Field Notes from a Month’s Travel in Spain and Portugal: The Good and the Bad

By Robert McGarvey

First this: do the Camino de Santiago, an ancient pilgrimage route in Spain and Portugal where all paths lead to Santiago de Compostela.  Multiple routes exist where even a slow walker can complete a Camino in maybe 10 days.  Go. Spending day after day where the only agenda item is walking liberates the mind. If you can walk you can do this. Personally, I like it so much I’ve done it twice in two years and already have started planning a third.

Now for some specifics from my recent trip which involved a 13 day walk from Porto to Santiago through rural Portugal and Spain (Galicia), but started with six days split between Lisbon and Porto and ended with six nights split between Santiago and Madrid. There are highlights and lowlights.  What went better than I had a right to expect and what went worse.

Let’s get the losing moments out of the way.

*Delta checked baggage.  No surprise of course but, yes, I am still waiting for three hiking poles that had been checked because they have to be. There no obvious reason for this policy but it’s the policy so we first checked the poles with Iberia when flying from Santiago to Madrid – they showed up fine. We then checked them on a Delta Madrid to Atlanta flight, continuing with an Atlanta to Phoenix flight.  They showed up in Atlanta where we claimed them, as required, and then put them back into Delta’s hands for transport to Phoenix. Four days later there still is no sign of them and Delta’s customer service is simply terrible.  Just don’t check luggage with Delta.  We used carryon backpacks – Osprey 40 liter bags – so had no problems with that. But the hiking poles have vanished.

*TAP’s bag hustle.  I thought I’d seen every airline hustle but in Madrid airport TAP did something I’d never seen. As passengers waited to board a flight to Lisbon a TAP employee circulated among us with a cardboard bag sizer and put just about every bag to the test – and, guess what, many were “too big.” Rejected bags had to be checked and many passengers – with discounted airfares – had to pony up Euros to check their bags. Literally dozens of bags failed the sizer test in the minutes I watched.  Mine were not even sized so I have no personal gripe.  But flier beware with TAP.

*Delta Club. After depositing the hiking poles in the about to be lost forever bin and walking to my gate for the flight from Atlanta to Phoenix I saw a Sky Club literally feet from the gate. Might as well go in, right, since I have Amex Plat. Uh no. That’s because a noticed a line of about 10 people waiting outside the club and this was a line that wasn’t moving. It of course meant that inside the club was jammed as well. Airport clubs really do suck now.

Now for the best moments from a month in Iberia.

*The weak Euro. The last time the dollar was at parity with the Euro was 2002.  On this trip I kept celebrating the reality that a 100 Euro meal was actually costing me only $100, maybe even a little less.   A year ago when I did a similar trip to Spain the Euro was worth $1.15. If you need another reason to go to Europe, you have it: the dollar is just so powerful.

*The AMEX Hotel Collection. For a stay in Madrid I booked three nights at ME by Melia, on Plaza de Santa Ana in centro Madrid.  I had never stayed at a Melia hotel – hadn’t heard of the company to be honest – but the location sold me.  I paid $1020.81. But I got a $200 credit from Amex plus Melia gave me a $100 onsite credit – which paid for breakfast for two for two mornings.  I also got 5105 Amex miles (a 5X haul).  I hadn’t made much use of this Amex perk but count me a convert.  I also am a fan of ME by Melia.  A lovely hotel at a great price.  

*Luzeiro Suites Lisbon. Joe Brancatelli is a fanboy and he is right. The hotel is in a great location – convenient to many restaurants, the subway and wonderful streets for walking.  Rooms are clean, reasonably sized and the staff are helpful. But it’s the price that hooked me. 440 Euros for three nights – in a nice hotel in a European capital in the middle of plenty of action.  If you are going to Lisbon – and these days just about everybody seems to have a jones for Portugal – just stay at this hotel.  

*Don Quixote Restaurant, Santiago de Compostela. It was a Sunday, mid-day, many restaurants weren’t open but this one – which specializes in Galician food and is a short distance from the Cathedral – had an available table.  And a remarkable thing happened. For our main we ordered a lobster and rice dish and a bottle of good Spanish wine. But then the sommelier came by and urged me to change the wine order.  The wine I wanted was too good, he said. He talked me into a wine that cost half as much. “It’s not as good a wine but better for the lobster,” he said.  His wine choice proved a great complement to the lobster – and the meal for two cost $116. 

*T-Mobile international data.  Free data, that says it.  T-Mo covers hundreds of countries and the data may be slow but it is free.  Don’t you remember the trips you took maybe in 2010 and data bills for hundreds of dollars inevitably rolled in? Not for me today. Not with T-Mo. Yes, T-Mo offers higher speed data for a price but I never enrolled.  Wasn’t necessary.   Also included gratis is inflight WiFi on at least some flights.