Day 2 Monday, 4/10/17 Lisbon to Santarem
In the morning we took train from
Lisbon Oriente station to Santarem. By
foot this would have taken us 3 days, all on city streets. We had planned to take the train in order to
bypass 3 days of city street walking and to make sure that we had enough time
to complete our journey since we and hoped to not have to walk more that 15-20
km each day.
The train station in Santarem is
beyond the town which is on top of a hill. The man at the ticket window
was very helpful but pointed us the wrong direction to find the Camino
route. We thanked him and gave him the
half-full box of cookies from the Convent in Santiago. It would help lighten our load, even though
we enjoyed them and had eaten just a few of them on our journey so far.
Once we left the train station, we
weren't sure where the pilgrim path was, so took the first road with a sign to
Santarem. It turned out to be the
longest, round-about way to drive into town.
It was long, windy, and uphill. Feeling very sweaty from the heat and hill
walk, we finally reached the town but from a completely different side than
what was on our map and we had no idea where we were and no sense of direction. Santarem was a much bigger town than we were
expecting. It took us more than a couple
hours to get from the train station to our hostel after a lot of zigs and zags
and finally using Google maps to help us figure out where we were and where we
had to go. In the process we even met an
Indian woman and her daughter who were living in Santarem. They wanted to invite us for tea, but at that
point, we were tired and determined to find our hostel and get settled.
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| Happy to find a Rotary Club presence in Santarem as we arrived. |
Hostel Santarem was our first hostel experience. We had a room with a private bath and plenty of open patio areas to relax or do laundry and hang clothes to dry. We met one other pilgrim there, Gerard, a Kiwi but who lives in Brisbane. What a completely easy going and funny guy he was. He had 3 months to travel and no agenda. He is writing a blog for caminodesantiago.me, which we will have to check out sometime. We all went out for beer and wine and food and chatted thru the evening.
Gerard was quite the story teller
though sometimes it was challenging understanding that Kiwi accent. He told us about how he prepared for walking
the Camino by walking to the movie theatre, 15 km away from home, 50 times to
see the movie, The Way. He told us that
his family had wanted him to take a cell phone with him...but he refused, saying
that, for 30 years they never called him, so, why now! He told his family to just bury him wherever
he died, if he died on the Camino.
Actually, when we met him, he was aching from a quick brush with death. A car surprised him as he reached Santarem
and he fell over into the bushes. The
lady driving the car was stunned and scared.
His ribs were hurting from the fall, but he was laughing the aches and
pains away, though he had no idea how he would feel tomorrow and or if he would
be able to continue.
That afternoon in Santarem we visited
the church where Cabral, the explorer who discovered Brazil, is buried in a
simple grave. we also tried to find the Camino path out of town. It took us a while, but we found a Camino
yellow arrow near the Jardim das Portas do Sol, a large park with ancient Roman
walls overlooking the Tejo (Tagus) River. There
were few Camino signs in town, so we would have a challenge trying to find this
path in the morning, so that was a blessing.
Santarem was a pretty fascinating place, inhabited at one time or
another by Greeks, Romans, Visigoths and Moors.
The foundation of the city is Roman, and its Roman walls still exist,
but it is also known as the 'Capital of Portuguese Gothic'.
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| View of the Tagus River from the Jardim das Portas do Sol. |
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| The Camino path leaving Santarem |
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