The Tower of Hercules is the oldest known Roman lighthouse to still be standing, dating from the first century C.E., although much of what is seen nowadays comes from an eighteenth century restoration to preserve the core of the Roman structure. The original lighthouse had a spiral ramp around this core and you can see evidence of that in the brickwork.

We were looking forward to our visit of the tower right up until we rounded a corner and saw the crowd of schoolchildren at its base and the sight of another couple of full buses turning up. My wife expressed her desire to perhaps leave visiting the UNESCO heritage site for another day, certain that we’d return. Her actual words, should you be interested, were “Fuck that for a laugh.”

Sometimes you’ve just got to be flexible about your plans, and this cruise had certainly given us many opportunities to demonstrate that, particularly during our couple of days in Lisbon earlier in it. We decided we’d simply hug the coastline a little more and circle around and back towards the port knowing that there would be nice views to see and the opportunity for some liquid refreshment.

One of the first things to catch my eye was a monument across the road from us. This was the memorial to victims of fascism. Memorials like this can be infuriating when you see the same selfish power struggles and political leanings starting to surface once more, as they are now. The people who most need to understand the meaning and human cost of fascism are the ones least capable of it and most likely to be coaxed into working against their own interests by the rich and powerful, thinking all the time that they’re one of them and not simply very disposable tools. Ask me someday about what else I’d like to see next to memorials like this.

Back to cheerier matters and our continuing clockwise wander around A Coruña’s coast. Far smaller than Orzán beach that we’d already seen we next passed San Amaro Bay which had its own beach of golden sand as well as a health and fitness club with outdoor swimming pools, all looking very popular on this warm day.

A mosaic artwork on a viewpoint area along the promenade might have made for a better photo opportunity for the city had it not been obstructed by a street lamp. I do wonder about the mentality of people sometimes. “Ah, visitors will enjoy this pleasing artwork. Not all at once, of course, unless they’re less than half a metre away from it.”

We headed into the city and away from the shoreline once we reached Rúa Veramar and the reason for that was because there was a microbrewery in that direction. This was Malte Atochas and, as we got close to it, we saw that it was popular. However, according to our map there was another Malte place nearer the port so we foolishly decided to bypass this first one. We won’t make that mistake again because a closed and very abandoned-looking building was all that could not be found where the map said the latter was.

The stone structure below is a mystery to me. I’ve seen three different explanations for it as either a guard’s shelter or a shrine or a former water fountain. There was a time when you could simply plug in a few keywords with quotes in the right places and Google would sort you out no problem but these days the same query will produce different hallucinations from the AI (which it isn’t) slop machine that has priority over search index results, and none of it can be trusted. I may as well declare that the photo below is a public artwork representing the majesty of man by a Galician sculptor.

We didn’t look inside the Church of St George, merely admiring the lovely Baroque exterior as we walked the streets, but it’s a place with an interesting note in history attached to it. In 1901 it was the site of Spain’s first same-sex marriage thanks to a little subterfuge by the celebrants, Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sánchez Loriga. I’m a big fan of subterfuge when it comes to religion.

If you’re on a cruise ship and you visit A Coruña and you walk around and somehow don’t end up in María Pita Square then congratulations on being weird. Everyone else ends up here at some point. The town hall building on the north side of this huge public space is a beautiful building indeed with metallic tiles on the domes of the towers that gleam like scales on a reptile when the sun hits them.

María Pita, for whom the square is named, is an absolutely fascinating character. Ordinarily, in a post like this, I’d summarise her life and key events, but between this visit recorded here back in 2024 and this write-up now at a mysterious time only discernible if you’re able to read the RSS content associated with it (Ha! That’ll teach you for not knowing about the web standards that underlie the internet!) we returned to A Coruña and looked around the house museum in the city dedicated to her so I’ll leave this until I get around to that account. For now, though, just know that the square is a vast open space with lovely architecture around it and a sculpture to the local heroine created by José Castiñeiras Iglesias who also made the surfers sculpture on Orzán Beach.

This was the point where we headed off in search of that other microbrewery only to discover that the Google Maps information was appallingly inaccurate and so we ended up near the waterfront of the marina in view of our ship in the cruise port instead. We had low expectations of the place and, indeed, the beer was general lager, indistinguishable from any other. And we might have left then if we’d not spotted some people at another table having some sangria delivered. Needless to say but we decided to stay for another drink. Or three. Accompanied by a random selection of crisps and sweets because that’s something Spanish bars like to do. We don’t disapprove.

We never wait until the very last minute before returning to the ship but it wasn’t far off all aboard time before we headed back towards Ventura as we could see her from our seats and had a decent idea how long it would take us to walk back. We like to spend as much time ashore as we can, spending locally if we can. We’re not that type of cruiser who gets off, does very little ashore, then gets back to save money by having the free food or included drinks on the ship. The number of times we watch cruise bloggers posting videos about late breakfasts, time ashore, then getting back to have lunch on the ship. It’s not a good look. Yes, the world does have tightarses in it; that’s the nature of humans. But you’re cruisers. You’re already despised by people who are way too stupid and lazy to know any better. Don’t make it easy for them. Promote the good things you’re doing for local communities while cruising.

Cruise ships at A Coruña typically dock at the southern side of a convention centre which features a pair of male and female sculptures on its northern and southern sides. For some reason those to the north are lying down, and those to the south are standing erect. Well, not erect, exactly. “Are you using your zoom lens?” asked a fellow passenger heading back to the ship as I grabbed one of the photos. Everyone’s a comedian.

And with that we returned to our ship to enjoy the sail away from the final port of call.

We had a sea day before arriving in Southampton but there were few photos and not enough content to warrant another write-up so this concludes our 2024 Iberian coast cruise aboard P&O Ventura.

We’re totally biased because we think all cruises are great, and this one was no different. A great experience to spend two days in Portugal’s capital and to head off into the Douro Valley for my birthday. Ventura’s a lovely ship – she’s Grand-class and we love Grand-class ships – and we’ll be back aboard her again.

This was Aquarium Finisterrae, opened in 1999, just on the coast near the Tower of Hercules, and home to a number of themed areas relating to different oceanic ecosystems.

Upon entering we had the chance to use the toilets then admire a lot of marine-themed photography lining the walls, but we didn’t have too long as we’d been told that the seals would soon be fed outside if we wanted to see them, and we decided we did.

There were some lovely rock formations on the shoreline outside the aquarium, making for plenty of pretty pictures.

A fair-sized crowd of visitors were already crowding around the pool area where the seals were fed as part of a reward system that involved them being given health checks by aquarium staff. It was interesting to see that the seals knew the order in which they would be called up because there were six of them and only two staff members so only two could be treated and fed at a time. The remaining seals swam around and kept an eye on things until they knew it was their turn.

We headed back into the main aquarium building before the seal-feeding had finished to get ahead of the crowd and made our way first to the Nautilus Room. Posters from the book and movie Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea lined the route to a themed environment based on the Jules Verne work and it was nice to sit down in front of the large tanks and listen to organ music playing.

We passed through other rooms in the aquarium with tanks focussed on marine life local to the Galician coast and also others more generally Atlantic. The size and clarity of the tanks in Aquarium Finisterrae was very good.

To finish this brief look at the aquarium from our visit in 2024 here are three photos of the most interesting specimens to me. I think the starfish is Luidia ciliaris given that it has seven arms. We’d not seen one with seven arms before. The giant sea snail was a first for us too. Finally, there’s the gorgeous cuttlefish. We both have a fascination with any creature from the cephalopod class as there’s something so otherworldly and intelligent about them.

In the next and final post in this Ventura cruise travelogue series we’ll complete our visit to A Coruña as we head to the Tower of Hercules and some final sights of the city. If you’ve read the posts from this series where we visited Lisbon then you won’t be surprised at how that turns out.

We were not upset at all about the late change to the cruise itinerary but it did mean that we didn’t really have much time to do any planning. Luckily for us, A Coruña is a very easy and charming place simply to get off and wander around anyway and that’s what we would end up doing.

We had visited this city once before but on that occasion we’d only docked in A Coruña aboard Sapphire Princess then headed off on an excursion. We didn’t fancy any hastily-arranged cruise tour this time around so had breakfast and headed ashore after a quick look at the map to see if there was anything we should head for. The Tower of Hercules (Torre de Hércules), a first century lighthouse, looked like it would suit us nicely so we plotted a route and wandered off in the general direction.

One thing you might see if you look online, watch any videos, read any English language travel accounts of this city, is that it’s sometimes called La Coruña and you might not be aware of the difference. Simply, A Coruña, as I spell it, is the Galician form of the name, while La Coruña is Spanish. The Galician form is the preferred term and the Spanish form is in decline as a result.

A Coruña’s architecture was very varied. While our intended destination of the Torre de Hércules dates to the Roman period, passing through the streets of the city presented us with a wide array of different styles from different periods through history, from medieval to modernist. The city has records of visits (in the euphemistic sense of pillaging) from Vikings, Normans, and Muslims, and its strategic location has led to numerous battles and sieges taking place around it in the latter half of the second millenium. The San Andrés drinking fountain below dates from the eighteenth century while the nearby church is a neoclassical structure from a hundred years later.

After passing through the close streets of the city we emerged at Orzán Beach. The golden sand was bright enough under the sunshine to make the light cloud cover seem darker and threatening in the pictures below but it was wonderfully warm with no fear at all that rain might make an appearance.

It was time to spot some artwork on the shore. Following the coastline around to the north we soon came upon a monument to surfers. The fountain sculpture was created by José Castiñeiras Iglesias and it wouldn’t be the only work of his we’d see in A Coruña on this day.

Most recently restored in 2022, the giant wristwatch sculpture – telling the correct time – we were next impressed by actually dates to 1994 and was created by the artist Antonio Vázquez Liñeiro.

By far the weirdest sculpture was that by Jorge Peteiro. A double-tailed swordfish chicken? Who knows? If you’ve a better explanation then feel free to share it. I liked it, though.

We now came within sight of the tower that had been our destination since getting off the ship a little earlier but we wouldn’t be heading straight for it as we’d suddenly realised that there was an aquarium close by, and we are fond of aquariums.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be paying a lovely visit to the Aquarium Finisterrae in A Coruña.

Vigo has a hill overlooking the city and on that hill stands the Fortress of El Castro so after a morning wander around some of the interesting architecture and art in Vigo we made the decision to see if we could get to it. Because we were in the middle of the city and surrounded by buildings we didn’t really have a firm idea for how high up the fortress would be but we’d not seen a mountain towering over the cruise port earlier in the day and guessed it likely wouldn’t involve too much uphill-walking since we’d already had to do a little by this point anyway.

Wrong.

There was quite a bit more uphill-walking than we’d anticipated, which isn’t really surprising as we always underestimate this sort of thing, and because we weren’t approaching by the most direct route there was quite a big of zig-zagging up roads and paths through more tree-lined areas. We stopped often to take photographs and to rest, and we almost gave up the ascent when my wife’s knee suddenly started causing her a lot of pain. She’s a trooper, though, and after a decent break near an area of street art we were able to continue.

The fortress is really two fortresses and a city wall joined together to provide defences and it was built in the middle of the seventeenth century. Its actual usefulness was less than ideal as there were plenty of places that any invading force could land well out of the range of the guns and the subsequent history of El Castro is one of defeats, occupation, and ransacking.

What most people come to El Castro for, though, are the views. There’s a very nice pond with fountain too, and the fortifications are very nice, but the views are the big draw as you can see out to sea, down to the port, and for cruise visitors, your own ship will be there and you’ll be obliged to take a photo of it. You can also get a feel of the height above sea level you’ll need to climb to get here, and if we’d had a firmer idea it was this far up we probably wouldn’t have risked injuring ourselves, so sometimes it’s good to not be informed.

One of those battles that weren’t really affected by Vigo’s fortifications was the Battle of Vigo Bay (also known as the Battle of Rande) when a Dutch-Anglo fleet almost totally destroyed a Franco-Spanish fleet that had made it to Vigo with treasure from the New World. A lot of treasure was subsequently taken whilst rumours abounded that much was sunk and could still be in the muddy waters off the city. Regardless, a monument to the battle in the form of three of the anchors and some guns recovered from the sea bed was erected in 1967 and designed by local artist Desiderio Pernas.

Getting down from the fortress was a lot easier than getting up to it and we were soon back in the main part of Vigo where we decided we needed to reward our exercise and appreciation of some cultural highlights of the city with a beer in the shade somewhere. It was just a lager, so not our preferred drink – we’re fond of trying locally-made craft beers if we can – but we were hot and a little tired so it hit the spot nicely. What was fun here was admiring the perseverance of the pigeons on adjoining tables trying to get at leftover crisps and not really caring if they knocked empty bottles over to do so.

As we approached the cruise terminal we passed by a large bronze sculpture in a very odd pose. This was El Nadador and its name means The Swimmer and not The Faceplant in case you were wondering. This sculpture is supposed to a swimmer in the act of diving into the water while there’s another one to find elsewhere in the city that depicts the swimmer in mid-stroke. The pair are by Francisco Leiro.

In the next post in this Iberian cruise travelogue series we’ll sail away from Vigo.

Blue sky, the Cíes Islands in the distance, and gulls swooping around. Yes, this was all very familiar.

We had a flexible plan for the day with some walkable goals but a lovely, relaxed sense that we’d take it as it came. Our first target, though, was a very specific building that I’d noticed when looking at the map and so we stepped ashore, passed through the very nice port area, and headed in the general direction we’d need.

One of the first things you’ll spot as you walk through the port area of Vigo is an ensemble of sculptures put up in 2011 called the Tribute to Emigration. If you’re talking to right-wingers on a cruise (and you will find them) then just tell them it’s people going on holiday or they’ll get a bit foamy-mouthed. These are by the sculptor Ramón Conde and they wouldn’t be the only public works of art of his we’d see on this day in Vigo.

Our walking route took us past the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria (or, at least, that’s one of its many names) and as it was open our walking route then took us inside. The building dates from 1811 and is simple in appearance without being too overstated. Neoclassical architecture, fairly small, and not too gaudy. Very nice, in other words.

We continued on our way and the next thing to catch our attention was the Neptune Fountain. Its current location wasn’t the original site it was built on but it had to be moved when Vigo underwent expansion in the nineteenth century. The first references to it, though, date back to the early seventeenth century and it with its angel atop are one of the city’s oldest public sculptures.

From something old to something very modern with El Sireno, or the Merman. Francisco Leiro was the sculptor of this 1991 rather surreal blend of man and fish in aluminium.

We were enjoying the various bits of architecture we could see around Vigo and we still hadn’t reached the one building we were aiming for when were sidetracked again after spotting MARCO, the museum of contemporary art. Naturally, we had to pop in. I do know that modern art isn’t to everyone’s tastes and I’d never claim to like all modern art but sometimes you’ll just see something and it will evoke a reaction or positive emotion, and that can be all you need. We’re fond of the surreal or abstract. We saw some pieces that we’d be happy to have in the house and we liked the building too. We couldn’t possibly afford either.

Just outside the museum there was another interesting sculpture. This was a tribute to a well-known newspaper seller in the city known as Manolo Castro. The sculpture apparently used to have a newspaper balanced on the top finger to spin, something he was famous for doing, although it was missing during our visit.

We finally reached the building we’d been looking for. This was the Aurora Polar Building and architecturally it’s from the broad movement that is rationalism, but even though it was built in 1959 it’s clear to see that it’s got all the hallmarks of the International Style or Art Deco here that pre-dates this by a few decades. We do like Art Deco, and Streamline Moderne with its hints of speed and travel leap out at me here too. Basically, this could be the corner aft of a cruise ship with balconies reflecting the blue sea. And we’re fond of cruise ships. As you can probably tell on this site.

Just around the back of the gorgeous modernist building in Vigo we found Plaza Portugal Park, a small green space with a fountain and some street art around the area. It made for a good place to sit and rest in the shade for a few minutes before setting off again.

The street art we’d seen had been okay but the next thing to catch our eye was a huge piece on the side of a building that was absolutely superb. This was Vigo, City of Colour by Louis Lambert.

It was time to check in with my wife to see how she felt about a little bit of uphill walking now. She has a history of bad ankles, knees, and hips, and another point of interest in the city was higher than we were. Getting the okay from her, we started to make our way to a historic point overlooking the city. This required us to double back on ourselves a bit before heading up the wide Gran Via Avenue. The road includes a moving walkway to help people up the hill… which wasn’t working. Still, as we walked, slowly, we did pass a monument to the workers – fishermen specifically – that also incorporated a water feature, and this artwork was also by Ramón Conde. See, I said we’d see more of his work.

In the next post in this series we’ll eventually reach the Fortress of El Castro for some lovely views out over Vigo before making the far easier trip down into the city once more.

We didn’t look around it, though, instead opting to take a cruise excursion to visit two nearby towns to see the local architecture. The first of those was at Comillas (and a rare Gaudí design outside Catalonia) with the second town being Santillana Del Mar. Follow those links if you’d like to see pictures of the towns to compare late nineteenth century modernist works in the former with medieval charm in the latter.

So, Santander looked very nice. The same couldn’t be said of the view from our balcony where I could see someone on the deck below smoking a cigarette. Some ships do permit this vile habit despite it being dangerous while others don’t, and P&O Cruises don’t which is why the woman in question was trying to keep out of view of those above, particularly when she caught me looking over. It’s dirty, it’s dangerous, it’s selfish, and people like this who absolutely know they shouldn’t be doing it deserve to be banned from ever cruising again.

Anyway, we had a very nice architecture-themed day in Cantabria then sailed away from Santander, even catching sight of one of those ferries that runs the route from this port to our home city as we left.

Dinner for this evening was taken in the main dining room and you can see the menu and what we ate below.

The evening was the typical one after that of finding any trivia going on and hunting down venues with music to listen to. With the odd drink, of course.

The next day was another sea day (the first day of this cruise had been spent at sea) which, for us, means doing very little. We like to test our trivia knowledge against others if it’s going on, we like to read, we like to spend time on the balcony once we’re sure the room has been cleaned, and we got to do all these things. If you’d like to see what other sorts of activities there are taking place around a ship like Ventura then there are scans of the daily programme of events below to take a look at. This sort of range of things to do – or avoid – is very typical of most cruise lines.

One unexpected activity – and unwanted for those involved – occurred during our time on our balcony when the ship slowed practically to a stop and the captain announced that a medical evacuation would be taking place. We certainly heard the helicopter from our private outside space but never saw anything. We’ve seen a few of these over our years of cruising and you always feel so sad for the people affected by this.

Formal nights often fall on sea days and that was the case for this day which is why we booked the speciality dining venue of Epicurean on Ventura ahead of the cruise. The main dining room can be absolutely heaving on formal nights and we preferred a more relaxed meal.

Epicurean was fine, no real complaints, and we’ve dined at this venue on ships before and had both better experiences and worse ones. You can take a look at the menu and our food choices below. The starter selection of bread was lovely but then again I’ve never met a bread I didn’t love.

And once again – we are creatures of habit – it was drinks in bars and finding music to round off the sea day evening on Ventura.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive at a port we’d visited once before and on this very same ship three years earlier. On that occasion we’d headed off on an excursion but this time around we would be exploring Vigo on our own.

Santillana Del Mar was a marked contrast in terms of architecture, with everything we saw feeling far more medieval with its warm-toned stone walls and cobbled streets. The name of the town comes from Santa Juliana and its origins date to the eighth century when monks brought relics of the saint to this location. Donations from wealthy people, land acquisition, and being located on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela all helped the town to grow through the Middle Ages. Despite a general uniformity in the buildings in we saw in Santillana Del Mar the ages of their construction varied widely, though.

Our guide gave us a little bit of an explanation about some of the initial buildings we passed that had some historical significance but this was largely a “look, it’s a pretty place and it’s got tourist shops” kind of visit. We didn’t have too much of a problem with that because it had been the earlier part of the tour that we’d been really interested in, and it was a pretty place, after all.

We had plenty of free time on our own to explore. While the photos here may show some steep and hilly-looking areas to the town we didn’t find it too taxing to get up and down. There had been rain before we’d arrived which gave the cobbled roads a sheen, but I don’t recall it ever feeling dangerous to walk on the surface. Something to consider with accessibility, though.

Our free time in Santillana Del Mar didn’t extend far enough to really allow us to visit anything. We wandered as far the Collegiate Church of Santillana, the former monastery where the religious relics are stored, but there was no opportunity to pop in that we could see so this trip ended up being one for the eyes rather than the brain.

On the walk back we popped into the grounds of a small museum dedicated to some of the works of sculptor Jesús Otero. Animals were his thing. That and helping rebels to hide when fighting fascism during the wars of the twentieth century.

A minor bit of activity was required at the end of the tour as our bus had been moved on by the police so our guide got me to lead everyone to where it was now waiting while he hung around for those inevitably late to return. I seem to get roped into this role more often than you’d think. I must look trustworthy with “that man has a good sense of direction” written in my expression too.

Another day might have been a completely different experience, but we didn’t feel that this part of the tour as a whole was that great. Santillana Del Mar is very pretty and has a lovely feel but from a cruise excursion perspective there wasn’t really a lot to see or do after you’d passed the first palatial house in the medieval town and after you’d passed the first tourist shop. We’d have liked more time to be able to visit some of the museums or churches, but there is that trade-off with trying to just a get a feel and some highlights of an area. So overall, for the contrast in architecture, we enjoyed the day spent in these two Cantabrian towns, but Comillas was our favourite for the dedicated look around Gaudí’s building.

In the next post in this Iberian peninsular cruise aboard Ventura we’ll return to Santander for the sail away and there will be a day at sea before the next port of call.

In 1881 the town hosted King Alfonso XII at the request of the marquis of Comillas who was a close friend. Ahead of the occasion electric light bulbs were installed, making this the first place in Spain to showcase the new invention. In addition, the house in which the king was staying for this period served as the location for a ministerial congress and since the law demanded that this take place in the capital city, for one day only Comillas became Spain’s capital.

None of this was why we chose to take this tour while our ship Ventura was docked at Santander at the start of our Iberian cruise in 2024.

Our excursion would see us visit two Spanish towns and it was the first of these, Comillas, that we most wanted to see but the reason was only lightly connected with what I’ve already mentioned. The second half of the nineteenth century saw members of the Spanish royal family regularly visit the town and this led to an explosion of monuments and buildings befitting people of their standing. We like architecture so this would be great on its own, but there was a specific building we were interested in.

We started this tour with a walk past the Sobrellano Palace – not in it, sadly, but there’s always another time – and then through a few streets of the town where eclectic but enchanting examples of design were clear to see.

When King Alfonso XII had come to visit Comillas the house in which he’d stayed had been prepared by a team of architects with whom the marquis was acquainted, one of whom – responsible for the cigar pavilion – was a relatively unknown Antoni Gaudí. A couple of years later Gaudí was commissioned to design a summer villa in the town for a wealthy client. We were familiar with Gaudí’s later work in Barcelona and had visited his home town in Reus so we were very interested to see what one of the architect’s earliest designs would look like.

This was El Capricho. It was crazier than we’d imagined.

The design of El Capricho is influenced from eastern styles and it’s easy to see some Arabian elements such as the minaret, but the heavy use of natural motifs and symbolism also points to what would eventually become Art Nouveau in Europe. Flower and leaf tiles were everywhere. It was also nice to see a distinct layering of the floors with the exterior brickwork or decorations differing between the ground, first, and top floors of the building.

The interior of El Capricho didn’t have quite the wow effect of the outside view but that’s to be expected; it was fairly plain by comparison. You wouldn’t want to live in a house that constantly challenged your senses. However, there were some lovely elements and one of the most interesting was in the windows. The client who’d commissioned Gaudí was an amateur musician so the architect designed the windows with metal pipe counterweights which emitted sounds when they were opened and closed.

As architecture fans we were not disappointed at all with this excursion to see El Capricho, one of only a very few examples of Gaudí design outside the Catalonia region of Spain.

We finished this first part of the day’s trip with a walk back through Comillas to the bus and had a chance to see and appreciate more of the late nineteenth century modernist architecture on show, including a delightful fountain with three spouts designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner.

In the next post in this series we’ll visit a town with a different character altogether, Santillana Del Mar.

This post will be somewhat lacking in description. The next, and final, post in this cruise travelogue series will cover the evening’s entertainment and food, and the following sea day’s activities (spoiler: not many), with a summing up of this winter cruise. For now, though, please simply enjoy the views from our balcony aboard the ship as we waited to leave the port of Vigo.

You’ll notice that gulls feature a lot in the photos here, and that’s because there were a lot of gulls. Gulls are often attracted to ships as they can stir up sea life and bring it within easy reach, but in this case the birds had clearly learned that there were some easy marks out on the balconies who’d provide them with food. Now, in general, I don’t have a problem with feeding birds food because, hey, it’s a nice thing to do. But if you should ever find yourself on a balcony on a cruise ship, with food, considering that it might be fun to feed a large seabird flapping its hungry wings near you, then please, for the love of fuck, give some consideration to anyone – me, for instance – who might be below, wondering whether that thing that just him on the shoulder and just missed his expensive camera equipment was crumbs being dropped or something more faecal being ejected. Rant ends.

The island that you can see to the left in the photo below is one of the Cies Islands, a natural reserve in the mouth of the estuary leading to Vigo.

Following our snack and drink and views from the castle on its elevated bit of land we were led on foot down into the town of Baiona itself. The first thing we saw as we hit the golden sands of the pleasant-looking beach and marina beyond was what we took to be a miniature reproduction of an old sailing vessel. Well, it was a reproduction, but not a miniature. This was La Pinta, and if the name seems familiar to you then it might be because you remember that Christopher Columbus took three ships on his voyage to “discover” the New World in 1492. In fact, it was La Pinta that first sighted land on that trip, and it was La Pinta that first returned to Europe after the expedition. And its landing point in Europe was Baiona, hence the reproduction ship, so Baiona was the first place in Europe to learn of Columbus’s successful voyage.

La Pinta would prove to be Baiona’s main claim to fame so it would crop up again on this tour, but a little more looking around the town first, starting with the area opposite the beach. I’d tell you what trees these were except I know almost nothing about plants. I don’t even have great confidence they’re trees. I probably should have wandered across to the signs in front of them but I didn’t want to stray too far from our guide and the rest of our group who were listening to her pointing out the small ship (26 men on that tiny thing crossing the Atlantic twice!) and the commemorative tiles on the wall.

Our guide led us on a short walk towards the town square.

The austere church that ran along the northern side of the tow square was the Chapel of Mercy. Originally built in 1595 (apparently, and despite the date on the plaque) by the order of King Phillip II, the building was rebuilt sixty years later in the spot where it stands today. Inside there stands a crucifix made from gold from Mexico… but we had to take the guide’s word for that as we weren’t allowed in.

Decorated with flags on the eastern side of the square and facing the main square itself was the village hall. This building dates from the middle of the eighteenth century but was only bought and turned into a civic building in 1942. The square was a pleasant enough space though we were not given (or I didn’t hear) what uses it typically served during the year, and was notable for the monochrome representation of the Baiona seal on the flagstones.

So that was pretty much our tour. As you can see, not a lot, and yet, strangely, and very irritatingly, it seemed to take a long time to explain this not a lot.

“You can have some free time now,” our guide said, which was good. “Let us meet back opposite the Pinta in… twenty minutes.” Oh. We weren’t the only ones to suddenly be thinking “Well, that’s clearly not enough time to see anything at all.” I know this because it was voiced quite loudly by several people. We’d rather hoped we could have had half an hour exploring, maybe another half an hour to locate a bar and spend some money locally, but no.

So, off we set in a random direction just to see if anything grabbed our attention within a few minutes before we’d have to turn around and head back. There was no time to really plan or look anything up so we decided on a small circle that should take us out to the shoreline by the marina fairly quickly and which would allow us to see and head towards the meeting point, and ensure nobody left without us if we were a little late (but we’re never late).

Our random walking route brought us to the Arrival Monolith. Even if you don’t speak Spanish – and we don’t – then the carved symbol of the ship on this large stone’s front should give away that the arrival being commemorated is that of La Pinta once more. The stone is a fairly recent addition to the beachfront area of Baiona, only being erected in 1965, but it’s still a fairly impressive lump of nature and skilled artistry to admire.

A few sculptures were nearby. Baiona was granted a royal charter in 1201 by Alfonso IX and in 2001, to celebrate the 800th anniversary of this event, a statue was placed on a roundabout with his finger pointing to the ground and his horse looking in the same direction as if to say “What the hell is a roundabout?” It’s what he would have wanted. Over the road from that, dating from a few years later, and sculpted by Manuel Quintas Vergara, was the monument to sailors.

And that’s about all we had time to see in Baiona. We completed our visit to the town with a walk along the marina leading back towards the castle and the sandy beach area where we’d meet the bus to take us back to the ship in Vigo. We were very impressed with just how clean the water was (we’re from England where clean water is but a distant memory to many of us who can remember when the water companies actually did their jobs instead of lining their pockets) and with how many fish there were.

Baiona is a lovely little town with some interesting history. You can see how pretty it was for yourself, and that was helped, of course, by some glorious weather. It likely has far more to see and do than we got to see on this tour. We do like tours when we cruise because we like to get a flavour of things before considering if they’re worth a more in-depth look at some future date, but our time here was so fleeting we barely got a sniff of a flavour. I don’t like recommending places because we all have different tastes and expectations, but I will say that this particular excursion left us feeling a bit disappointed with its duration, particularly with the lack of free time to explore, and I know we weren’t alone in that.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series I’ll cover the departure from Vigo, and that will leave just one more post to go through the evening aboard, the following day at sea, and some final thoughts about this late 2021 P&O cruise.