Lisbon, Portugal

Spending three days in Lisbon to relax after walking the Fisherman’s Trail. Taking in a few sites, taking care of some last minute errands and making some travel plans for our Camino walk.  It has been a very pleasant stay.  Our host from a guest house in Zambujeira do Mar recommended the VIP Executive Eden hotel located in the Rossio district because it is central to everything.  Good advice.  

Interestingly, we arrived during the week of a partial mass transit employee strike.  Fortunately for us they are not working the first two hours of a shift during the week and because we are not traveling at 7am, it has not affected our minimal use of the subway.  I say that knowing we will take the subway to get to the train station sometime tomorrow morning and they may get the last laugh on the Wesslings.

The primary goal of this visit is to get new shoes to walk the Camino.  We wore hiking shoes for the rugged Fisherman’s Trail and that was the right call.  However, for the Camino over 50% of the walk is on hard surfaces where a softer walking shoe may be better.  It took us a number of visits to various shoe stores and the mall (yes, we joked that Joe spent more time in the Lisbon mall than all American malls combined over the last 20 years).  Julie ended up purchasing a pair of Hoka Bonidi shoes and Joe bought a pair of Merrell walking shoe.  We are a little concerned we will not have enough time to properly break them in, however we are counting on the 200km of conditioning on the Fisherman’s Trail to make the transition easier.  

The fun part of the trip was getting a massage last night at a spa, Terra Heal, that had over 2000 reviews and a near perfect 5.0 rating.  We were not disappointed.  Okay, fun is not exactly the right word, and neither is relaxing.  Afterwards, Joe commented that he had never had a more thorough or aggressive massage.  The masseuse beat the crap out of him, but he felt wonderful. (there may be a deeper issue there?).  We shared the same room and Joe knew that when he heard Julie laugh a few times it was not because she was being tickled.  She said it was either laugh or cry and she thought it would be too unsettling to the masseuse if she cried out loudly.

On our final day we went to go to the Cathedral to get our pilgrim’s passport for the Camino (see Julie proudly presenting her’s with its first stamp).  We then stopped by a cool outside restaurant (Rossio Gardens) for a light lunch and happy hour drinks. And boy are we are happy!