Home Sweet Home

What a change! From warm and sunny Rome to cool and damp (one might say, CHILLY) Northern Ireland. But we have been enveloped in the warmth and hospitality of Mary, Ed’s second cousin on his mother’s side, and Mary’s husband Tony. Ed and I first met Mary and Tony in 1989 when Ed’s brother, Bill, the Muldoon…

by Anne Li October 25, 2025October 25, 2025

Eternal City and Other Cities

Our beloved Pope Francis declared 2025 a Jubilee Year of forgiveness, love and joy. So we knew that Rome would be especially crowded with pilgrims… but we were not prepared for the sizes of the crowds we encountered. We visited Rome twice on this trip — once to catch the Ryanair flight to Dubrovnik, and…

by Anne Li October 19, 2025October 20, 2025

Crossing to Croatia and the Eastern Adriatic

To explain why we went to Dubrovnik, go back in your mind to the pre-Covid era. At that time, Ed and I had begun to plan a rail trip to parts of Central Europe (formerly known as Eastern Europe) that we had never visited. Since those plans were quashed by the pandemic, more recently we…

by Anne Li October 12, 2025October 25, 2025

We walked from Muros de Nalon to Soto de Luina today. It was a very difficult walk. It was about 16 – 17 km but it was up and down hills all day long. Most had very steep slopes of 10°, 20°, and some were 30° and more. The path was filled with loose rocks and stones, many roots, leaves and in places, mud (barro). Our legs are really tired. Today was the 6th day in a row that we walked, so we are glad to have a scheduled rest day! Not to mention rain in the forecast…

Our approach to each day is to start around 10:00 am and to walk without stopping for rest until we get to our destination. Today we walked for about 6.25 hours. We carry food and water and stop only to take a drink or get the food out of the backpacks. If we were to stop longer and sit down our joints would stiffen up. Experience tells us that it takes a while to get loose again, so we just don’t stop.

We are almost half way to Santiago. We will walk 5 days in a row starting on Tuesday. Then a day off. Next we walk 4 days and then take a day off. Then we walk for 3 days and walk into Santiago de Campostela on the last day of this Camino.