February 28 - March 2 (Lisbon to Santa Iria de Azoia)

I try to pop in for a quick pray most days. Today, we visited Igreja do Sao Roque, the mother church of the Jesuits. As you might expect, it drips with gilt and relics. There is also a “Chapel of Doctine”, with an ascendent Vigrin above an entombed Christ. There is a “Chapel of the Good Death”. These are alien. Jesuit history is challenging to a Progressive, nevertheless the Church feels sublime. The Sanctuary is peaceful, ageless, gently filled with recorded chanting. Praying there was a deep, inspiring experience.

Their exhibition, “5 photographers and 5 relics”, enables modern engagement with the history and the artifacts. Each artist approached their subject differently: highlighting their enigma, their sumptuousness, their precision. Fresh eyes and a fresh medium, It was fascinating.

We spent these 2 days roaming Lisbon for small sites, authentic tastes, smells. We moved to our “camino” hotel today and will walk tomorrow. We had a flurry of last-minute logistical corrections, but we are now set. Finally.

Remember those “logistical corrections”? Well, they weren’t corrected. We did almost 38km today because/even so our pickup didn’t arrive. It was supposed to be 27km. Fortunately, we were still in the greater Lisbon metro area and got a train back to our hotel, from whence I write. Still, tomorrow is a new day.

It was good to be back on the way. Although, the “moderate rain event” of the last several days left the way a combination of boot-suckingly deep mud, marsh and, unfortunately, a very slippery yellowish mud by the river. We laughed when Carey went over the first time. He even insisted on my taking a photo. We neither of us laughed over the second slip. It was a bad one that had to be walked off. Fortunately, walking was all we had to do. I’ve just finished the laundry and that water was BROWN. I had to thoroughly rinse the bath afterward. There was a LOT of grit.

We commented all week that we saw no camino signs in Lisbon. This also proved true of most of the trail. Thank Goodness for the app, which did great service. Things got easier when we realised that, around here, the Way of St James is also the Fatima Way – a Portuguese pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima, near Leirria.

It was a good day: fresh and breezy, with some rain, more of a steady mist. We walked through the Park of Nations, site of the 1998 World Expo, past the carnation fountain, a reference to the 1974 revolution that birthed democracy here. The paddling pool is studded with cartoony bathing beauties skinny dipping. That’s the difference between Europe and America, right there. We followed a river with avocets, sandpipers, egrets, hawking martins and, among them, the first swallows in from Africa. Whatever happened to the area, (flooding, maybe?), people have left the marsh to the elements. The flood plain was studded with ruins and rotting buildings, and ringing with bird song.