Somewhere Slowly

The first day of our Camino Portugués Coastal route was mild, overcast, perfect for walking. We packed up, left the building and made our way to the cathedral for a stamp before heading off towards the river. I am by no means a camino purist, but we had decided we wanted to walk out to Matosinhos rather than take the metro, because I wanted to see the river meet the sea.

Only the office wasn’t open, so there were lots of pilgrims milling about waiting. Some were eager to talk, some were not, some were on their own and some in groups. We assumed most of them would take the Central route, a good few would get the metro to Matosinhos, and the rest would walk faster and further than us, so we’d probably never see any of them again. We were right. Then suddenly everyone moved, credencials were stamped, and we were off!

Now I’m no fan of walking in a queue, and I like my morning coffee, so we decided to hang back a bit and get a nice first breakfast by the river. However, I also don’t like being hustled into a place, and the square by the riverfront was just too hustly, so I wanted to move further along. My bad – there weren’t any nice riverside cafés after that, so we ended up in a small, brown place that could have been anywhere. But – on the upside they served all manner of eggs in the morning. I even found an Aquarius in the fridge, so I was a very happy pilgrim.

I am not sure why so many decide to skip the first 12 km out of Porto, we both found it quite pretty. There are obviously some not so pretty parts when you walk out of a big city, but it very quickly started looking like sun, sea and sand. We were very pleased we had chosen to walk it.

We didn’t go out to the lighthouse that stands between the river and the sea, but stopped for lunch at a bar/restaurant right on the beach – I even got a bit of sunburn. It was so lovely just sitting there wave watching, it was hard to get going again. We were stopping in Matosinhos though to make it a leisurely first day, and soon we could see the highrises across the bay.

Our room was a twin, but with the beds pushed together to make a double, so we had to shift things around again. Apart from that it was lovely – the room had air con, which made my Californian friend very happy, and there was a seafood restaurant downstairs, which made me very happy. We tried these massive prawns for a celebratory late lunch, though for the price I think I will stick to the smaller ones in future. For dinner we went to a Mexican restaurant – there would be enough grilled seafood on the way, so we thought we would try something different.

In hindsight I don’t think I would stay in that part of Matosinhos, maybe go a bit further, but all in all it was a lovely first day.