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S1 E2 | How We Booked the Camino Portugués: Route, Stages & Where We Stayed | Travel Joneses · Travel Joneses

• speaker-0: Be honest, how many hours did we spend planning this trip? speaker-1: Be alive, sing and live. speaker-0: Hey, where the Travel Jones is, I'm Janice. speaker-1: And I'm Donald. We're a husband and wife team, storytellers by trade, and travelers by heart. speaker-0: Fancy trips, road trips, city walks, mountain hikes, and every great discovery along the way. speaker-1: We definitely do our research and we plan the details. speaker-0: Then we leave room for surprises because the best moments are rarely on the itinerary. speaker-1: Yeah when something better shows up, we are happy to pivot. speaker-0: So pull up a chair and come along. This is Travel Jones's Porto, Portugal to Santiago, Spain on foot. Two hundred forty-two kilometers, two countries, and lots of surprises. This is our take on the Camino de Santiago, Portuguese route. speaker-1: When we talk about planning, how long it took, I'm I don't know if I'm thinking hours or days. Usually with a big trip like this, you're thinking, weeks, right? Maybe. speaker-0: Well depends on what the definition of planning is. Is it the actual booking or is it the preparing for the trip? Those are two For the Camino we had to prepare for the trip physically and mentally and do a lot of things. But the actual booking of the trip, yeah, and researching. speaker-1: Think back, a lot of people put a lot of time in this. And as we mentioned in episode one, this came about quickly. This is true. The Camino found us. I was reading, it hit me, and it was the idea was there and it w it was it was presented, right? It unfolded like we couldn't believe because basically in three days, we had decided we're gonna go, we're gonna do this, which route, and we immediately started booking, right? Yeah. Okay. So After that we had gone to visit our friends that after those three days up in Savannah, Jim and Mary, and we're like, Guess what? We're doing this. They're like, When did you start planning this? We're like three days ago. And speaker-0: And we spent all our time with them booking our trip. Right. Because you were you were consumed. So speaker-1: I we're so excited. speaker-0: fun for Jim and Mary. This help us plan our trip. speaker-1: They're excited for us and they're asking questions and we're like, I don't know. And they've traveled a lot too and we've done European trips, but this is different. We're walking, right? And it's a a a totally different approach. So we're online. speaker-0: And the trip itself is planned for you because there's a path that you're walking. speaker-1: We're walking the path, but how far do you walk? Which city do you stop in? Which town? Where do you want to stay? Well, we had decided we were booking our rooms ahead of time. That's gonna be your choice, right? It was our Camino. Jan said, Hey, if I'm walking an average of twelve miles a day, I gotta sleep well, right, honey? speaker-0: Yes. sleeping is valuable to me. And, you know, I like to say like I don't want to hear him breathing at night, let alone a whole room full of people. Because one of the very traditional ways to do the Camino is to stay in hostels in dorms where you're sharing with a lot of other people. And the sharing is a big part of the Camino. Right. But we could share other ways and we did share many other ways, but we wanted our own rooms and we wanted to know where we were sleeping that night. Right. Many people will walk and just find their place when they get to somewhere they are done finished walking. Right. speaker-1: So that comes into where do you want to sleep, where do you want to rest? So I'd say maybe all in all, hours wise, two full days of of right booking rooms for where we wanted to stay, right? speaker-0: And we did not use a travel agent. A lot of people asked if we went with a group or we had someone plan this trip for us. Many people do that. And that's a great option. Great option. And you'll get people who are experienced doing that. We like to research and plan our own things. We do a lot of traveling for work, being familiar with a place and knowing how to get there and how to travel there, how to stay there, how to experience it is very familiar to us. So we planned for ourselves. speaker-1: So we decided we're gonna do that. We're gonna book our own rooms. But how did we get to that point? We will tell you, doing our research online, we started Googling, we were listening to tons of Camino podcasts, as we mentioned, watching tons of YouTube videos. that overtook all our favorite programs on Apple TV and Netflix. We just watched documentaries and Camino and YouTube channels, which there's some great ones out there. And so we we drew from a lot of things, but I said, let's try to build the itinerary 'cause we knew we didn't want to walk more than twelve miles a day if we could help it. We wanted to average twelve miles a day, which put us in the fifteen walking days for the hundred and fifty miles or so. speaker-0: Let's first talk about the where where we're walking, the route. Cause we've chosen now we decided in episode one, we shared, that we thought one of the shorter routes of the Camino was something that we could manage. Being away from home and our family and our business for, you know, slightly less than three weeks was something that we could do. And one of the routes we had discovered from a friend, we could go from Porto, Portugal to Santiago, Spain in a manageable amount of time. And we planned it for ourselves for about fifteen days. Right. speaker-1: That's the Camino Portuguese route, if you want to look that up. there are many ways, as we've discussed. The most popular, the French way. but again, that was the 500-mile route, which would take 40 days or more. So we discussed this. Jan put that idea out there, and that's what we landed on. And so immediately we were booking from Porto all the way up, eight days in Portugal, seven days in Spain, walking to Santiago. speaker-0: And from Porto, there are actually a couple of routes that you can take. Yeah, speaker-1: Three, actually. speaker-0: you can take two out of the city, and then you can take an offshoot of another route to add some time and to see some different locations. So that's the central route. At the coast, there's the coastal and the littoral route. So that's three. And then there's a spiritual variant route as well. So you still have to decide, you know, once you get to Porto, it's not, you know, still have some decisions to make. speaker-1: We had to choose that. What were we gonna do out of Porto and ultimately to Santiago? speaker-0: So we I had really specific feelings. The central route takes you through towns, medieval villages, lots of history and architecture to see. The coastal slash literal, you're at the coast. And this is the Atlantic. And we live on the east coast of the US on the Atlantic, and I love the ocean. And I wasn't gonna go all the way across the ocean, the Atlantic, and not say hello to it on its West Coast. I really wanted to see I you're a mile from the water. I wanted to see the water. And we had heard that the central the first day or so out of the city is kind of an industrial route. So we decided of our own accord to cut out to the coastal route and begin that for two days and then cut through to the central route and finish all the rest of the walking on the on the central route where we could get that history and architecture, but we got our taste of the ocean and If you ask me, that was the perfect choice. And I think Lenore, who did this route, did similar and she suggested that. speaker-1: Yeah, a good friend of ours who helped plant that idea in Janice's head because she knew she had done that a year ago and said, Well, Lenore did it in two weeks. That's something we could do. So we started asking her questions and it worked out great. speaker-0: And some of my favorite moments were in those days on the coast. speaker-1: We were looking at the days, the mileage, how long we'd be there, how long we w wanted to spend when we arrived in Porto, and how long we wanted to spend in Santiago once we finished walking. So you gotta think about that. speaker-0: we realized, hey, wait, we need to spend a little more time in Porto 'cause this is an amazing city and we shouldn't skip past it too quickly. And we wanted to have time for our bodies to adjust. So we decided to spend sort of a day and a half and then walk out on Thursday. speaker-1: Yeah. And that and that's definitely recommended because speaker-0: Don't rush yourself right in, make some adjustments and prepare yourself for that long walk ahead. speaker-1: Yeah, kinda the body clock's still gonna be a little funky, right? Because Portugal's five hours ahead, but it gives you a little time to get some solid rest. Most of all, like Jan said, you gotta check out Porto, one of our favorite places we've ever visited in the world, I believe. We wanna go back. It's beautiful, it's friendly, it's lovely. And so we were fortunate to have the time we we had there before we started walking. speaker-0: And one of my takeaways is is that wow, let's spend some more time in Porto. And there are a number of places, a handful of places along our route that now I feel like I have to go back and dive deeper because they were so amazing and the incredible skyline, city line of Porto is like no other. And so that was a cool advantage. speaker-1: City built on a speaker-0: City, right? Riverside that's on a mountain. speaker-1: It was so cool. So we decided that. Two days in Porto, fifteen days walking, and then build in two days on the back end to enjoy and celebrate what we just accomplished or what we were going to accomplish when we reached Santiago and the cathedral. speaker-0: And get to experience the city of Santiago w after we've finished. Not just finish and hop on a plane and go home. But get to explore that amazing city and sort of process what you just did. speaker-1: So these are our thoughts going in. That gave us the opportunity, starting in Porto, we knew, okay, first day, let's not go full bore and do a big 12 miler. Let's look at a town. And this is how we started the research that maybe we do under 10 miles. So we did that on the coastal route. There's a couple of choices there. And I think we ended up doing an eight miler on the first day, which was gonna be closer to 10, I think. And then we switched it because of a place we wanted to stay that definitely had A C. speaker-0: So that's the point when you're booking your hotels and we again did book each of our nights. So if you're a mile north or a mile south, when you're walking it, that changes. So instead of having a a ten mile day and a twelve mile day, we ended up having an eight mile day and a fifteen fifteen mile day the next day, which was speaker-1: Which which we didn't plan originally. It it threw us a little bit. But anyway, that's what we looked at. So we took all that information and we were looking at Google. We're starting in Porto, we're walking the Camino Portuguese route. We want to average about twelve miles a day with a shorter first day. Give us the towns that fall in those areas. But basically, once we had the places, then we went on to booking dot com. It is used by so many, so many Camino pilgrims, right? Over the over the years. So every place that you pop in there and you go in and say everything you want on the filters, this is what we did. All right, give us all the places to stay speaker-0: These are the filters that Donald's talking about. The things that were important to us, we put in the you know, whether if it's price that's most important or it's, you know, space of the room or location of the room or all the different things they have in the filters. We put the things in that were important. speaker-1: Our main filters were private room, right? 'Cause as Jan said, you might be able to stay in a a hostel or an albergue, which is basically a hostel where you're in a bunk bed situation. We needed to have the sleep and we were like if we're gonna do this first time ever of walking twelve miles a day, we wanna get good rest. So speaker-0: in some of the albergays or hostel style locations, you might bring your sleeping bag with you or or bedding. And we did not want to add that to the weight on our packs. So booking a private room allowed us to eliminate that from our pack. And we had beds that were prepared for us with the the linens and things. speaker-1: So that was the filter. First was a private room. Then you can say private bathroom, because there are situations where there will be a private room, but you have a shared bathroom in the hall. speaker-0: So we were okay with shared bathrooms and we had that sometime. speaker-1: AC. We went end of August into September. It was at the end of a heat wave. We're from Florida. We're used to needing the AC. And if it had it, we wanted to try to get it. speaker-0: We're used to sleeping cool, so it was a priority to find A C. We did not find it all places. Yeah. speaker-1: then the last filter that you can pop on there is make sure you suggest rooms to us that are a eight point or eight point five rating and higher. You can see tons of reviews and every review we looked at for all of these were Camino walkers, right? These are pilgrims giving their feedback. speaker-0: I can remember things like one of the reasons we changed one of the rooms was because of reviews that we read after we'd booked it. And weeks later we went back and reviewed everything we booked and there was a review about a place we had booked that said the beds were super uncomfortable. speaker-1: Great location, very clean, beautiful, easy to pop back onto the Camino after you've woken up, but the only problem was. speaker-0: I don't know if it was the only problem or what, but we decided it wasn't a place for us. speaker-1: We looked closely and they described it like army cots and that it was s super hard. And then we looked again and somebody's like, way too firm, I couldn't sleep. And they were small. So we changed it and that was our first night. So it brought us back out of Porto closer. Which speaker-0: We moved to a different location. speaker-1: made that second day walk fifteen miles plus speaker-0: In hindsight, the whole Army cot description, which sounded like horrifying before speaker-1: You would have done it. speaker-0: we went. we slept on many that were ish harmy army cot ish pillows, speaker-1: Let's just say super firm. speaker-0: like you know, the thickness of a pizza kind of thing. Like now that we've been there, yeah, like one of my tips will be coming up in a little bit, but yeah. Yeah, you know, so be prepared for those sorts of things. speaker-1: So let's round that up. speaker-0: How much comfort you want, yeah, you determine and you pay the price for comfort. speaker-1: We we we looked closely, did our research. Booking dot com is very clear on everything. There are pictures, there are great reviews. So once you decide what town you're gonna stop in, if you're booking ahead of time, go in, look at the places. You can even see or check to make sure that you You don't get to that town and this great rated place is another two kilometers or one point something miles or th three kilometers off the route. Because after you've walked all day and you get to the town and celebrate, you don't want to have to walk another 3k. so you'll find that on booking dot com. But just decide your filter and what you want to do. And and you'll see some private albergues where it has a bunk situation that are super clean and it's super nice and they encourage speaker-0: And they might it might only be six bunks in a room and you might love that idea and want speaker-1: Right. speaker-0: to travel, you know, really affordably. Yeah. There's a lot of options for that. speaker-1: Right. So it could be budget friendly. You just decide what's in your best interest for red. speaker-0: I'm remembering one of our friends that we met on the Camino who was a younger Italian woman, she said she sleeps like a rock. She was sleeping in the hostel styles everywhere she went and she loved it. It was fine because she said when she laid her head down, she was out and she would sleep all night no matter who was around. So if you're that kind of sleeper, that's awesome. speaker-1: Earplugs, that's one thing that people do. That's highly suggested by many. Check out booking dot com, do all the filters that you think you would like, check out all the pictures, check out all the reviews, and it will lead you to what fits you best, which is great. speaker-0: So Donald, did you have a favorite place we stayed and why? What was it and why? I'm not so much looking to tell the name of it, which we'll give the link to all the places we stayed. speaker-1: Well our notes but it maybe it was the excitement right off, but it was easy, it was a cool spot, but right off the bat in Porto when we got there speaker-0: Which was actually in Gaia, across the river. Villanova de Gaia. speaker-1: Gaia, G A I A Villa Nova de Gaia. We walked out of Porto Center, walked across the bridge of the Douro River, which is beautiful. So I speaker-0: Amazing. speaker-1: that was another advantage of staying over in Gaia, is you got to look back at the city of Porto. and we say look back, it's not like you're far away. These were two kilometers. speaker-0: It's like being in a stadium and being on the other side of the stadium so that you can see that. speaker-1: It was beautiful. Gorgeous. So Gaia is awesome. There's a lot going on over there. It's where all the locals gather every night in this massive park and just sit and watch the sunset. Sorry, we're gonna get there, but there's so many beautiful speaker-0: So we're talking about the room then. Beautiful. It was a good talk about great space and a little kitchenette. Yeah. speaker-1: But what was the name of that? Let's share it. I have it in my notes. The Smarter. Yes. S M-A-R-T-R, Smarter Porto, Gaia and Spa. So that is in Villanova de Gaia, across the bridge from downtown Porto. It was a nice spot. SMARTR. Everything is once it's time to check in, they send everything to your phone through booking.com. Use the app on your phone. It's super helpful. They'll message you there. You just use the code to get into the front door and then a code to get into your room. And there was AC and there was speaker-0: that was good A C at that place. speaker-1: Kitchenette, clean bathrooms, clean room, a nice couch, a balcony. speaker-0: Do you remember that was the first of our discovery that all of the showers in Portugal and Spain in the places that we're staying along the pilgrim route were small and often flooded. Like they didn't keep the water in the shower. speaker-1: are very shallow and sometimes it's just like an open shower, right? This modern thing where it's a glass wall on one side and then it's just open and you think, the shower head's a two feet that way but by the time you're yeah, anyway, just be prepared to put a towel or a bath mat down. speaker-0: and figure out how to get in them. speaker-1: W that's another thing. That's a different anyway. So the that that one was a great spot. It was nice. It was easy. As we said, spa, it was downstairs. It was separate, but you could book. So we went ahead and said, let's prep ourselves and we got this tie like pressure foot massage. It it was super speaker-0: That was really fun. speaker-1: That was one of my favorites and I think I had another favorite, but that's your favorite too. speaker-0: Padron. Well, so the the place in Padron is a favorite because it was close to the end of the trip. We were both not feeling great when we arrived at that place. And we lucked in at that that moment, that that day, that that city, that that place, we had booked a nice one. Like an an an extra extra nice. And it was like a king-size bed and it was soft and it had fluffy comforter and fluffy pillows. And I think they had a TV on the wall that worked and was big enough to see. And it was a day that we kind of napped extra. As I said, we weren't feeling our top notch and we needed some rest. And it was the perfect room to like cozy into that bed and watch a little TV. And so I room I'm gonna remember that room because it it it greeted me really nicely. speaker-1: And the management was super nice because we got there earlier and Jan needed to get some more rest. We're gonna get into this later when we talk about our walks each day and what happened. There was a little bit of a pivot, and I messaged them and said, Hey, can we get in a little early because of this circumstance? And they did. They met us there, they let us in. It was super comfortable, clean, modern. And man, it was nice. That was Terra. T E R R A Like speaker-0: Depadron. speaker-1: Terra de Padron Quality Room. speaker-0: It was called. speaker-1: and we paid we paid it a little bit higher price, but man was it worth it. I think that speaker-0: Moment in the walk we needed that. Yeah. Yeah. speaker-1: Let's talk about price 'cause that was a little over a hundred bucks, which was the one of the most expensive. speaker-0: It was very high for us on this trip. speaker-1: but when you look at it and you'll see, and I think that's also 'cause we were getting closer to the end. To the big city. It gets more populated and the prices tend to go a little higher, especially also when you're in larger municipalities. But I mean, we went everywhere from forty dollars a night to speaker-0: This was probably the highest. Yeah. speaker-1: fifty, sixty, s but you know, they were anywhere around forty to sixty a night, which is amazing. and then this one was the highest apart from Santiago. speaker-0: And if you wanted to go more affordably and stay in the the hostile styles, they were ten or fifteen Euros. speaker-1: if it was a private albergue, maybe they'd be fifteen to twenty something and then you could include breakfast for more or not. speaker-0: Yeah. speaker-1: but the municipal albergue, which means I think there's one or two within the city that the city gives the option to run, those were the but most budget friendly, but they're bare bones. They are bare bones and you gotta carry all your stuff. speaker-0: And w as we discovered, eventually as you get into the bigger cities and more people are walking, there were lines for those. speaker-1: Right, because they don't open till two and you it's speaker-0: It's first come, first serve. speaker-1: first come, first serve, people line up, they put their backpacks on the wall outside to s to hold their place in line. And once the beds fill up, the beds fill up and then you have to go find another spot. so the the unfortunate part with that is you kinda have to rush your day. And then to us for us we didn't want to rush. We wanted to enjoy our time on the walk. the route from each town to the next town and not have that worry hanging over us of, are we gonna get there in time to get a bump? speaker-0: we had young friends we met on the Camino who were having to get up at five in the morning and speed walk to the next town to put their backpack down in line to hold a space. They would get into town by ten A. No speaker-1: No, not that early. b lunchtime. By lunchtime. if it was a long walk and they're going early. speaker-0: Leaving at five, getting there at ten or eleven. speaker-1: Well yeah, maybe in some speaker-0: it didn't open till two, but you have to get in line to put to hold. and that means you're not getting to, in my opinion, slow down and enjoy the walk and look around and see an experience. You're just getting from point A to point B. So consider that if you feel like a free spirit and you wanna just pick your place when you get there, then consider what time of year you go, less crowds. can you walk? at five in the morning? Is it too dark? Are you by yourself? Like there would be a lot of things you would consider if you wanted to, you know, just find your place when you got there. speaker-1: Yeah. And we'll get into those details about timing of walking and how it changes from Portugal to Spain, and how that plays the part of where you want to stay and how you start and how you finish, just like Jan said. But one other plus I wanna to mention while we're just here on this point and we we'll get there later when we talk about what we packed and what we took. But the advantage of us staying in the private room, as Jan said, is We didn't need a sleeping bag in our backpack that we had to carry because they were all fresh linens and every place we stayed, the beds were nice, it was clean, nice linens, good put for the most part, good pillows, towels in the bathroom, so you don't have to carry a towel, because if you're staying in an albergue, you would take these small quick dry towels. Yeah. speaker-0: So that goes in your backpack. speaker-1: And if you can deal with it, toiletries, right? Unless you're so needing your specific shampoo and or body wash or soap, most of all the private rooms, I think every one of them, had a bar of soap or liquid body wash and a simple shampoo. speaker-0: Let me let me give you Janice's take on speaker-1: Which for for for dad, for me, for DJ, I was fine with and I totally understand it. I and and now I am picky, I got some goop that I stick in my hair each day, otherwise it's everywhere. And I took a small thing of that. But I used the body wash and whatever shampoo was at the place. But Jan speaker-0: Far the places had one product for body and hair. speaker-1: yeah, that's true. speaker-0: I n I noted it. Okay. Because when it was available I used it. When there was an actual shampoo conditioner available, I used it so that I could save up mine, which I did pack. And that was very few times. It was mostly one product for your body and your hair. Yeah. Which in my world is not great. Right. To deal with my hair all day long that's just been washed with soap for two weeks straight. is not gonna happen. So I did carry some toiletries. I'm a pillow person. A big challenge for me was the idea of having one pillow. And I know there are some of you out there that are like me that sleep with three to f and you know, if I could have four pillows, I would. speaker-1: The pillow behind your back, the pillow between your knees a yes. And after you've walked twelve miles in pill I can see how that would be speaker-0: Again, if you want to sleep well depending on where you are in life and your comfort level sleeping and that sort of thing. So you're gonna be guaranteed a pillow. It could be not your first choice of type of pillow. I took a camping pillow that blew up so that I could have a second choice of pillow and two pillows when I wanted them. Yeah. so I was grateful for that. And that was extra weight I The toiletries and the pillow were extra weight I put into my packpack and determined to carry because they were important to me and my comfort. speaker-1: Extra weight and we and we'll get into that, it all adds up, but we did spend the money to get you a backpacking super light inflatable pillow. Yeah. It's great, it's quality, it's light. It was speaker-0: Glad to have it. speaker-1: but it's easy to pack 'cause it goes out down into a stuffy this big. for those watching, I mean it's maybe a three inches, you know, long in this little plant. speaker-0: I had one kind of in between speaker-1: But when it comes down to it it's me maybe four ounces, three point five ounces, four ounces. But you go, What? What does that matter? Well, once you start packing your pack, every ounce counts. And we will for sure. We will get to that for sure. Yeah. So we've covered everything from how we booked, how we came about it, where we booked, booking dot com. speaker-0: Hotels, pluses and minuses about hotels. speaker-1: Decided to book it all ourselves and honestly it was pretty easy. Just the fact that we had it all laid out, we knew where we were staying, that took a lot off of us. And then for us, we could really enjoy our day and our walk because we knew our place was waiting for us and we didn't have to rush. speaker-0: And we didn't have to rush. And and note when we were planning and booking, majority of places allowed us to cancel up to a certain point. Mm-hmm. And we made a few changes as we learned things and as we had mentioned, the one significant change we made in the beginning. But just so you know, when you're when you're booking, you know, book things and then you can my goodness. That was one of the filters that was important to us. speaker-1: Make sure that you click on fully refundable, right? that you can change your mind. And most of them I mean, we booked three months out, right? But most of them were probably two weeks to ten days. Some of them were one week. So as we looked at it and double checked everything, a month out, we could say, cancel that one, let's change this. So that was a big help. speaker-0: Yep. And really quickly on flights, there are lots of different options. Of course everybody's flying from wherever they are. but we we took a flight where speaker-1: And you're going into Porto, right? For sure. If you're doing the Camino Portuguese from Porto, you're flying into the Porto Airport. speaker-0: Yeah. And so you could fly out of Porto and and do a round trip situation where you'd end in Santiago and then you would bus back to Porto and then have a round trip ticket. We were trying to just find the most affordable tickets and we ended up with a flying into Porto on one airline and then on the route home we flew out of Santiago then back to Madrid and then straight home. speaker-1: The the big thing is is if you do a Porto round trip, then you've got to find a way to get from Santiago where you finish down to Porto and you think, wow, I just walked twelve or fifteen days to do that. Well, guess what? It's crazy. It's a two hour bus drive. You buy a bus ticket and you're back in like less than maybe it's three hours. I that's possible. It's affordable. You spend your time in Santiago, you get the bus, reserve that ahead of time if you want, go back to Porto. And maybe build in a day at Porto on your way back so you're you you don't have to worry about getting back in time for a flight and you do the finish of your round trip out of Porto. So those are the options right there. And you know, maybe if we do it again. I'd like to. on a different route. Janice is like, Can we just do a relaxing Caribbean trip first? then maybe we would try to find a way to go back to Porto one, because it was just so dang cool. speaker-0: Since this is on booking and prepping, do you wanna just quickly add what about phones, money and things that we sorted out properly beforehand? Yeah. speaker-1: Just check on on the phone part, right? You gotta look at what's gonna use all of our data and you're overseas. We're on T Mobile. T Mobile has great European connection on your plan. We have a bigger plan on ours through through our business. And instead of buying an electronic SIM card, as as you know, in the old days you would get a physical SIM card, but these days the phones don't have its electronic SIM card. You It's buy through an app, you you'll see tons on online or advertisements for an electronic SIM card. But check with your cell phone company to see if you can add just like a a one-month add-on or 30-day is what they have, I believe it is. So we paid like 75 bucks for a 30-day data add-on so that you could make calls. But th here's the thing. When we're walking, we were never really using that. speaker-0: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is I had speaker-1: The GPS watch that I would use. speaker-0: The Camino for many people is don't even take your phone. Right. speaker-1: Right. I mean so when you get to your albergue or a town, you're hopping on Wi Fi. Keep it on airplane mode, you get on the local Wi Fi and you're safe. speaker-0: Another note about the phone is that we did have them and kept them charged because we wanted to use them as our cameras to take photos and videos. And something that is probably added in here that we'll put in the show notes is an app we use called Polar Steps, which allowed our family to follow along where we were. So at the end of the day, we didn't again, we didn't want to spend a lot of time. I did not do social media the whole time we were there. We didn't wanna be engrossed in our phone. So Polar Steps was great because we could at the end of the day Upload some photos and do a little journal which helped us kind of process the day, remember things, and give our family a review. Family and friends that wanted to follow along could see where we were and see a few highlights of our day, which was kind of nice. speaker-1: It was cool. It was super cool. speaker-0: For family and for us to be connected. Again, for many, the Camino is complete disconnect. Yeah. and so you do where you are and where you're able to do. speaker-1: Like you said, what was nice is it was a form of a journal for us and some people choose to take a journal and write and that is great. But then I was thinking about having a journal that's big enough can I write in? Where we're putting it in our pack, will it get wet, will it not get wet? So the polar steps was a perfect solution for us. That you could send a link to your family or whoever you wanted to, because you can put it on private mode and it The version we were using is free. The app was free. You can upgrade if you want, but Polar Steps give you a great option to do free. Put your notes down of what you enjoyed, what you liked, what you thought about, how you experienced it, and you add what pictures you want to add, and it will look at your GPS location and say, okay, they experienced this in Porto. And there's the little dot of view on the map in Porto. Your family clicks on it, it comes out, they read the journal entry, look at the carousel of pictures. speaker-0: And they feel good that they know where you are and that you're safe and sound and you've accomplished the day. speaker-1: And it was so fun. And like Jan said, we can go back to that for our speaker-0: Helpful for us. So that reminds me this is a good moment to tell you that a lot of the people that we met and and a probably a majority of the people on the Camino were solo walking. So they're traveling on their own. Many, many women traveling on their own. So this is also a nice way to stay connected and let someone at home, you know, follow you along a little bit. Okay. So two questions we're gonna ask ask ourselves before we close. What we d do differently? speaker-1: What would we do differently? In in the Yeah. We we thought about this several speaker-0: I think we both agree on this. Or in in doing the whole trip, what's the one thing we would do differently? Or rest day. speaker-1: We would build in rest days. One, I mean, we did it. And yes, we had days where we were tired and and again we had one day that really threw us for a loop, but we'll get into that. I think we did pretty daggum well. We were gonna make it. speaker-0: We were gonna make it. I think a rest day not just not truly just for resting, because you can figure out the walk and then get to your hotel or place your stay and have time for rest. speaker-1: And we have hindsight on this part of it about where we would take the rest. speaker-0: Yeah. But rest days also because for me, the the cool places went by too fast. Yeah. Which is weird to say since you're walking. But you're walking and you're you've got somewhere where you're going. So and because you're going for ten more miles, you're not gonna necessarily walk four miles that way to see something and three miles that way to see something all the time. Yeah. And you're passing by such amazing stuff. There are some like All of the places we walk through are great, but there are some towns that I went, I would like to spend a little more time here. Yeah. speaker-1: Later on in the central route, just beautiful spots, medieval towns, amazing historic speaker-0: Restaurant. speaker-1: historical centers, the restaurants, as Jan said, Ponta de Lima, Tuy Spain, gosh, Barcellos. What else? I mean there was another one in Portugal. And so that would be hard to decide if we spent Little speaker-0: Villa d'Oconde on the coast. speaker-1: Candy on the coast. You might look in there and say, Okay, I'm walking fourteen days. I'll put a rest day in between this seven and a rest day in this seven. And look at what that town is and then do more research of that town because you're gonna see things that you go, I wanna go see that, or I wanna spend more time in this Right. we would definitely do that. So that would build much more time into our schedule because I certainly wanna want to take off the two days on the front end. And you want to leave a couple of days on the back end because you've got to use that time to relax and celebrate and just soak in your accomplishment of your Camino, reflect and enjoy Santiago, because man, Santiago was just so cool. And then watching other people finish. my gosh. That you we could just spend hours in the square in front speaker-0: True entertainment. speaker-1: of the cathedral, watching pilgrims all day long finish. speaker-0: It's so emotional and because you felt it yourself, that sense of accomplishment and then it makes me like want to tear up just thinking about it now. You know, watching the next people come. speaker-1: True. It tears all around. And we're gonna get into that and show you some things later that it's just spectacular. wow. speaker-0: So much to say. So we're gonna wrap today up. We've got lots more episodes ahead and we'll definitely talk about the different towns along the route and the fun things that we discovered in episodes to come. But next episode is everyone has advice. So we're gonna share the advice we got and what we used and what we did not use. speaker-1: And and you're hearing it from us, and so you'll have to decide as well. Thank you for listening in on Travel Joneses. We're so glad to have you here. That in the comments, we'll check them all out. And we can't wait to get on to the next episode. And again, thanks so much for joining Travel Joneses. speaker-0: Thanks for listening. That's our story. speaker-1: Now go find yours, Wayne Camino. speaker-0: Camilo. speaker-1: The Travel Joneses is produced, hosted, edited, and occasionally argued over by Donald and Janice Jones. Emotional support and Velcro snuggles provided by our golden retriever, Friday Jones. Quality control, keyboard napping, and general supervision by Juni Bug Jones, who has reviewed this episode and remains unimpressed. No interns were harmed in the making of this podcast because we don't have any.