We’d been to Galicia before back in 2018 on Sapphire Princess when one of our ports included A Coruña on the northern coast of Spain. Vigo sits on the western coast but both cities offer similar excursion experiences for cruise travellers. On that previous occasion we’d hit the very impressive Santiago de Compostela so for this visit we were after something different. You’ll be able to see the main target we chose to explore in the next post in this travelogue series, but to start with here we’ll look at arrival in Vigo and the first part of the organised excursion to a popular viewpoint over the city.

The sun had not quite managed to climb over the horizon and hills that lined the Ria de Vigo estuary as Ventura made her way along it.

Cruise ship excursions are sometimes extremely early upon arrival at a port, sometimes quite a bit later, but on this occasion we’d have about an hour after breakfast to leisurely prepare for the moment we’d need to meet up and board the bus for the day’s activities. More photos of the Vigo skyline from Ventura’s berth, and of the empty pool area on the top of the ship then.

A final quick return to our room to use the loo, pick up water, etc. plus a few quick snaps from our balcony because you seriously can’t leave me alone for two minutes when we’re on holiday without me thinking “Yeah, another shot from here is exactly what everyone will be clamouring for when they come to read this drivel at some future point.”

The day’s excursion included just one location actually within what I’d consider the city of Vigo’s limits and that was the first stop of the tour. A drive through some cramped streets and up a hill with a spiralling-inwards road eventually brought us to Monte da Guía, a viewpoint a couple of kilometres north of where Ventura had docked.

In addition to some lovely views of Vigo and distant islands in the estuary the hilltop location housed a building which turned out to be the La Guía Hermitage. I won’t lie: it’s not the prettiest of buildings. Dedicated to Our Lady of the Guide and the Sacred Heart of Jesus this refuge for hermits to contemplate life and great beyond was built in 1951. The size of the stones that make up the hermitage would be better suited to a far larger, far grander structure, and indeed, the intention was for something on a bigger scale but the finances (or lack thereof) of the order that commissioned the building put a stop to that. There are some interesting architectural design decisions on show here, but overall it’s not something that really works for me.

Still, as a viewpoint for photos it’s a nice little spot, and in the pictures below you can see our ship docked at Vigo.

In the next part of this travelogue series I’ll cover our visit along the coast south of Vigo to the town of Baiona and the Monterreal Castle.

Baiona is a coastal town that grew to prominence in the medieval period, and, having a nice bit of land sticking out into the nearby bay, it made for the perfect place to situate a castle. In this first part of our day in Baiona I’ll cover our trip to the grounds of the castle and our break for some light lunch in the hotel within its walls.

Monterreal Castle (sometimes called the Fortress of Monterreal, and usually not in English because, really, had you heard of it before?) dates from around the twelfth century (even though some fortifications were on the site during Roman times), but its present form mostly comes from around four hundred years later. The town of Baiona grew when a royal charter permitted families to settle within the walls for protection, but the fortress itself only really grew in wealth and stature from the fifteenth century onwards when Baiona and A Coruña were declared the only ports in Galicia that could trade with foreign countries. The fourteenth century saw Monterreal Castle serve as the residence of the King of Portugal for a period (not that the Spanish wanted that), and the castle successfully helped to defend the town and repelled attacks by Sir Francis Drake in 1585. Little of all that history truly remains, though, other than a battery on the battlements and the walls themselves.

The large building within the confines of the walls of Monterreal Castle was the Parador de Baiona (or Parador del Conde de Gondomar), a hotel owned and run by a prestigious Spanish hotel chain. This was built in 1966 but remodelled in the 1990s and includes a chapel, swimming pool, and over a hundred rooms with easy access to some lovely views and walks. We didn’t get to see much of that, though, with our visit there primarily giving us the chance to grab some food from a buffet – fabulous cakes! – and enjoy either coffee or local wine. Well, of course we went for the wine. Very sweet, but nice.

There’s not a lot else to say about this part of our tour because after our snack and drinks, plus the chance to use the toilets that must be included on all cruise excursions by maritime law or something, we headed off on foot to see some of the highlights of the town of Baiona. This walk would take us down a sloping road, initially inside then outside the walls of the castle, but first we were shown the San Antón Battery.

The San Antón Battery is the location of four cannons pointing out to sea from the battlements of the castle. These cannons, though, never saw any real action, being cast in 1853, ten years after any conflict. That had been an internal matter, when a general in Vigo had decided to seize the town as part of a larger military uprising and had sent a small force to take Baiona. Cannon fire from Monterreal at that point had killed a number of attackers and wounded many others. The castle itself had been declared no longer militarily significant ten years prior to all that, and that status continued despite the skirmish which is why it eventually fell into disrepair, then private hands, and now the location of a hotel.

The walk was a pleasant one – the weather, as you can see, was glorious for this trip – and it took us through a few arched gateways outside the walls of Monterreal Castle. The fortifications looked fabulous in the sunshine.

Monterreal Castle contains a number of towers of some distinction. This final one as we emerged at the entrance to the historical landmark was the Torre do Reloxo. This tower was constructed around 1500 when the royal family granted the castle that privilege. A bell, forged in 1510, was then placed in the tower, allowing it both to serve as a clock for the growing castle and growing town, and to warn about potential attacks. French vessels, attacking the port in 1533, caused serious damage to the tower, but it looked pretty good to us so perhaps they had the builders in afterwards.

In the next part of the coverage of this excursion I’ll go through some of the highlights of Baiona as we were taken on a short walking tour before an even shorter period of free time to explore the town ahead of our return to our ship at 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.

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.

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.

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.

Yes. And on the same ship as the last time I wrote about a cruise departure from Vigo which took place three years earlier. What can I say? It’s a very pretty place to sail out of. Pure coincidence that we’ve done this twice now and both times aboard P&O Cruises Ventura.

There won’t be much in terms of writing or photographs for this update; I mostly just wanted another chance to have something largely specific for the sail away from Vigo to match the one from the previous cruise. If you want to see more photos of the landscape you could expect to see when cruising out of this Spanish port then hit that earlier post linked above.

After our day ashore where we’d actually explored the city on foot this time, hitting a load of art and architecture early on before making our way up to the Fortress of El Castro, we got back aboard and headed up to the top deck to start with. This isn’t because we had any intention of hanging around the top deck – Spend time with half-dressed, half-cut Brits in the sun!? Hell, no! – but because we were peckish enough to want to grab a bite to eat from the poolside pizza place then take a drink back to the room to enjoy on the balcony. P&O aren’t quite refined enough to offer the delivery service that makes Princess Cruises stand out above them. In our opinion.

Back to our room and our balcony, then, and a far more civilised place to enjoy our drinks and take in the views of the Spanish landscape ahead of and during our sail away from Vigo.

The Cíes Islands that you’ll see as your ship departs from this port – three islands making up a nature reserve and national park – can be visited by boat from the mainland during the summer months.

To round off this day on our Iberian cruise aboard Ventura here’s a look at the menu in the main dining room along with what we opted to eat. As I’ve mentioned before in this series the quality of the food on this particular cruise never really got much above average and that was certainly the case on this evening. That said, you should never gauge whether a cruise will be right for you based on one person’s experiences of something on one occasion.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series it’s the first of two days in Portugal’s capital city, Lisbon, and we start with a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus ride.