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Jesse. Welcome on the forum.Hi Jesse, I have just a couple of initial comments for you. These are based only on my walk from Lisbon to Santiago in September. You and other people may have completely other experiences / opinions and that is fine by me.
Your walk from Lisbon will be very, very different than your walk from Sarria in many ways. When walking from SJPdP to Santiago in 2012, I averaged about 27km for day easily. I figured the "suggested stages" for the Portuguese route which included a bunch of 30 - 35km days should be easy because it is flat. It is doable but it took too long each day so we had to break up one two-day section into three. We also needed to add, effectively, three rest days that we never would have considered on the French route. That said, the extra days were well worth it in Tomar, Coimbra and Porto. Strongly consider Laurie's suggestion about breaking up some longer stages unless you are sure you can do the longer walks.
North of Porto, I found the suggested stages were often too short but I suggest doing them anyway. Most of the towns you stop on that route are awesome stops. Also, it's a fairly lonely walk south of Porto so you will enjoy a bigger Caminho family north of Porto who really prefer the traditional stops. Bom Caminho!
Jesse. On the Portugese caminho there is no need to make reservations in advance a bit depending on which time of the year you walk and where you start.Hello!
In planning the camino, do most of you make lodging reservations along the Way, or in advance? I'm in California-if I wanted to plan some of it in advanced-I suppose email would be the easiest. When in Portugal/Spain-what is the best phone service to have in order to make local phone calls.
Thank you and Buen Camino!
Jesse
well spoken Scruffy !Shalom Jesse and Greetings from Jerusalem!
You are going to love the Camino Portugues! Where do you want to start? I walked from Lisbon, a wonderful city for sightseeing try and catch the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, ride the 28 tram, and play tourist better than fighting jetlag walking on the Camino! Up through Tomar and the Convento de Cristo then unconventionally, I cut across through Fatima, Bathala, and rejoined at Coimbra-a great university town. Porto is another site to play the tourist, wonderful little town. From Barcelos a short bus ride to Braga off-Camino to Bom Jesus a most important Portuguese shrine and back is well worth a morning. The bridge into Spain at Valença/Tui is lovely I loked the Spanish Tui better as a place to stay, less so in a pouring rain with wind! Just before Santiago in Padron inside the Igrexa de .Santiago is an important relic from the trip of Saint James, the mooring post from his arrival. There is usually a priest there expecting a small contribution to his allowance to open the covering, the mooring post outside in the park is a replica. The CP invites side trips, walkabouts, and wanderings ask at any open tourist info office about local sights, river walks, AND markets there are several beautiful ones along the Camino. Phone service? Orange is just about everywhere but I never called to reserve or even thought about it. Another consideration, how is your Portuguese? The language can be quickly decoded when written since much is close enough to Spanish, spoken Portuguese is a totally different story(!) over the phone forget it(!!), if its not your mother tongue or if you have not studied forget it and fall back on your English! The Portuguese are a wonderful and welcoming, warm people, their food is marvelous, those in contact with tourists can handle English, most others not so well, try your Spanish.Bom Caminho it's going to be fantastic!
Last year I bought a Vodaphone prepaid card at the Lisbon airport, value € 15 and at the end I had left 8€ . Mind after half a year you will loose your credit .For our Caminho, we called ahead two times to make reservations in the next town but unless you are really keen to stay in a particular small or popular B&B, casa rural, pension, etc., I would not call further advance than that. My Caminho plans were written in very light, erasable pencil because I fully expected them to get changed as needed. For me (others are different), I'd hate to walk knowing that I had to be in x town in 3 days, this other town in 6 days and that town in 8 days. That said, a phone with a local SIM card did come in handy on those two days. Sorry but I can't remember which carrier it was.
WHAT?! Albertinho - after walking for a couple of days with a backpack, you'll lose all your fat15€ credit and see how fat you come. Bom caminho
winners have a plan StephenWHAT?! Albertinho - after walking for a couple of days with a backpack, you'll lose all your fat
Steve.
P.S. Looking forward to that beer in 21016 ...
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