We've had a day off the bike today. Walked through Vigo, again, but this time without all the crowds processing 'cos of 'Semana Grande' - Santa Maria Saint day for the city.
Last night we somehow managed to get right in the way of the procession in front of all the crowds, and in with the police and no-one told us to go away, or ask what we were doing. We did think all this for ourselves and left to find somewhere to eat.
The beginning of the procession looked like this - we do have a rather dull video with hideous singing so that's not being posted!
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| Procession at 7.30pm - can you see the candles? |
There were thousands of people marching and singing. You would have thought it would be uplifting but we thought it was all quite dull and boring. VERY slow walking and terrible singing along to thin-sounding speakers and a not-very-good choir at the other end of the sound system.
Drinks and tapas beckoned rather so we had our choice of bars 'cos everyone else was out being boring!
Vigo is a lovely place - vigorous statues in the middle of the roundabouts and lots of cool new building mixed in with the very old.
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| Roundabout statue |
Here's one of the statues on our way into the centre of the city in the morning. We went shopping in El Corte Ingles, a rather posh shopping centre/chain throughout Spain, and our credit card was rejected for the third time. We dropped into a cafe for a beer and phoned the card company and discovered we've been hacked into and now our credit card has been stopped. Makes me a bit nervous now that we are down to the last one and all our bookings are online and dependant on being able to search and book in via the internet. Let's hope that the last card stays safe!
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| The mer-man of Vigo (er...at the top of the pole) |
The centre of the city is like this. There is a statue of the Vigo merman and this is the street that we got into the middle of the procession without meaning to.
Had a very good walk round the narrow streets and slowly drifted along avoiding the pedlars and hawkers and peeping into some interesting shops.
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| LUNCH - start |
We went for lunch here and had a paella for two (maybe it was for three) and a free bottle of wine. Very cheery owner whose claim to fame was that he worked in a Kentucky Fried Chicken (I won't try to spell how he pronounced it) in Stockwell...... or Schto-ke-welley......tee hee!
This is how it looked at the start.
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| LUNCH - end |
And this is what it looked like at the end......
Rob has tried (obviously not hard enough) to learn some Portuguese and feels not very good at it so we've decided not to go to Lisbon and to keep to the North of Spain as the weather looks as thought it's pepping up and it looks REALLY hot the further down south you go. We're going to A Coruna tomorrow to do some more coastal exploration and to see if we can actually see Finisterre this time!
In A Coruna we'll be in another decent hotel with weefee (wifi) so there'll be more posts for the next three days at least! No-one has commented much but lots of folk have been watching the blog so that's nice to know. We've been watching the Olympics but rather from the Spanish point of view - makes us feel quite sporty especially as we order another round of wine and tapas while our compatriots are winning medals!
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