After an early buffet breakfast and check-out, we packed into the official tour bus to drive around Lisbon for a sightseeing tour with a local guide. I had no preconceived expectations of Lisbon. Apart from the fact that it is the capital of Portugal, I knew very little about this city. But as our bus cruised around tree-lined streets and navigated the narrow, winding alleys through its different neighborhoods, I found it oozing with old European charm without the pretension

A month after my whirlwind travel booking, I was on an overnight flight from Ottawa to Frankfurt, where I would get my connecting flight to Lisbon, the start-off point of this pilgrimage. From there, our tour group would head north to Fatima and Braga, then cross the border to north-western Spain and spend time in Santiago de Compostela. Then, we would travel east to Burgos and Spain's Basque country and onwards to southwestern France. We would cross the border again to go ba