This blog post
is purely about travelling because that is the only thing I can think about right now. I went to Santiago de Compostela in Spain
and Porto in Portugal last week with my parents when they came to see how I am
doing here. After coming back to Vigo I've only been planning the next travels...
First of
all, Santiago de Compostela is a small city here in Galicia with less than 100 000 people. Regardless of its smallness, there is a university in the city
and also many exchange students choose Santiago as their destination. It takes
more or less one and half hours in a bus to get there from Vigo so this capital
of Galicia is not too far away from my home. The old town of Santiago is one of
the UNESCO’s world heritage sites but the city is even more famous of being the
destination of Camino de Santiago, a walk of more than 700 kilometers. According
to Lonely Planet, an average of 150 000 pilgrims and thousands of other
visitors make this 5-week journey, marked with scallop shells, each year. So if
you have five weeks of extra time, the Camino de Santiago might be something
you would like to consider because at least each person who has walked through
the route and I have talked with afterwards have praised the experience. If
five weeks is an easy excuse for you not to try it out, don’t worry, there is
also a possibility to walk only the last 100 kilometers which takes
approximately one week. Usually after visiting a new place people get things
out of their bucket list but after visiting Santiago I just added one to
mine.
 |
| Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela |
After visiting
Santiago and having an awful experience in a car rental place called Goldcar
(never ever try it!), we finally got going two hours delayed towards Porto on
Friday morning. Luckily Porto proved to be an absolutely lovely city and hence
we could forget the car rental mess even though everything didn’t go according
to plans in Porto either, but that’s the essence of travelling, I guess. The weekend included
shopping in Primark, sightseeing tours in a Yellow Bus, wine tasting, delicious
(and also not so delicious) food and a cruise on the river. Also a lot of
laughter and incredible memories. I let the pictures speak for
themselves and just say that go to Porto and experience the lively city with
its beautiful houses and view from the river. To get the best out of it, I really
warmly recommend you to learn at least a couple of words of Portuguese before you go.
Now that I
got back the taste of travelling it is a bit difficult to stop. I want to go
back. I also want to discover every corner of the world that is still unknown
to me. Once again I’ve realized that travelling is the best time of our lives
and teaches us a lot even though you don’t always recognize it when trying to
sleep at an airport or getting food you absolutely didn’t want but it’s still
better to eat what you got than to take another shot with the menu written in
an undefined language. Somehow it is a lot easier to take the attitude “when
life serves you lemons, ask for salt and tequila” while travelling than during
everyday life. Therefore, to learn some more patience and dealing with the
negative with humor, I have booked a couple of more travels within Spain. The
downside is that I just realized that I only have three or four more weekends
in Vigo before moving away towards new adventures… The last times come always sooner than expected but this time I’ll try to remember to get the best out of them and pay attention to every second I have left here. I hope you'll do the same wherever you are and remember that the new things are often worth trying already today.
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