Blogs from Lamego, Northern, Portugal, Europe

Today rain caught up with us. Portugal and the Douro region were happy, as we had already learned the past summer had been the driest in many years. Our shore excursion from Régua was to Lamego. Lamego is famous for the Santuário de Nossa Senhora dos Remédios. The Bishop of Lamego founded the pilgrimage site as an alternate to Santiago de Compostella. Pilgrims seek healing for themselves or family or a friend. The Rococo church was built in 1750-1905, replacing a 14th century church on the site. Inside is a gilded high altar with the image of Our Lady of Remedies (Nossa Senhora dos Remédios) carved in wood. Photography is not permitted inside the church. In the small park adjoining the church are two very old chestnut trees, estimated to be over 700 years old. What ... read more

We were booked into a family Hotel in Lamego. The Tom Tom took us to the middle of town. We asked a Lady where the Hotel would be and a whole lot of people came out, that we made clear no Portugese made no difference she just continued. But the way she waved her hands towards the mountains,it did not look that well. A man dressed in suit and tie was watching and told in English he knew. He was with two cars with a lot of women with one girl dressed in a long cream dress. It looked like a first Communien. He argued with the women folk went in one car and told us to follow him. He went out of town up the mountain, through hobble stone lanes, with stone walls on each ... read more

Day 2: Procession of Lamego After our stay in the public park, we decided to visit the local supermarket for some bare necessities like campingaz to cook. For us nothing is far away, so we dicided to walk the distance.... Still walking....Finally we found ourselves a supermercado were we bought our stuff. On the route towards the supermercado we saw a little sign for Capella de Sao Pedro de Balsemao..So we thought: "Why not visit it while we're here?". We started walking...again...30min....no chapel....1h....no chapel...1h30min....no chapel...1h45min...chapel closed on monday's!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Heading back intelligence struck us...so we thought...the thing is we were following the valley of the Rio Balsemao....in the mountains....and Lamego was on the other side of this valley, so we tried to cross it...Walking through a vineyard and olive ... read more