September 20, 2025
The Portuguese Camino
It’s our first full day in Porto and I have to say it’s much like Paris. No there’s no monument to compare to the Eiffel Tower and no art museum to compare to the Louvre, but there are two things we discovered today that scream PARIS!!!
Of all the times I’ve been to Paris to visit my cousin she always points out to me that the government is doing restoration work again. And so it is here in Porto. I wasn’t able to take any pictures today as my phone died so I’ll have to post some tomorrow.
The second similarity to Paris was even more striking (no pun intended). We downloaded a walking tour app and the first location it guided us to…had a large protest/parade going on. I’m sure the app wanted us to see some famous corner or building, not the protest. The reason for this protest was uncertain to me; it seemed to be labor related and many different groups were protesting.
I’ve always said that if there were an Olympic triathlon medal for complaining, protesting, and going on strike the French would take the gold every time. And just so you know our waitress complained to us this morning saying, “You pay minimum wage, you get minimum service”
Now I just hope no one goes on strike.
But truly apart from the construction work Porto is a lovely little town with lots of interesting features. The app we used is called GPSmycity. We’re using the free trial for now, but for $15 a year there are over a thousand cities with walking tour maps. The walking tours cover monuments tours, cathedral tours, shopping tours, and food tours. For us this was great because we love walking. That last sentence was dumb. We must love walking or else why would we be walking the camino again ;-).
All in all it’s been a pleasant day in Porto. Good food, good entertainment (who doesn’t love a good protest), beautiful sites.
Bom Caminho!
One day I decided to go for a walk... 