Before the Beginning

Now that I finally have found some wifi that works and the time to do this, here's how our first day went With our backpacks packed and double checked, Andrew and I got a ride to the airport in Jackson. I was carrying a huge purse for our electronics and other forms of entertainment and my 20-something pound backpack. We ran into some friends in the airport who were going to Mexico and another who was going to Virginia on the same plane we would be on. The plane to Houston was TINY. Andrew could barely stand up in it. They asked for volunteers with flexible schedules to change their flight for weight issues which didn't help my nerves. They had to put a tag on my backpack and store it under the plane because there was not enough room for it in the overhead storage. The ride was short and sweet and I tried not to think about just how in the world we were staying in the air. The next flight from Houston to London was the typical long coach class flight story: we were all the way in the back of the plane sitting right beside a woman with a baby. The baby was super cute and the mother was very nice but the baby still cried all night long. When we later met up with daddy and told him about it he told me it was karma. Apparently I had been a bad plane baby in my day. The final flight from London to Lisbon had its troubles too. We had been given a paper saying that we needed to pick up our ticket to Lisbon at the TAP Lisbon desk in Heathrow. When we got there and asked about the ticket they couldn't find us in the system. There had been a problem checking us in at one of our previous flights because United had changed their system. We got everything worked out and they printed our tickets but by that time instead of have around two or three hours to blow at Heathrow, we had about twenty minutes to get to our flight. We booked all our flights using Expedia by the way.. It made me wish we had spent the extra fifty bucks on Delta lol Nevertheless, we did arrive safe and sound in Lisbon, Portugal. Navigating this airport was a bit of a challenge. I don't know that I've been in a situation where I knew absolutely none of the local language before coming to Portugal. We called and met up with daddy at the Hertz rental car place and we all got into our cute little Renault hatchback with 75 horsepower. :) fun/scary to drive up the frequent steep hills. We drove for around four or five hours and stopped in Porto for supper. We got a bit lost in the city trying to find somewhere to eat but we eventually found a nice mall and had pizza hut for supper. This was an unusually formal pizza hut with delicious dessert and menus in our language which was helpful. I felt completely helpless in this country as far as language was concerned. We picked up a few things at the supermarket that was in the mall before we drove for another few hours into Santiago. By this time it was around one or two in the morning and Santiago was still awake. There were people filling the bars around town and streets lined with cars. Now we had the challenge of finding Hotel Altair. Santiago was a much bigger city than we imagined. We finally did spot the hotel and manage to park somewhere and get checked in. Our room was very compact and the hotel had very kindly brought an extra bed into the room instead of charging us for a four person room. The bathroom had lotion and shampoo and a hair dryer included.. Such luxuries I would come to appreciate more and more during the course of this camino. We slept very well that night and were treated to a nice breakfast in the morning. I had violet petal jelly on a toasted croissant. It was the sweetest jelly I think I've ever had. We left Hotel Altair and drove to the airport in Santiago where we were hoping to get a bus out to Lugo, the closest stop to our starting point of Sarria. But the bus decided to hide from us and leave fifteen minutes early.. So we took a taxi instead all the way to Sarria! It was a beautiful drive and a long one. I thought about the distance as I realized that we would be walking all the way back to Santiago. The taxi driver dropped us off at an alburgue in Sarria. It was Saturday afternoon, the first day of our camino. We got stamps from the alburgue as well as the cafe where we got bocadillos (giant sub sandwiches) for lunch and we were on our way! Santiago Bound! Buen Camino! To be continued...