Today was a long, but fabulous day. We left Sintra by train, enjoyed coffee in Lisbon, and had to stop at the pharmacy because my left heel is in some pain all of a sudden.
We headed to the cathedral and enjoyed our walk out of town hitting an area of Lisbon we had not yet ventured to. Lisbon went on and on....
We then stopped at a grocery store and bought some supplies. We didn’t know where our heads would rest tonight and highly entertained camping out under the stars.
While having a nice pastry and coffee at the grocery store overlooking the street, we caught a glimpse of a young lady with a shell on her backpack who looked so put together. Compact pack, light clothes... you could tell she was a seasoned hiker and athlete. We left before she did, with no exchange of communication.
As we walked, Aynsleigh mentioned she thought she left her buff at the grocery store. Buffs are one of my essential items! I wasn’t convinced because I always do a double take and didn’t see it. I had images that if she had left it or dropped it that this unknown pilgrim would catch up easily to us and would maybe notice it was ours and to pick it up.
We joke we are “purist” pilgrims, our intention is to walk every inch of our hikes on foot, no cars, taxis, buses once on the Camino. If a side trip presents itself that’s different, we are specifically talking about the walk to Santiago. We do realize that is a want, and of course if the need arises and things need to be altered, we will cross that bridge when we come to it. But so far, even with the five kids last year, we stuck to that. Today probably challenged that a little. Along the river was a neat cable car opportunity that would cover 1km to 1.5 km.... so it would spare about fifteen minutes of hiking but took probably about fifteen minutes. Bad pilgrims that we are we said “it would be rude not to....” and there we were sitting on the cable car ...with the river to one side and a gorgeous boardwalk filled with life on the otherside.
We enjoyed it so much!!!!!
Immediately upon hopping off, up came the pilgrim who we had seen in the store with Aynsleigh's buff. It ended up that Aynsleigh had dropped it somewhere else from where we sat. This sweet gal brought it to us!
What an impressive young lady. We would walk with Magdelena for the remainder of the day. She is a strong hiker and I thank her for choosing our company over speed, - lucky us. She is from Poland but an Engineer in Germany. Travels well, lives well and just all around impressive! It’s gals like this my daughters are meeting. It’s been a treat having them meet lovely young women, global minded citizens. It’s wonderful seeing them in discussions with young strong women.
We had a beautiful walk, the sun started going down and when we reached “our town” where we planned to stay, it ended up there was no albergue. It was offered for us to taxi to a town that had one in which I guess we would taxi back here in the morning.... I didn’t like that idea, cable car is one thing... but not really wanting a taxi in my Camino.
Magdelena glanced at her guide book on her phone and was quick thinking, we pow wowed and agreed we could keep walking. We had all started today’s walk between 1pm and 1:30pm. She had just arrived via plane, we trained from Sintra. We made our way to Santa Irene where a young man offered to put us up with scout troop seeing that we might help. A lovely young man and crew! We instead, with their guidance, made it to the Bomberious, the Fire Station. We were greeted there by an adorable fireman and shown a gym where a pilgrim was already asleep with the only blankets offered. Strong ladies that we are we all slept off in a corner with our sleeping bags, nibbled on goodies in our packs and fell off to sleep.
In the morning we were going to start later and said our goodbyes to Magdelena knowing she has a tight schedule and is fast! She assured us we’d see her in the morning as she wanted to stick around for a stamp from the fire fighters for our credential books.
What a great day, great night and great camino friend! We are thankful for a place to put our heads as we did not see any trees that convinced us they were strong enough for our hammocks AND spaced appropriately for them.
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