was open that early in the morning.  We promptly found ourselves walking on lovely forest area paths and passed a dam with pretty water flowing over the top.

After that we came to a Fishing Park, a place where people could borrow poles and catch fish (pay by the pound for the fish) in a pleasant location. There was a snack bar with a nice, clean bathroom. (Don't laugh! Someone, somewhere will be glad to know that, if they make it to the Fishing Park, there is food, drink, and a bathroom.)

We passed the famous Fonte de Tres Bicas (Fountain of Three Mouths) and shortly thereafter came to a road crossing. Our way along the trail continued on dirt--not only straight ahead but steeply up! We stood there looking at it and trying to get up nerve to go. While we, and some other pilgrims, were doing that a young man walking solo came up, said "huh," and trotted right up the hill! After seeing that, we had to quit waffling and go.

We saw sap-gatherers marks on the pine tree trunks.

After we got to the top, and rested a bit on the considerately placed bench, we got to go down. There were even more rocks on the downhill side.

Note the yellow arrow hidden in the electric pylon. This was a standard place to put them on the Portuguese way--apparently folks aren't so in love with having yellow spray paint on their walls and rocks as all that.

DH went out onto the top of the dam to get this picture.

It's amazing how much less steep this things look when you aren't walking them! This is the uphill side. 

The down hill side. 

We reached Valencia/Tui on this day. This is the fort on the Portuguese side of the border.

 We reached the Spanish-Portuguese border this day and crossed over. There is an albergue close by the cathedral in Tui and we happily stayed there. An afternoon snack of tortilla de patata, a tour of the interesting cathedral, and dinner ended the day.

Returning to our pilgrim notes

Hello, everyone.

The mind returns to the pilgrimage over and over, when any little thing cues the thought. DH got a book of Portuguese home cooking--written by a person whose family came to the US before she was born, but who was raised in touch with the ancestral culture and foods--and we found a recipe that reminded us of the next day of walking in the sequence: after the day in Braga, the day walking from Barcelos to Ponte de Lima.
The recipe calls itself "Beans with Rice" and I got my hopes up--beans cooked separately from rice, then mixed for the plate, with onion and garlic. No ham bone, but we could fix that. Oddly, there is a bit of vinegar in the recipe in this cookbook. So I made it today--it turns out to be somewhat similar in taste, but not quite the same.

As you can see, there are both older and newer route marks.

This was just a little place on the side of the road. But this was the best meal we ate of the entire trip.

The tomatoes had a light vinaigrette, the pork cutlets were tasty, and the beans-and-rice was the perfect food for a pair of walkers that needed food, liquid, and salt. The soupiness of the dish was a major feature for us.

The ancient stone bridge of Ponte de Lima. The water was beautifully blue and calm. There were rowers rowing and a set of fake Roman soldiers on the bank of the river.

This was a beautiful walking day for much of it. We got into the town at a reasonable time (not as early as we like, but not hugely late) and had time to shower, wash clothes, and wander the town in search of dinner.

 

Zachary, Elizabeth, and the young John? Note that Elizabeth has a stuffed lamb in one hand.

The parish at Ponte de Lima was having a procession--this was the very last day of the weeks-long Festas de Sao Joao--with Roman "soldiers" in red, various Biblical personages in costumes, young ladies representing the Works of Mercy, a band, and even the parish priest. It was very festive.

After watching them all go by, we wandered around, found a grocery to buy some Pringles and fruit, and then we found a place to eat.

Braga, a brief side trip

Hello, everyone.

We caught a bus to Braga in the downtown square of Barcelos before the breakfast places in that city were even open. (It happens a lot on the Camino, that the pilgrim is ready to roll out and there is no coffee or other morning stuff available. We just rolled out anyway and had something when we found a place open. This day, we found breakfast in downtown Braga.)

When we got off the bus and started walking toward the tall buildings from the station, we heard drums and noticed that the streets were full of people in groups. About when we got to a coffee shop to eat, we discovered that the city's Marchas de Sao Joao was stepping off (9 am) and so we snapped a couple of pictures of the parade.

These were just two of the many marching units--two bands, of course, because bands are cool. There were also folk-costumed marchers and giant paper-mache puppets. The whole parade took about forty minutes or so to walk past the coffee shop.

 

One of the many magnificently-carved churches in the old city area.

The typical sandwich of the area. Francesina has a couple of layers of meat, a couple or three layers of bread slices, fried like  a French toast, gravy poured over, and this one had also a fried egg and an olive for garnish. French fried potatoes on the side. The Portuguese French Fries were uniformly good.

Wall of relics at the Bom Jesu shrine at the outer edge of Braga. This was in a different room than the giant, elaborate crucifux that is famous--both are in the Crucifixion shrine at the top of the very long staircase.

A segment of the long staircase of the Way of the Cross, showing the stone mosaic designs in the pavement.

View of the upper, allegorical staircase with its statues of prophets, kings, and virtues. The chapel of the shrine is at the top. This is a very "aerobic" sight to see!

Statue ready for procession in one of the churches in downtown Braga. They were doing up the flowers for the statues while we were there.

Vila do Conde

Hello, everyone.

Returning to our series of pilgrimage posts, the end of our day of walking on the boardwalk along the lovely beaches of northern Portugal ended at Vila Do Conde.

Vila do Conde is close to the beach, but not really spread out all along it. The place we stayed was on the plaza, which was decorated with symbols of different parishes. It turned out that this particular Sunday was the day of their Marchas de Sao Joao. DH got right out there to take a picture or two--yours truly was in the middle of washing dirty clothes.

Procession for St. John the Baptist in Vila do Conde on Sunday afternoon.

Ancient Monastery in Vila Do Conde area

DH views the Roman aqueduct ruins in Vila do Conde.

The weather that day was cooler than it had been, and it rained on us a little.

Y'all may remember comments about the great beauty of plants in Portuguese gardens. This flower escaped! It's a calla lily and it's growing out in the middle of trees.

Your humble blogger with the Barcelos chicken statue.

View of downtown Barcelos. Note another chicken on the building.

At Barcelos, at the Capuchin church of St. Anthony, we were blessed after Mass by the priest. This was the first pilgrims' blessing we received on this trip. One of the servers, a young man studying to become a Capuchin, spoke English. We were so grateful for their kindness and friendly welcome!

We stayed at Barcelos for two nights, as we planned on a little side trip here: a bus ride over to Braga.

Matosinhos and the Boardwalk

Hello, everyone.

Passing along from Porto, where we stayed for two nights, and picking up with the walk, we rode the bus to Matosinhos. (Reading the destinations on the glowing light board while hearing them read aloud by the automated announcer was always a trip. There was no correspondence that we could see between the letters appearing and the sounds heard. Though the pilgrims who already had French language skills did a lot better than we did at following what they heard!)

We got to watch a ship go under the moving bridge at the port. 

One of the many beaches--they were all coves like this one, separated by rocks and little peninsulas.

This is the boardwalk that we walked for most of the day on. The cool breeze from the Atlantic operated like an air conditioner, taking much of the heat out of the bright sunlight.

Some of the boardwalk was still in process. (Note the path alongside.)

Ancient salt works, either Roman or older.

This was the day we saw a McDonald's. That was all we did, though, because it was around 9 in the morning and the sign clearly said that the McDonald's would be open from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m.! No coffee, breakfast, and facility for you, traveler! Fortunately, even though they open somewhat late, there are a lot of coffee shops along the Atlantic coast.

Porto, some notes

Hello, everyone.

It's been a little while since the pilgrimage was the subject of a post, so I'll start by reminding y'all that the last post was on the little village of Grijo, just outside of Porto.

One of the days that we encountered Fatima hiking pilgrims was on the way from Grijo into Porto. We made sure to tell them about the albergue in Grijo!

The River Douro, a busy waterway even though we weren't close to the port. Left side, Vila do Gaia, right side, Oporto.

Cute little cable cars let you ride down and back up the hill in comfort.

View of our apartment in Se House, below the cathedral.

Diorama of the Marchas de Sao Joao. This was in the courtyard of a former convent that had been founded as a foundling home. 

Porto

Hello, everyone.

It was mentioned yesterday that the village of Grijo is close enough to the large city of Porto that people can live in Grijo and work in Porto. We met a lady who does exactly that. (She has to leave about 0500 to get in on time, but she gets to live in her longtime family home.)

We left bright and early, as usual, and headed down the road into Porto.

At the parish church in Grijo, a Pieta. The church is inside the old monastery grounds.

Creative parking!

Can't get lost here!

Easily the best Roman road surface we have ever walked on.

There was a path around the big rocks, but it was twisty. People walk their dogs on this path. The dog we saw had a cone on its head while walking on the leash with his boss.

Neat looking building, in the town across the river from Porto: Vila do Gaia, I think it's called.

View from a park just before the bridge. 

Stopping on the bridge into the city.

 A gear note: the long-sleeved Columbia fishing shirt was surprisingly cool in the heat. The hat was necessary--portable shade! The black tights were a flop: too tight around the knees. About a week later I tossed them. But they did prevent the difficulties caused by sweat-soaked crotch seams rubbing on tender skin. If only they had fit better at the bottom edges, they would have been perfect for walking.

View from the window of our apartment for the two nights in Porto. The building is the cathedral. There is a stone stairway, obscured by the window structure, that leads right to the porch and also to the tourist office.