Wide awake at 2am. Always on the first night in the EU. No matter how tired I am from the day before.
I was out of bed at the 6am church bells and our the door just after the 7am. I walked over to the bakery that I'd unthawed at yesterday and had coffee and pastry.
Just over the railway tracks it started raining and I put on the poncho and would wear it for the next 4 hours. Today was entirely farms and countryside with long stretches besides canals. Not many towns or services, few people only the odd speeding car.
The first stop about 10km in was at a bar in the first collection of houses. A rude lady made me bad coffee which I drank while a really loud TV blared.
There was another cafe a few kilometers further where I had coffee and a really good sandwich.
In the bars I keep seeing Trump in the news. The nonsense coming out of his mouth is making a laughing stock out of the USA here.
Since the first bar the route was beside a levy. Just atfter the half way point began a long 15km section of no services and no buildings. About noon the rain finally stopped and the puddles started to shrink. I found a railing I could lean on and let my feet dry out and put on some dry socks. Walking in wet socks is giving me the start of some blisters.
I found a Pilgrim swing in the middle of nowhere and pulled out the drone for the first time.
With about 5km to go I found a rock I could sit on and stopped to sit and let my feet dry. I suddenly saw my first fellow Pilgrims. Jeane and Francisco had been walking together all day and were seeing my tracks. There aren't many starting from Lisbon and they were excited to find another. We walked and talked into town, had beers and agreed to meet for dinner. Jeanne is French but spent a lot of her life in the South Pacific. Francisco is Portuguese and will show us the best of Portugal.
I was staying at the Hotel Vitoria and after reading some really bad reviews was not feeling great about it. Will not the cleanest place I've ever stayed the room is big and has what you need.
Dinner having a Portuguese guide got us way better food. We basically let him decide everything and it was all great.
During dinner Trump bulling Zelensky was on the TV and it was embarrassing. My dinner companions could not believe what was Trump was saying. Clearly, Trump views things as isolated transactions that exist independent of everything else. It may work when you are trying to screw a guy putting toilets in your casino, but not when dealing with events that could lead to World War 3. I wanted to put all that stuff out of my mind for a bit but it's everywhere and affects everything.
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