Caminho de Santiago, day 3

Today was perhaps the longest scheduled hike, up to Viana do Castelo. The final mile or so was a drudge, along a straight busy highway then narrow highway bridge (cough cough).

But Hotel Jardim do Viana was fine. We all noted the wear and tear on our feet by this time. I knew the shopping mall in Viana, so I went up there, pleaded with two different phone shops to no avail – they'd never seen such an error message, they can't do anything about it, I will need to reset my phone completely. I updated the phone to iOS26, but the eSIMs still did not work. I dared not do anything more radical on the road, as other functions (maps and email and whatsapp) worked fine on wi-fi. This increased my reliance on the others, as I could not use google-maps while hiking! An enforced detox from our always-connected life!

We ate dinner at Felipe Pizza near the hotel.

I collected some of our photos in a google-photo-album 2025CaminoDeSantiago. For reference sake, here's a link to the previous year's 2024Camino album. We took the same basic route both times.

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String Quartet Broken String

We attended a marvelous concert last night, at the Porto Museum of Casa do Infante , a beautifully-renovated 1325 building near the river. At one point it served as a customs house. The government sponsors Portuguese musicians to return from other European orchestras to perform in their homeland. We heard and saw this group play a traditional piece – Haydn string quartet Opus 20 #2. Then the modern Benjamin Britten's Three Divertimenti – the stunning last movement of which they performed as an encore. They performed (and I recorded) the Shostakovich Quartet #9, during which the first-violinist broke a string (it features several strongly-plucked chords!) and had to retreat&repeat!

EUA: tanto estrago em tão pouco tempo

As part of my effort to learn about Portugal, both the country and the language, I'm subscribing to the centrist newspaper, O Publico . There are plenty of newspapers: conservative tabloids, and socialist and communist-sponsored daily papers; I find O Publico to be most sober, with consistently interesting columnists and opinion pieces, in addition to some local (Porto) news, with just enough sporting news to keep me chatting with the taxi driver. Today's opinion piece sums up, I think, European pundits' view of the U.S. government. As the title puts it: so much damage in so little time. I shudder at the rank incompetence and corrupt behavior, demonstrating a cynical attitude toward public service, showing indeed that the cruelty is the point. What scandal, what damage will be the tipping point to collapse this government? And what will it take to recover from the damage? Who will be able to trust the US government again, ever? Only ni...

Música Tunas e Boémia

We attended an unusual concert last night: Música Tunas e Boémia (bands and parties) University student folk-music groups — big groups of 40 and more each! put on a great show of singing, playing, flag-twirling, tambourine-swinging, all at the major (private) concert hall. The most unusual thing about it was that nobody used any electronic device (except for microphone amplification)—no electric guitar or keyboard, no big drum set…every instrument and prop was hand-held. The singing was quite good, given the effort to synchronize 40 voices.

Thomas journals

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