Regrets, I Have a Few….

Maybe just one….not learning a second language at an earlier age.

“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech….they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves….” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”. Gen 11:1-9

People! Come on! Why! Isn’t it nice to have our book of history named the bible to know how some of these things occurred? It would have been so much easier with the one language. Sometimes there can be two different languages even in one house such as man language and woman language, right?

We arrived in Porto, Portugal to begin our time in Europe. Fortunately, these days we have translators on our phones. Also, many locals do speak more than their native language. We have found if you learn a few phrases such as, Bon dia/Ola = Good morning/hello, Obrigato/ Obrigata = thank you, por favor = please, adeus = good-bye, the locals love that you are trying and will help as much as possible.

Our driver from the airport shared the top items to see while in Porto. They include the six bridges over the Douro River. One is shown in the top picture. Here is another.

Another site to see is the most beautiful bookstore. The staircase is a work of art, and there are books in so many languages. In order to go into the store you must schedule a time.

Another must see, according to the driver is…

McDonald’s is McDonald’s in every language.

Porto is the home of ports. Not shipping ports, but sipping ports. Every port distillery you can think of store their ports here. Our favorite has been Sandeman for several years. The “Don” did not disappoint at his home.

Since Jay likes the “value added” (aka cheap) ports, because I like my 20 year old Tawny, we are able to stay in budget.

The flat bottomed rabelo boats, which have a very shallow draft, were used to bring the port barrels from the Douro Valley to Porto prior to 1968 when the locks and dams were built up the river. Now they are used to show off the bridges.

After a few days to adjust to the time change and enjoy Porto, we began the real reason to be here, The Camino de Santiago, the Portuguese Way.

We weren’t expecting how emotional I would become seeing the cathedral and the first way marker. Tears of joy. I gathered my emotions for the picture. Amazing we are getting to do another Camino. God is so good.

As several of you who read this blog know, when we were in Curacao for Jay to spear Lionfish (got it in there), I was awakened by what I believe was the Holy Spirit telling me we would do this in May. There is a longer version of this story however the shorter one is, here we are just as the dream said we would be.

Frank Sinatra might have said in his regret song, “I did it my way”, however we are doing it the Portuguese Way. There are different routes in Portugal as well as in Spain. We are on the coastal route. As of this moment we have completed approximately 70 kilometers, plus the 21 kilometers we did for practice the day before, which is a portion of the Portuguese Camimo. 56 miles total, averaging 35,000 steps a day.

So far we have met people from the Czech Republic, South Africa, Argentina, Italy, and Canada.

There are so many sights to share it’s hard to choose. Here are a few along the way.

There are opportunities along the paths to do other exercises other than walking.

Some languages are spelled with more syllables than the English language and yet sound so beautiful when spoken well. Some sound harsher, some more gentle.

Others like McDonald’s are the same.

A smile can show the love we have for one another. That’s universal without any language barrier. Sandy Patti sang a song saying, “Love in any language pulls us all together, never apart….maybe when we realize how much there is to share, we’ll find too much in common to pretend it isn’t there.” I think that can be in a simple smile.

We have a God, the one who created all these languages and scattered us among the lands, who loves us so much that He gave His one and only son, Jesus, to bear all our sins and regrets on the cross for each of us. Did you hear that? All our regrets. What regrets are you carrying? Give them to Him. We just have to confess them. That’s universal.

Bom Caminha, Nos the amamos! (Good Camino, we love you!).

Bencao, Jay and Kelly