We didn’t do a lot today. Some preparation for trip home. Charlie did a self-guilded tour of Vigo’s architecture. I did some shopping and strolling around.
We’ll fly from Vigo to Madrid on Thursday and then from Madrid to Atlanta to Albuquerque on Friday. Delta made some changes that forces us to do an unexpected 24 hour layover in Madrid. We aren’t happy about that but at least it’s a long enough layover that we can spend a few hours in Madrid and sleep in a hotel overnight.
Here are a few photos to tell the story of today.
I snapped this photo yesterday morning when we were walking to the boat. I quite liked the look of this building. Then this morning Charlie showed me a brochure about a self-guided architecture tour he planned to take. I told him about this building I’d spotted on our hurried walk to the harbour and we checked and, sure enough, it was on the tour he took today. (Let me know if you want details.) Vigo has some beautiful buildings.This is a pedestrian street a block from our airbnb. Some nice buildings here, too, but not quite as striking as the one in the first photo. We stopped to listen to a street musician. We could hear her from our apartment and that drew us out. You might be able to spot her in white blouse with microphone standing against the building on the left. There have been several musicians at this corner. Many are basically singing karaoke. But they have good voices.This is our new favorite cafe in Vigo: Migas (which means crumbs). We’ve eaten here twice and wish we had more days to eat here again. (Would we be crazy to go back again tomorrow?) We got there just as they opened, so the restaurant was empty when I snapped this photo, but it soon filled up completely. Every table was reserved. When we called for our 1:30 reservation, they apologetically said we could only stay till 3:00. In Spain that’s considered a rushed lunch. We got there at 1:00 and were out by 2:00, despite lingering over coffee and dessert at the end. https://maps.app.goo.gl/vBuiAR4TjhNxANm76The menu was different both times. You’ll never drink alone at this bar. (Passed on the way to Migas.)The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (MARCO) is nearby so we stopped in there today. There was an exhibit by a Madrid painter, Alfonso Galván, and an exhibit by a political organization of mothers whose children had been or were drug addicts. I didn’t totally understand what they had to do with the art displayed, but the above photos were striking. (I finally realized they are of the same young woman.) I know it is naive, but it hard for me to believe there are troubled kids here. We see so many parents of young children and they seem like model parents. All the kids and young people and adults young and old seem to be content and healthy. But we do see a lot of graffiti. I wonder what percentage of kids are involved in that. Might not take many to make a huge impact.
The Cies Island are a small archipelago off the coast of Galicia, a 50 minute ferry ride from Vigo. They are included in the Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%C3%ADes_Islands
We did a 8 hour excursion there today with Noah. I’ll tell the story with photos.
Just leaving on the ferry. That’s a cruise ship across the way. Named “Sky Princess”. We were amazed by its size. We looked it up and it is about half as big as the biggest cruise ships in the world.On the boat ride out Charlie sat downstairs to avoid the sun. Some girls asked if he’d watch their food while they went off somewhere. Left there on seat. Another time, back in Lugo, a young girl asked Charlie to watch her bag while we were sitting near a playground. Charlie must look very trustworthy.Charlie eventually came up to the top of the boat.On the island. A big sandbar joins two islands, making them seem like one island. The first thing we did was walk the length of the sandy beach. Maybe 1/2 mile long?We hiked up to a lighthouse. (Forgot to take a photo of that.) Here Noah and Wynette took a selfie.The rocks were covered with bright gold lichen. There were some scary cliffs that we looked over on our hands and knees.Overlooking the camping area. I’m assuming families and groups can rent these tents and stay overnight.Noah on the hike to lighthouse.We ate lentils and salads and patatas bravas at one of the three eating places on the island. Then Charlie and I hung out while Noah walked back to this smaller beach (pictured above) that we had spotted on our hike. He went for a swim and sun bathed. He said it’s been very rainy in Madrid and he (a California boy) has been missing the sun.
Sunset outside our apartment window last nightInside a dry cleaners’ windowMexican food for lunch …… at Sierra Madre TaqueriaFortress at the top of the very steep hill in park not far from our apartment. We all 3 made it there on solo excursions. Nobody had to wait for slow me.View from the parkAnd, of course, there was a bar just outside the entrance to the fortress.Charlie and Noah chillin’ on the couch. Well, Noah was studying.
Thursday morning we left Melide. Well over 4000 pilgrims reached Santiago on Thursday. We did, too, but we did it by bus. Then, from Santiago we caught another bus to Vigo where we are staying a week in an Airbnb. Vigo is on the coast in the southwest corner of Galicia and is its largest city. Its population is around 300,000 but it feels far larger than Albuquerque which has over 500,000. Vigo is much more dense with lots of tall apartment buildings, typical in every Spanish city we’ve been to.
Charlie’s great nephew Noah is doing a semester abroad in Madrid. He traveled here to spend time with us in Vigo. It’s been great spending time with him. He said his classes are all Tuesday through Thursday so he has a four day weekend every week and has traveled somewhere every weekend: Seville, San Sebastian, Bilbao, Valencia, Paris, Amsterdam, and now he can add Vigo to his list. Of course, he’d never heard of Vigo before this and you probably haven’t either! He’s clearly an experienced traveler and knows how to find his way around the city, transportation, etc. He spent the fall semester in Mexico City and he’s fluent in Spanish. It’s fun to hear him talk with the locals. He loves to play cards. He taught us a new game last night and I have a feeling we’ll play something tonight.
It’s been rainy off and on but we’ve managed to do a few things. Walk around the city and see a few sites. This morning we caught a bus to Samil Beach. Very pretty and Noah got in a good run there. It’s supposed to rain more tomorrow but that is good because next week he has finals and papers due and he needs to spend tomorrow studying. On Monday we plan to catch a ferry to the Cies Islands.
Jules Verne statueAt Samil beach. (It’s a long beach, wish I’d taken a photo of the other end.)Amy Winehouse drawing in great little cafe we ate in yesterday: MigasMonument at the beach. It says: IN MEMORY OF THE MURDERED IN THE FASCIST UPRISING OF 1936 FONTES BEACH, AUGUST 17, 2002 A. VV. OUR LANDNoah in the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta shirt he bought in a thrift shop in Bilbao.Noah just got back from hiking up a small mountain in a large park in the middle of Vigo, near our airbnb. He took this beautiful photo from up there, sunset hour.
On the trail, early morningCows grazing way down in a valleyUnusual hórreo.Here, people can recycle their cooking oil. I assume oil they’ve used for deep frying? And I assume it’s remade into fuel?A little statue of St. James (aka Santiago)Walking into the center of Melide. End of today’s walk. End of our Camino.
If you look hard you might be able to see the stork.
Our neighbor Brian said he was looking forward to seeing stork photos. We’ve had some great stork sightings on previous Caminos so I was pretty sure this one would be the same. I checked out every church steeple for nests, that’s the place you tend to see them, but didn’t see a single one until today, at the very end of the last day of our Camino, walking into Melide, on the church steeple here. We spotted the nests and then got out our cameras and did a zoom to enlarge and, yes!, there were storks at the nests.
So, Brian, here are the best stork photos we could come up with.
PS. We did hear some cuckoos, about 6 times. Amazing how they sound just like the clocks.
PS. I think we might be on the very edge of stork territory. There are many many storks to be seen on the Camino Frances east of here.
You may have heard on the news that there was a big power outage here yesterday. Spain and Portugal and even parts of France. The area where Charlie and I are was without power for almost 24 hours. That included virtually no cell phone service (no cell data) or wifi. So, we didn’t do any blogging last night. I wrote up some notes on my phone so will copy them here.
NOTES FROM YESTERDAY, APRIL 28:
Charlie and I both agreed that today was the most boring walking day on the trip so far. 90% of it was along a small paved road with no shoulder. Very little traffic but enough that we couldn’t let down our guard. We did walk through a couple of tiny sweet villages and lots of farm country (wheat?). A few cows. A couple of horses. A cat. No places to stop for food or coffee or bathroom. It could have been worse. E.g., urban industrial. We’ve been lucky to be able to avoid that on this Camino, so we are spoiled.
The boredom turned to intrigue and disruption of our firmly established routine when we arrived at our place for tonight, a really nice tourist apartment (Apartamentos de San Roman), and our proprietor, Alberto, told us immediately “the electricity is out all over Spain”. I thought “surely he is exaggerating.”
We are lucky in that Alberto has a generator and turns it on and off so we have electricity on and off. But internet isn’t working. Luckily we can get some in and out phone service when we walk down the road to the local tavern. Their business is hopping. Lots of pilgrims.
Later Alberto told us he heard that electricity is also out in Portugal and parts of France. As I write this we still don’t know what is causing the outage. You may know before us via the international news. I’m writing this just on my phone, no internet right now. Will transfer it to the blog when we get service back.
We hear banks, airports, other transportation are in disarray. Alberto said his credit card machine isn’t working and asked if we could pay cash. We did have enough cash but that would have left us nearly cashless for the next few days. (We are in a very rural area with no banks.) He understood and graciously took our credit card number and will charge it when he’s able to.
He told us that tomorrow is very up and down walking but the prettiest day of walking on this part of the Primitivo. So, we are hopeful for a nice walking day tomorrow.
Most of the walking was like this. It could have been worse.Bar Maria. She didn’t open just for us.Finally, the Camino left the paved road for a short while and there was a nice place to sit on a fence and take a rest.Our little apartment shortly after we arrived and the generator was running.Sweet little taberna just down the road from our place for the night. They had a generator running continuously. For lunch there, we had killer bocadillos and some amazing ice cream bars. But the owner scolded me for leaving the cover to the ice cream case open too long. I’d briefly forgotten about the power outage.Killer bocadillos. (They gave us mayonnaise as well!)
The power wasn’t back on when we got up this morning. We had planned to get off an hour earlier than usual because a warm sunny day was predicted. But, the sun comes up late here in Spain. So, since we didn’t have lights, we got up at our usual 7:00 and it was still pretty dark outside. We packed with very little light and got off around 7:45 hoping we hadn’t left anything behind in the dark apartment.
We walked an hour or so and found an open bar for breakfast. They didn’t have electricity but their gas stove was working. We ordered eggs and bacon on toast from their menu and it turned out to be our usual fried eggs.
We walked another hour or so and found another open bar for coffee and …. they had electricity! The power was back. Yay!
Each of these bars were in tiny rural villages. It’s so great to come across them.
It was a nice walking day on the Camino. Pretty views, lots of small villages and dairy farms. At one point we got to walk through a small herd of cattle on the path. We had to walk right in the middle of them. My heart was racing but it’s always a fun thing to do. The herder at the end was laughing and joking with us.
We are staying in a private room in an albergue tonight (Albergue A Toqueira in As Seixas). We were relieved they had electricity. The owner told us they had to close yesterday. No lights, no running water, all the food going bad. They have a little bar/cafe and are the only place in town for food open today. We will have her menu del día for dinner tonight. She’s been working hard all day. We are sitting blogging just outside the kitchen. It sure smells good.
We got to mingle with the cows again.So typicalAt the second bar we stopped at. They didn’t have espresso machines. Hot coffee in one kettle, hot milk in the other.Scarecrows? Art?
Lugo wall from the outside. It completely surrounds the old town (population 3000, about 100 acres in size.) Total Lugo population 100,000. Was built in 3rd century AD to protect the Roman town then named Lucus.Street scene inside the old town. Some magnificent buildings.Street in front of our hotel. (Hotel ALBA Lugo)Charlie in the wall windowThis is our third time to spend time in Cafe Celta in the Lugo old town. They are open every day from 7 am to very late. Always busy. Three times as much seating outside on the plaza next to the kid’s playground. It’s been a great place to come for breakfast and tapas and to blog. We’ll be back for breakfast tomorrow morning and then head out on the Camino.Outside seating for Cafe Celta. These are 95% locals I’m sure. In all these Spanish towns, the community gathers in the evening.
