Day 18 - Wed - 11/19/2025 - Vigo, Spain

 You know when you have been cruising for a long time.  It's when you can't remember visiting a port 9 years ago.  Sure, I remember visiting Vigo last month when on the Emerald Princess.  But I had forgotten, but was reminded when I consulted my blog from 2016, that we visited Vigo on the inaugural sailing of the Koningsdam.  On that visit, we didn't see anything in town, but ventured out of the town.  In any event, it was good to be back in Vigo.  We had an 8am arrival time (still in the dark) and our scheduled independent excursion to Santiago de Compostelo, didn't meet until 9:30am.  We ate our customary breakfast and met up with Gary & JoAnn and scanned off of the ship.  Today we were berthed back to back with the P&O Iona.  We easily found the representatives from Tours4cruisers.com and we learned that we were the only tour participants who had pre-booked this 35E transfer to Santiago de Compostelo.  And since there no handicapped persons on the coach, we got to have the front left seats behind the driver.  


Our coach departed from outside the large shopping mall next to the ship just before 10am and it was an hour and fifteen minute drive to. Santiago.  Mercedes, our guide, talked nonstop the entire time about history, recommendations on what to see, and much more.  Once at the bus' parking location, she accompanied us to the square (Plaza do Obradoriro) where she turned us all loose to explore until 2:05pm.  The bus would leave promptly at 2:15 to be back in Vigo at 3:30pm (one hour before our scheduled onboard time).  Since Angela and I had been here before, I suggested that we visit the Market first.  It was about a 10 minute walk to it.





St.James

Pilgrim

Pilgrims 

"Pepperoni"


Bread & Cheese

Main Altar



Organ



The market is housed in a series of of 8 very old buildings and each building holds specific items.  Meat is in one building, fish in another, fruit & vegetables in another, etc.  We wandered the market buildings taking pictures and comparing this market to others we have seen.  I spotted some packaged pepperoni type meat labeled "Very Hot" in Galician.  So I purchased a package and shared it with the group.  It was really tasty and not that hot.  That got us started and the next thing I knew we were looking for a loaf of baguette bread and some cheese.  The cheese vendor sliced the cheese into slices.  Outside we enjoyed the cheese and bread for our lunch.  A short distance away we found a bakery and purchased some chocolate pastries and enjoyed those for some dessert.

Market Exterior


We made our way back to the cathedral arriving there just after 1pm (mass was over) and toured the cathedral.  This cathedral is the end point of the famous pilgrimage walk, and we encountered a number of pilgrims who were completing their walk.  I took pictures for one couple who finished the walk.  The pilgrimage is the subject of a movie, THE WAY, starring Martin Sheen and his son Emilio Estevez.  It's really worth watching.  


After touring the cathedral, we hung out in the square as our tour members began to drift back in from their explorations.  Mercedes took a group picture of us on the stairs facing the cathedral and at 2:05pm we walked back to the bus parking area along with the Princess ship tour participants.  They paid 6 times our ticket price for essentially the same tour except they had audio guides so the guide could talk to them inside the cathedral and while walking around.  

Mercedes, our guide

Our route back to the port retraced the route that we took to get to Santiago except that at the end, David, our driver, snaked the bus through the narrow Vigo city downtown streets to the location of setting up of the Christmas market and some of the early Christmas lights.  Back at the port, Gary and JoAnn headed back to the ship while Angela and I, accompanied by Mercedes, went to find the Jules Verne sculpture.  We said our goodbyes to each other there, took some pictures, and then we headed off to find the Vigo Churro restaurant.  It reopened at 4pm, so Angela purchased a Churro & Chocolate and munched on that on our walk back to the ship.  We reboarded the ship with 8 minutes to spare, but there were 95 people behind us.  We noted that there was still one truck and trailer waiting to unload.  We learned later that the customs officials decided to do a full inspection of the entire reloading of the ship.  This last truck contained a lot of alchohol but most importantly, butter.  It seemed that the inspectors decided to invoke an ancient rule that limited the amount of provisions that could be loaded on a cruise ship and it took hasty negations by Princess shoreside staff and choice Spanish words coming from our Scottish Hotel General Manager to get these last provisions released.  This last load of provisions was loaded just before 5pm.  I watched the entire process from our balcony and the forklift drivers loaded pallets at a rate of one every 45 seconds compared to the typical rate of one every 90 seconds.  It was a great ballet act to watch.  






Bumper installation


Pilgrimage walk marker


The Captain gave his departure speech and we waited for the IONA to depart.  It was facing the correct direction to sail out of the harbor into the open sea.  When it was our turn around 5:20,  the ship's horn played the Love Boat theme and the thrusters moved us away from the dock.  The ship then turned 180º counter clcockwise, and followed the IONA out of the harbor into the open sea where our paths diverged.  The were headed to Lisbon, while we were headed to Ponta del Gada in the Azores.  


It was soon dark, and we ate dinner before securing front row seats for the eventing entertainment, The Voice Boys.  This was a trio of UK men who had all competed on the Voice TV program.  They had great harmony and slick, coordinated dance moves.  It was so good that I went back to see it again at 10pm before joining Angela and Princess Live for karaoke.  A dad joke that I had submitted was used by the Cruise Director in his after show remarks.  The second show was much more receptive to the joke. At karaoke, there were a lot of good singers.


Tomorrow is another sea day before reaching Ponta del Gada in the Azores.


For those interested, the joke that I submitted was:


What do you get when you cross the DNA of a cheetah and a crab?


I don't know, but it quickly went sideways!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day -03 & -02 - Thu/Fri - Home to London

Image
 After a very brief less than 72 hours at home following our last trip out of England, we found ourselves back at SeaTac airport for a direct flight to London on Delta.  Our flight was scheduled for 5:40pm and we arrived at the airport around 3:15pm.  The ticketing agent didn't put our TSA PreCheck on our tickets so we had to return to the ticketing counter to get that fixed.  But I didn't notice another problem until we reached the gate:  we were assigned seats on opposite sides of the airplane.  Fortunately a gate agent was able to fix it and we had seats 47a&b (near the back of the airplane in economy). The A330-200 took off close to on time and we had a little bit longer takeoff roll (yes, I always count the number of seconds for takeoff). Typically it's 31 or 32 seconds; today's was 39 seconds.  The flight was smooth and we were served beverages first (tip: order two as it's a long time until the next one) so we ordered sparkling water and a C...
Read more

Day 01 - Embarkation & Revelations

Image
 Today's blog is a long one.  And what a surprise to start our day!  We started listening to game 7 of the World Series midnight when around 1am there was a sudden noise from the bathroom.  By the time Angela was able to reach the bathroom, the floor was totally covered in water as the bidet hose had exploded under the water pressure as someone else had not turned off the water at the nearby valve. We don't use or even know how to use the bidet.  She was able to turn off the valve and I got up and mopped up the bulk of the water.  I then called the front desk and a workman was sent up immediately who diagnosed the problem and fetched a replacement hose.  The original hose was split at the nozzle and he said that it happens quite frequently.  When he was finished, a housekeeping attendant came with a stack of towels and completed the mopping of the floor.  He also left us 3 extra towels just in case.   With all of that excitement behind u...
Read more

Day -01 - London Walk

Image
 Because we did the city tour yesterday, we had all day Saturday free to do what we desired.  We ended up listening to game 6 of the World Series from midnight until 3am so we weren't in much of a hurry to get up early.  Our only deadline was the 11am cutoff for the hotel buffet breakfast that was included with our tour.  We were able to enjoy breakfast and then headed out to walk to Trafalgar Square which is about 4 miles from the hotel in the Kensington District.  We learned that the Kensington district is one of the most expensive places to own property in greater London.  A small one bedroom 1,000 square foot apartment sells for over the equivalent of $1.5 million dollars or more! Our first stop was a little hardware store across the street from the hotel.  Jack's Hardware has a small storefront, but once inside, the store is deep and has a basement.  I was looking for another latch for our daughter and the clerk quickly found it after I showe...
Read more