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Published: September 26th 2016
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Day 16, Grijo to Porto.
At 0900, Sergio, our taxi driver with the very nice Mercedes Vito limousine, picked us up at Hotel to take us to the monastery in Grijo. He had his daughter, Rita, with him just as he had yesterday when he picked us up in Grijo to return to São Joao de Madeira. When he arrived we learned that he was also taking our bags on to our hotel in Porto. During the 35 minute ride he showed us photos of the hotel we will be staying in when we get to Porto.
Another of my points of dissatisfaction with Follow the Camino is, if they had told us he was also picking up our bags we would have had them downstairs saving about 10 or more minutes as the elevator was busy with folks going to and from breakfast.
He left us right inside the St. Saviour Monastery of Grijo, popularly called Grijo Monastery. I rang bells until a gentleman in a coat and tie, smoking a cigarette, came and let us in to stamp our passports and gave us a splendid tour of the church and cloisters.
The original buildings of
this Augustinian monastery dates from XIII c. The grounds are extensive, all surrounded by a ten foot high stone wall. There are 7 unique chapels plus the high altar and a separate alter of our Lord in agony. Like in the Se in Lisbon, we get our stamp in the sacristy. In the cloisters is the spectacularly sculpted coffin of Don Rodrigo Sanchez, the illegitimate son of king Sancho I the second king of Portugal. He came to help in their battles and died in combat in 1245 close by.
After our tour we thanked our guide, bid farewell and started our day's walk to Porto. It is advertised by Brierley as a haul, along traffic through suburbs, except for a steep climb and descent through pine, eucalyptus and locust forest. The latter is a section of the original medieval pilgrim trail. This ancient Roman road is called Calzada Romana.
We saw some different way marks today. We stopped for morning coffee at a cafe with wall photo of a river night view of Porto.
A detour was fairly well marked leading us around a construction blockage to the metro station at the top of Avenida Republica.
We now start down this avenida that continues a gentle decline to the river, block after block. Several more kilometers and we could see the river and buildings of Porto. We crossed the river on the upper level of the bridge. This is metro and pedestrians only. Cars use the lower level. We walked to the cathedral and went to the tourist information office nearby for map and to confirm Google maps directions to our hotel.
The bridge links the southern shore of Porto, called Vila Nova de Gaia, with the northern shore of the river. It is on this side that one finds most of the historic buildings and the cathedral. Vila Nova de Gaia is the home of the wineries and their cask cellers.
Our hotel is just below the cathedral.
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