Tag Archives: Cityscape

Getting there – and getting essential supplies

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Saturday 3 August 2024 – The agency, Audley, which is managing our itinerary (under the beady eye of the household travel co-ordinator, i.e. Jane) has done a distinctly average job of creating, and, critically, presenting us with, our schedule. Quite early on in the planning process we were given a very good general idea of where we would be and when, and what we would be doing when we got there; but important details (timings, meeting arrangements, etc) were missing, in many cases until a couple of days before our departure, and a few things had to be corrected after regression errors crept in as we moved from version to version of our schedule.  However, it looks like the whole – and very substantial – itinerary has come together nicely. As well as to Jane, thanks are due in no small part to Judy at Spear Travels, who cracked the whip very effectively for us.

STOP PRESS: Two days into our vacation, our trip is at last visible to us on the (admittedly cool-looking) Audley Travel Companion app, which will be a convenient way of accessing our itinerary details, which would otherwise be a bit of an encumbrance to  carry round with us everywhere.

The longest of journeys starts, as the saying doesn’t quite go, with a single taxi ride. Our taxi turned up early and got us very comfortably to the airport, whence everything moved very swiftly and unproblematically through the journey to Perth, our arrival point in Australia, reached via Singapore.

I say unproblematical; actually our departure from London was delayed, but only around 30 minutes. Any more than that and our transit through Singapore might have been rather inelegantly brisk, but the timings worked out fine.  We spent a long time on the various taxiways between terminal and takeoff, and I got an opportunity to capture a timelapse of the rather elegant ballet that goes on when there are several aeroplanes converging on the relevant runway.

I was interested to see a Concorde parked on the outfield; I didn’t realise that there were any left in the wild.

The arrival process of getting through customs and immigration and picking up our bags at Perth was impressively smooth and swift. We had to fill out an arrival card on the flight from Singapore, in which we promised that we weren’t convicts (no longer, it seems, an entry requirement to the country), didn’t have tuberculosis and weren’t bringing with us anything untoward, meaning, basically, foodstuffs. Because I knew that the Powers That Be in Australia are quite pernickety about such things, I had decided that we shouldn’t bring any home comforts that might cause a ruckus at the border; so we actually arrived in The Foreign without any of Twinings Finest Earl Grey just in case. Or, more accurately, not in either of our cases.

We were greeted at Perth’s airport by a very cheery chap called Stephen, who whisked us swiftly to our hotel, the QT, whilst simultaneously giving us a useful commentary about Western Australia and Perth, and making a useful recommendation of an outing we should undertake (Fremantle) and when (Sunday, i.e. tomorrow) because The Market Will Be On, and that’s a Good Thing.

The hotel is quite posh and is extremely conveniently located in downtown Perth,

but is architecturally unremarkable beyond being 18 stories tall with a Sky Terrace at the top (the highest bar in Perth, we understand), which sounds like something we should definitely acquaint ourselves with before we move on.

Another key datum that Stephen vouchsafed was that the shops were only open until 5pm, and, it being by this stage about 4.30pm, as you can understand we had an important shopping mission to undertake, which was to find a supermarket, and fast. Google Maps promised that there was a Woolworth’s (no relation, for those of a certain age) a couple of minutes away, and so off we scurried – not in quite the right direction, as it happens.  The Woollies was in a mall, and our efforts to find the entrance led us down a rather disreputable-seeming alleyway, which was, however, decorated rather beautifully.

Suffice it to say, we eventually found the shop and returned to the hotel bearing our spoils, whereupon we discovered something that raised the hotel in my estimation. They provided a kettle in the room. And largish cups for the tea. And milk in the minibar fridge.

Having used the shopping expedition to help us orient ourselves, and still being fairly full of Singapore Airlines (really rather nice) food, we needed to spend a few minutes before finding further sustenance. So we went for a walk. Obviously.

We didn’t cover much ground because it was heading towards sunset and, being winter, it was likely to get a bit chilly after the sun had disappeared.  But we were able to get a sample of the colonial buildings one can still find in Perth, squeezed in between all the modern high rise stuff.

Perth Town Hall (you can just see the side of our hotel on the left)

The old Treasury building

The Old Courthouse

We headed down to the water – the Swan River – also passing more modern buildings such as the Bell Tower

which has definite shades of Sydney Opera House in its side view.

Nearby is Elizabeth Quay

which has a very distinctive footbridge giving access from the west.

As you can see, the sun was going down by this stage, and it was indeed getting a bit chilly, so we headed back to the hotel, past another part of Perth’s architectural vernacular,

modern buildings in a faux-old style.  I think a lot of the colonial-era buildings have been demolished over the years, and in many cases replaced by steel-and-glass constructions; but there was more than a sprinkling of this more welcome style as well.

The QT Hotel offers an Italian restaurant called Santini, and we repaired there for an early evening bite to eat.  It was Saturday night and there was a wedding going on, so it was a tad on the raucous side, but provided a decent enough meal, after which we retired to our room to try to stay awake for a while to try to stave off the worst of the jet lag.  Crossing time zones can be unsettling enough, and crossing them from west to east is the more challenging direction, and we wanted to try to avoid the usual wide-awake-at-4am consequence of losing seven hours of the day.

I have to report that we failed, although not spectacularly.  It was around 8.30 at night when we both decided that we were losing the struggle to stay awake, and so we turned in. We had no formal schedule to have to work to, just an inchoate plan to get to Fremantle somehow. Stay tuned to see how that all worked out, eh?

Day 3 – Lugo again: Victor Lugorum

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Tuesday 30 April 2024 – We got a lot more touristing done today than I had expected given the dire (or at least rainy) weather forecast by Accuweather. And, in truth, the prospects at the start of the day weren’t particularly appealing.

It seemed that seeking indoor touristing would be the way to go for the day, so we set out for the cathedral, through the rain.

En route, we stopped in at the central pharmacy, which was well-decorated in an art nouveau kind of way,

You can only really see the stained glass in this door from inside the shop, where it appears reversed. So I have flipped it left-to-right

and were reminded that Lugo is actually on various of the Camino de Santiago routes – the Primitivo and XIX.

I’m grumpy about visiting the cathedral. They charge €7.50 for entry and then won’t let you take photos. My feeling is that you can do one or the other. So I sneaked a couple of illicit photos anyway, yah boo, in both cathedral and cloisters.

There’s some lovely detail in the cloisters and some fine stained glass in the cathedral itself.

After this peremptory visit to the cathedral, we walked around in dampness that was gradually escalating from slight drizzle to proper rain, taking in some other nice corners of the city.

but the dampness became too oppressive, so we scurried off to the Café del Centro, where we’d noticed hot chocolate and churros advertised. And very nice they were too; we were amused to note that the café seemed to regard this as a normal breakfast.

The rain appeared to be easing as we left the café, so, rather than go back and skulk in our hotel room, we decided to take a walk out of the old city to a Roman bridge across the river, passing a couple of installations in the main square that we hadn’t really taken note of before

and passing some nice scenes as we went.

Delightfully, as we got to the river, the sun came out,

and showed the 7-arch Roman bridge off to its best advantage.

The walk to the river is quite steeply downhill, which meant that we got some practice for our forthcoming hiking as we worked our way back up to the city, up to and through the Parque Rosalía de Castro. This is named after a Galician poet and novelist, considered one of the most important figures of 19th-century Spanish literature and modern lyricism. Widely regarded as the greatest Galician cultural icon, she was a leading figure in the emergence of the literary Galician language. The route also involved climbing some 180 steps and 100 metres vertical, so constituted a nice preparatory workout for the day after tomorrow, which is when we take our first steps on the Camino Finisterre.

By this stage we felt we’d earned some lunch, so once again visited the Terrazza restaurant at our hotel. Although we weren’t much later than yesterday, the restaurant was very quiet, with only a couple of other tables occupied; a great contrast with yesterday’s buzz.  The food was just as good, though.

Having (slightly over-) indulged ourselves, we noted that the rain which had come on just as we arrived at the hotel had now eased, and so we went off for a post-prandial constitution in search of some final sights to take in. There were still a couple of churches to be visited, after all.

Having passed the “Monumento do Bimilenario”, the city’s nod to Y2K

(dubbed “The Millennium Falcon”, by Jane), our first stop was the church of the Convento de San Domingos, a very tranquil place.

I noticed that it featured an organ with horizontal pipes,

which appears to be A Thing in these parts – we’d noticed similar setups in the cathedrals of Burgos and León.

The other was the church of San Pedro,

which has some fine stained glass.

There remained but one other Thing To See, which is something we’d completely missed in our walks around because the last thing it looks like is a site of significant historic interest.

It is actually the Museo Universitario A Domus do Mitreo. “Domus”, as anyone old enough to have studied Latin at school knows, means “house”*, and this unlikely-looking building houses (sorry) a really interesting site – the remains of what must have once been a palatial residence that was also a Mithraeum, a temple dedicated to the cult of Mithras, a Roman mystery religion. It’s a very extensive site


with great archeological significance for the city. The site of the domus is important to the city, since it has allowed the documentation of archaeological remains from the entire history of Lugo, starting at the moment of its foundation, around 27BC, until the 20th century. The site is very well laid out with lots of detailed information on info boards and in videos and enabling one to get really very close to the original Roman stonework. Interestingly, when The Powers That Be of the time decided that the city needed a wall, they just went ahead and built it straight through one end of the place.

And that was about it for our wandering around Lugo – a very pleasant city with a significant Roman history. The morrow involves departing for Santiago de Compostela and (after an overnight stop to draw breath) the start in earnest of our proper peregrination to the coast. It will be interesting for us to find out how we get on with some serious walking; I hope it might also be interesting for you to come back to these pages to see how things went.

 

* Domus was also the name of a now-defunct chain of (originally co-operative-run) department stores in Sweden. This fact may be of use in some bizarre set of circumstances, such as when writing a blog about a Roman city in Spain.

Day 1 – A Coruña

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Sunday 28 April 2024 – We arrived here in A Coruña yesterday, after a largely unremarkable journey. Only a couple of things were noteworthy: firstly that the Vueling flight from Gatwick to Santiago both pushed back and landed some 10 minutes early; and secondly, the hire car.  I had booked a small saloon (Seat Leon or similar) and asked for an automatic gearbox, a strong preference for me, since driving on the wrong side of the road is bad enough without having to worry about where the flaming gear stick is all the time.  It turned out that the only automatic car they had was

a BMW X5, which is much more modern and sophisticated than anything I have ever driven before (on either side of the road).  It’s also much larger; I’ve driven full-sized Ford Transit vans, and this felt bigger than one of those. It took several minutes even to work out how to engage forward gear but I gradually got the hang of it without actually crashing into anything, and we made it from Santiago airport to our hotel, the Melia Maria Pita, without any incident other than an unexpectedly closed road which we had to navigate around. Thank heavens for satnavs, that’s what I say. Thank heavens also for a wife who’s armed with Google Maps for when the satnav traduces the driver.

It’s a nice hotel and we get a splendid view across the bay.

Remember the hotel name, by the way; I’ll come back to that later.

We have just the one full day here in A Coruña, so we went for a walk. Obviously.  Jane did her usual great job of looking for items of interest, because if you believe the internet you’ll form the impression that there’s only one thing worth seeing here.  We did see it, of course, but Jane had unearthed a route which passed all sorts of striking scenes.

A significant chunk of A Coruña is a headland, somewhat appropriately named since it sits atop a neck, and it was a very pleasant walk to go around the perimeter.

Before crossing the neck, we walked along the prom

(tiddley om-pom-pom) which is allegedly the longest promenade in Europe.  It certainly winds its way a long way beside the sea side (beside the sea), where they appear to have shipped in a load of spare sand, in case the beach runs out.

Crossing the neck took us by some lovely architectural flourishes,

The dove is by Picasso, who lived in A Coruña as a child (1891-95)

through the Gardens of Méndez Núñez

past the Kiosko Alfonso with its decorative windows

and “La Terraza”, once a leisure centre, now the headquarters of the broadcaster RNE Galicia, which is a very ritzy building,

and into the Plaza Maria Pita (remember the name?), with its impressive local council HQ.

Maria Pita is a good example of nominative determinism, as she was, at least as far as Sir Francis Drake was concerned, a Pain In The Arse (PITA). She was a heroine in the defense of A Coruña against the English Armada attack upon the Spanish mainland in 1589. It’s worth noting that although Drake did a number on the Spanish Armada in 1598, he wasn’t always successful in his military exploits, as well as being, basically, a pirate. Anyway, there is a statue of Maria Pita in the square, obvs,

but what was also engaging was what the square was being used for – there was a lot of noise and bustling activity.


A Zumba session, and lots of kids’ sports made for a great atmosphere in the square – so energising, in fact, that we immediately had to go and have a coffee.

Also in the area is the church of St. George,

so we had to visit that, of course.

Also nearby is a very quirky square, called the Plaza Humor.

Having crossed the neck via these engaging sights, we then embarked on the Paseo Maritimo, which could very well count itself as the start of that long promenade I mentioned earlier. Whatever, there’s a path which winds right around this headland, across the bay where our hotel is, over to the other side and round where Monte de San Pedro overlooks the city. It’s a very well-designed path

with separate walking, running and cycling tracks and very distinctive lampposts.

It passes evidence of the once-fortified state of the city,

including the Castelo de Santo Anton.

Not all the buildings are old, though. The Port Authority building is strikingly modern

and rather cleverly designed, since, as you walk round the Paseo Maritimo and look back, you see varying reflections of the city.

The Paseo Maritimo also leads past a cemetery, which is catnip to Jane, so we went and had a look around.

The Paseo winds its way past a very attractive little beach, the Playa de San Amaro,

which features an interestingly decorated restaurant.

By this stage, we were approaching the top of the headland, and various strange-looking items could be seen.  As we neared them, they resolved themselves into: Monumento aos Fusilados, which has the appearance from a distance of a henge,

and, in a contrasting nomenclature, the Menhirs for Peace, a set of standing stones.

As you can see, the stones have openings through them, and it is, of course, a great game to use these as frames for futher photos.

and one of these openings frames the One Thing that the internet thinks that A Coruña has to offer the visitor.

The Tower of Hercules, the oldest known extant Roman lighthouse, and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


As you can see, I whizzed the drone up to get some footage, and in doing so discovered a couple of things: firstly, the best time to do this would have been in the morning so you can have the light behind a shot looking from the tower to the city; and secondly that I’d pillaged the drone’s memory card to use in another camera – which I didn’t have with me. Fortunately, the thing has some internal memory which was sufficient for this short clip, so carrying it all that way wasn’t in vain. But still – rapped knuckles for me for not checking it over before we set out.

The Tower is very photogenic

and also very useful as a secondary subject in photos of other things, such as the menhirs and this installation called “A Cup of Sunshine”.

The relief flooding through me that I had at least some footage of the tower almost immediately gave way to the realisation that it was time for one of our signature Late Lunches. Jane had picked out a couple of likely restaurants and so we headed off to find them (thanks again, Google Maps, the eSim capabiiity of modern phones and my brother for suggesting an eSim as a way of getting data cheaply whilst in The Foreign).

En route, we passed a building that would once have been magnificent, but which was now clearly disused;

the old prison.

We discovered quite swiftly that 3pm on a sunny Sunday was not the best time to rock up to a restaurant in A Coruña without a reservation. But the nice people at La Maritima managed to squeeze us in and so we got a decent and copious lunch there, after which we tottered back the couple of hundred yards to our hotel. Even that short distance was not devoid of photographic interest; it passes a big mural of Neptune and Hercules,

a rather oddly-shaped statue called Escultura soldado Botero (Botero being the name of the sculptor, who is known for the exaggerated proportions he gives to his subjects)

and, in the rocks below our hotel, a statue of the mermaid with the big boobies*.

So, for a place with supposedly only one point of interest, A Coruña had shown itself to be a charming place full of interesting sights, scenes and vignettes.  We’d had a great day wandering round, and we’re glad that we added it into our Camino itinerary.

Tomorrow sees us departing for another noted town in Galicia, Lugo; Jane has also spotted a couple of things we should investigate on the way there.  I’ll report back on it in due course, so stay tuned to these pages to find out what we got up to,

 

* This will only mean something to anyone who ever watched ‘Allo ‘Allo!