El Camino: Why Walk the Portuguese Way

I love to travel. But I rarely tell anyone to go to the places I have been.

For the Portuguese Way of the El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, I will make an exception. 

You should go.

If you have a passport and you can scrape together the airfare and have 15 days of vacation and you can walk 10 km a day, you should go.

You should go for the solitude and the companionship. You should go for the rest and for the exercise. You should go for the simple pleasure of going to bed each night physically exhausted. You should go to be alone with your thoughts and go to share them with others. You should go for the surprises that lie around each corner. The scenery that will stop you in your tracks over and over again every day. The walled medieval cities and the sleepy villages and the arched bridges and the seaside paths and the wide valleys and the forested mountains and the neighbours chatting by their gates. The ancient stone walls covered in moss and the grapevines unfurling in the vineyards and and the burbling streams and the early morning dew on the newly planted fields and the sun on the lemon trees and the spring flowers and the hills of yellow broom and the overgrown ruins of abandoned homes. The cobblestones leading to charming boutique hotels and rustic albergues. The most magnificent of cathedrals and the tiniest of roadside shrines. Go to see all these things you can only see when you walk.

Go for the green wine and the tiny beers and the espresso and the pastries and the octopus and the trout and the substantial free snacks. Go for the tapas and the three course pilgrim's menu. 

Go to renew your soul and go to remind yourself of what matters. 

Go because you want to walk your own way and go because there are many who will help you find the path. 

Go to feel solidarity with the generations who walked before you and those who will follow in your footsteps. 

Go to prove to yourself you can.

Just go.