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

I stood outside the airport in Lisbon with a bunch of retiree tourists from the West Coast. They were excitedly snapping group pictures as we waited for the shuttle that would take us to our hotel. It was late afternoon and the summer weather was gorgeous, but I hardly noticed the sunny skies and the cool breeze. I was too tired from a long flight from Ottawa and a little bit flabbergasted at the turn of events in the past few hours, the past few days, and the past few weeks.