Ponte de Lima & Guimarães

There are various routes for the Camino to Santiago de Compostela. From Bilbao, we have been following "The French Way." Now we are tracking, in reverse, "The Portuguese Way." Pilgrims walked north, but we are driving south.

Our tour leader, Marc, at a monument along
The Portuguese Way

We crossed from Spain into Portugal and our day immediately got an hour longer. Spain is on Central European Time and Portugal is on European Western Time, so it was suddenly an hour earlier when we crossed the Rio Minho into Portugal.

Our first stop involved crossing another river. At the town of Ponte de Lima we walked a portion of the Portuguese Camino along the Rio Lima. We then crossed the river on the old Roman bridge that gives the city its name.

Every ancient bridge here seems to have a fort or tower on one end, and a church on the other. The towns seem to have sprung up around these, but the bridge came first.

Legend has it that a Roman legion refused to cross the river here due to some sort of superstition. So their general crossed the river on his horse, then called across to let them know he had suffered no ill effects. That got the rest of the troops to follow. For the sake of tourists, statues of Roman soldiers are on one side of the river, with a statue of a lone Roman on a horse on the opposite bank.

Back on the bus, we drove on to the city of Guimaraes. The old town here is small, but nicely preserved. Lunch was on our own, but after a big breakfast we decided to only have dessert. A bakery here makes little pies with spaghetti squash and almond. This could become a favorite way to eat squash!

Guimaraes was the first capital of Portugal, after the nobleman born here defeated the Kingdom of Leon to declare independence and become the country's first king. Ruins of a castle and city wall, as well as a much later palace (now museum) are reminders of this history.

The longest stretch on the bus came in the afternoon as we continued south into the Douro Valley. The terraces carved into the hills above the Douro River have been producing wine grapes since Roman times. This is where Port comes from. We'll learn more about that tomorrow.

The small city of Lamego in the Douro Valley is our destination today. The hotel is new, very modern, and very nice. But unlike the other hotels on this trip, it is not in the city center. After checking into the hotel we had to take the bus once again into town.

At the top of a hill overlooking the city we visited a chapel where healing miracles supposedly take place. No one in our group appeared to be cured of anything. But most of us took the 690 steps down to the city center where we met the rest of the group for a nice included dinner.

Returning to the bus after dark, we noted that the church and stairway are nicely lighted.