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Published: August 31st 2016
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Day 1 - August 24, 2016 - Lisbon, Portugal to Santa Iria de Azoia, Portugal – 3.5 + 14.72 = 18.22 miles I'm dedicating this Portugues El Camino walk to my dad and son, Chad. I know they will be watching over me every step I take as I walk the 450 miles from Lisbon, Portugal to Santiago, Spain and then onto Finisterre, Spain.
It’s official – we are off walking the 450 mile Portugal El Camino. After getting the pickup for our bags straightened out, we bid farewell to Felicidade Borges (owner of the apartment we stayed in while in Lisbon).
The walk officially starts at the Lisboa Cathedral Se but since we had already done about 3.5 miles of the walk on Monday evening we took the train back to the train station at Braco De Prata and began there. After getting off the train we located the yellow arrows marking the trail and begin our journey to Santa Iria de Azoia. We hadn’t gone too far before I saw this cool graffiti on the walls of an underpass. As we continued walking we came upon a manhole cover with
the emblem for the Lisboa Expo 98 and a little further we walked through the site for the expo.
The trail has us walking on the pedestrian walkway alongside the banks of the rio Tejo (river) which takes us past the Oceanario (one of the largest aquariums in the world) and the cable cars that go to Lisbon’s emblematic tower. As we are walking we meet up with a young lady from Japan named Ayako who is doing the same walk as us and joins us for the day. As we continue on the walkway, we reach the sculpture of Catarina de Braganca who left Lisboa to marry Charles II and who is known for introducing tea and “tea time” England. Continuing on the walkway we go under the big bridge, past a skateboard park and more graffiti.
Upon reaching the Boteco Vip Bar and Restaurant we decide it is time to stop for some lunch. Having replenished our body with fuel, we head off again. The trail now takes us through what is called a green valley but I call it a dried up weed patch with no breeze and terribly hot. As
we exit the weed patch we come back onto a paved road where it’s not long before we say goodbye to Ayako who heads to her hostel and we head into the town of Santa Iria de Azoia in search of our hotel.
The road we take to get to our hotel is what I have will call “the road from hell” as it is curvy, uphill and has traffic going both ways at a fast rate of speed with us walking on a small path alongside the road. Definitely not fun and rather scary at times. Once we get to the top of the long winding road, Harlan asked a nice young lady if she knew where our hotel was. She gave him directions which had us going through a tunnel under the road that I was totally freaking out about as all I could think of was there would be rats in there. Thanks goodness we made it through the tunnel and no rats to be found or at least not seen. Hate to think would have happened it I had seen a rat – definitely not good! After about another 30-40 minutes of walking
we finally made it to our hotel after a very long hot day tired and ready for a bath/shower. Did I forget to mention the temperature was only 96 degrees??
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Sharon Keister
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Oceanarium
Dick and I took the bus to the Oceanarium when we were in Lisbon a few years ago. What a fantastic place. I'm glad you ended up having a safe walk. I remember how much fast traffic there is around Lisboa