Camino Portuguese Day 3, Santarem to Tomar

Day 3, Tuesday, 4/11/17  Santarem to Tomar

Breakfast at the hostal in Santarem was self serve. Mario, the proprietor, set it out the night before and said we could help ourselves.  There was bread to toast, cereal, some fruits, milk and orange juice in the fridge, coffee was in a thermos pot and could be heated in the microwave.  We didn't quite know how to work some of the kitchen equipment but it all worked out.

Since we now knew the Camino path thru town, we were able to walk down a beautiful but challenging narrow path with overgrown bushes to train station and it was definitely much shorter than the way we walked into town the day before. 

Leaving Santarem via a gate and then along the old city walls.

The beautiful narrow path winds downhill from Santarem

At the train station we met a woman from Montreal, Chantelle, who was walking the Camino but taking a detour to Fatima (at a later point we met her again and she became a fellow pilgrim for several days).  At the station we bought a ticket to Tomar, but decided to get off at the station before so we could walk into Tomar.  We didn't know how far away we were, but it took us close to 3 hours to get to Tomar.  The train stop seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, with just a few scattered houses around.  The street names were unmarked so we were guessing at which way to go.

As we got closer to Tomar, we were lost once...we missed some stairs (no sign there) to walk under road and train tracks and so we ended up wandering thru rural neighborhood roads. We finally turned back when the roads started turning into little gravel lanes.  As we got closer to the turn we had missed, were saved by barking dogs whose owners came to our rescue, or we would have missed the steps again, because they weren't marked.  We were finally back on track and comforted when we saw the little chapel of San Lourenco and a cafe across the street.  Regained our energy after a coffee stop there, then we continued on into Tomar.

Tomar goes right, but the Camino arrow says to turn left.

When we found this chapel at St. Lorenco, we knew we were no longer lost.

At this point we were still uneasy about not having hotel reservations ahead and not knowing if we would find a place to stay, so we made a reservation on hotels.com at the 2300 Thomar Hostel in Tomar.  We tried to cancel it when we realized the pricing was incorrect but couldn't.  The person who ran the hostel realized the error and corrected the cost us.  The actual cost turned out to be 15 Euros per person.  We loved Tomar and decided to stay 2 nights in order to have time to visit the famous Templar Castle and Convent.  Luckily, since it was early in the season and there weren't too many pilgrims yet, we were able to stay there a second night.  2300 Thomas Hostel was our first hostel with shared bathrooms.  Our room and the bathrooms were very neat and clean.  Our room had 4 beds, but no one joined us, so it ended up being very private and we even had our own key for the door.