Tag Archives: History

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!

Fogón Conclusion. Well, sort of.

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Saturday 16 March 2024 – or, in another way of looking at it, Thursday 28 March 2024 .  It’s actually nearly a fortnight after our return home as I write, a lacuna caused by a couple of health-related items, but mainly the Worst Cold In The Known Universe, which basically laid both Jane and me low from the day we arrived home (Monday 18th) until today, some 10 days later.

Also, “sort of” in that the first thing I’m going to write about, Fogón, is a conclusion only in the sense that it was the last thing we did in Buenos Aires, it wasn’t the last thing I’m going to write about for the trip as a whole; but I just couldn’t resist the pun.  Below, I also write about something we did on our first night here; well, the first evening of the first full day of the three we had on our second visit to BA, that is, this being the hub we travelled through.  Come on, keep up at the back.

Anyhoo….

OK, it’s a restaurant, in the up-market Palermo neighbourhood, and the word “asado” tells the foodie cognoscenti among you that it’s a barbecue-style meal.  It being in Buenos Aires, one can reasonably expect it to involve much very high quality meat.  The other key word on the sign is “experience”.  This is not just some guys chucking burgers onto a barbie; this is Food Preparation As Theatre.

There will be pictures of food in the following.  Many people will mutter and make rude remarks about me posting photos of food.  To them, I say two things:

  1. it’s a piece of theatre and it involves food. Conveying the experience photographically without showing a scrap of food here and there is a nonsensical ambition. I’ve minimised, but not eliminated, the actual food content in the pics.
  2. Actually, what I object to is people sharing a photo of the plate of food they’re about to eat, to show the viewer what cool, cultured cats they are and what posh places they’ve managed to get into. I really object to that, and so you don’t see it on these pages. Also,
  3. It’s my blog. I make the rules and I can break ’em if I want. So, there.

Sorry, got carried away a bit there….back to the evening at Fogón.

It’s very, very well managed theatre that provides very, very good food.  You are shown, with a flourish, into the “auditorium”

where you take your seat and have the idea of the evening, and some of the rules, explained. For example, if you want something refreshed (e.g. the soda siphon below, or your wine glass), you put it up on the counter. When delivered, you take it down and use it.

The setup shown above is a bit of audience participation – making a chimichurri sauce. They’ve made it pretty idiot-proof, with the ingredients nicely parceled up and a little recipe to follow.  This will be used, we are told, with the main course.

A big part of the theatre involves the central barbecue apparatus which is large, complicated and hot.

It has many moving parts and every so often someone, normally this chap (who is wearing a gaucho cap and is therefore a chef)

would pick up a shovel and wander around in the confined space on his side of the counter with a shovel full of glowing coals to put them where they were needed, often without injuring anyone.

The meal has nine courses, and they are all explained in some detail,

so above was the talk about what meat we would be eating.  The pine cones were not just decoration, by the way. They were used to smoke some of the meat.

Each course is carefully assembled in front of you before being passed over.

For the main course, in possibly the most pretentious part of the evening, you are asked to make the reverent selection of Your Knife from a box of them.

The main chunks of meat were mainly prepared, cut and cooked by this chap,

who, Jane reckons, is actually a moonlighting James Anderson (if you don’t know who Jimmy is, you should be slightly ashamed of yourself, but telling you will make no difference to your life).

It was a great evening – very entertaining, brilliantly choreographed and engagingly presented.  By the time my main course came around I was so full I could only manage a token mouthful, and, as usual, I passed on dessert, but all the other courses were very good indeed.  I have, of course, plenty of video, but I won’t be sharing that with you at any stage, oh no.

So, Fogón was the finale of our time in Buenos Aires, but it’s not the end of this story, because I wanted to finish the BA part with an even more dramatic piece of theatre, which we saw on the evening of our first of three days here.  Argentina is known for its meat (which is all originally from imported British stock several hundred years ago, by the way); it is also known as the home of The Tango.

Yes, we went to a tango show.  It was at a place called Aljibe, over by Puerto Madero.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. On one of our drives, we passed a great glittering place with “TANGO” writ large in lightbulbs outside, and I wondered if the experience there would be like an Argentinian version of Moulin Rouge (the Paris show, not the film).  This place, however, was clearly a lot smaller, with a charming foyer

where we were greeted and taken to our seats in a compact, but nonetheless attractively decked-out auditorium.

At the far end was the stage, where the entertainment would presumably happen,

and where one could get one’s photo taken in relevant fancy dress as a memento of the evening. At a charge, of course.

As well as the dancing, there is eating. The menu is brought, followed by one’s food, in pretty brisk succession, carried in towers of plates in order to get it out to the punters quickly.

Yes yes, I know it’s more pictures of food… get over it.

We were there for one of three shows they were staging that day, and they had about an hour to get our orders (only made slightly more intricate by our habit of not drinking wine and therefore demanding G&T), deliver them and clear away before the entertainment started. It’s very obviously a production-line, but it’s done with assured efficiency and the food was pretty good.

After a short while, the musicians ambled on to the stage and looked like they were debating which pieces to play

and the place filled up nicely, in time for the show to begin.

and we were off!

As one would expect for something as flamboyant and exciting as the tango, the evening’s show was eye-catching and engaging. It started with an ensemble piece involving six dancers,

who managed to whizz all over what was quite a confined space without actually stabbing anyone with stilettos, or whatever. There was the occasional song break

much individual skill and flair displayed among the cast

not all of whom were in the first flush of youth,

but who all danced with great skill, athleticism and passion.

In a departure from raw tango, the show featured a middle section of gaucho-style entertainment, with a very theatrical couple

who didn’t just dance, either.

These two also provided the most left-field piece of theatre of the evening when they got their balls out.

Not only did they whirl their bolas around with great skill and energy and without breaking any lightbulbs or knocking each other unconscious, but they also used them as percussion instruments!

It really was a spectacular centrepiece to a great evening of Argentinian theatre.  Most of the photos above are from Jane, because I was busy videoing bits of the show. If you have five minutes to spare, you can watch this video that I cobbled together from some of the snippets.

Fogón and Aljibe were two very different pieces of theatre that conclude the story of our three days based in Buenos Aires and so (if you’re still awake) you’re pretty much up to date with the story of our travels to South America and the Southern Ocean.

Despite the “conclusion” in the title, I think I have one more piece to write.  Over the course of three weeks on Hondius, we collected a fair bit of video footage.  Because the internet aboard was slow, but much more importantly, metered, uploading video would have been ridiculously expensive.  So I will go through what we have and try to weave a few stories from those pieces of footage.  Give me a couple of days, though, won’t you?

A Colonial Visit

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Friday 15 March 2024 – One very rewarding thing one can do when visiting Buenos Aires is actually to leave it – and, indeed, leave the country. Just across the River Plata from Puerto Madero is Colonia del Sacramento, which is in the tiny country of Uruguay.

In theory, it’s a short journey on a fast ferry. As ever with these things (and, dare I add, particularly in Argentina), the reality differs somewhat.

I started this blog almost exactly six years ago when we toured Chile, Patagonia, Ecuador and Peru. I remember writing that our arrival into Chile was marked out by a succession of queues. Our departure from BA was similar.

I had fondly imagined that our transport would be one of those streamlined wavecutter catamarans, with maybe a few dozen passengers aboard popping over for a day in Uruguay.

Nope.

This began to be borne in on me as we queued to check in. There were lots of people and many of them had large suitcases with them, hinting at major travel intentions.

After checking in and getting boarding passes, we then queued for emigration (no photos allowed!), which for punters like me involved queuing for a desk to be free, getting the thumbs-up from the official and then – having to go to another identical booth to get passport stamped.  I still don’t know why.

Then we got into the departure area, which was worryingly short of information screens telling us where we should go.  There was nothing on our boarding passes to guide us except the name of the boat we’d take – Sylvia Ana L. There was board up with that name on it, but no indication of what its significance was. A bunch of people started moving off in the direction of, well, somewhere else, we had no idea, and we wondered if we should join that rush, but hadn’t the nerve.  We met a couple of ladies who Jane had chatted to earlier and they assured us that if we simply sat down and waited, we’d be fine. But there appeared to be a gigantic queue, and no actual way of knowing whether it was one we should join. Announcements were either incomprehensible or clearly pre-recorded.  So we caved in and joined this queue.

It goes, in the picture above, all the way on the left of the terminal building, to the far end, crosses over and comes all the way back – that’s a looong queue.

A nice lady behind us in the queue helpfully told us that she thought there had been some issue with the jettyway that passengers should normally use to get aboard, and so we had to go via the drivers route.

This gives further clues as to the size of the boat; it’s a car ferry.

The queue to our right started shuffling forward, but for an age no-one moved in our queue, which further stoked fears that They were getting on board but We were in the wrong queue. But after a while we slowly plodded along until we passed, going back, the place from where I took the above photo.

Yup.  Still a queue.  We shuffled along and down some stairs and emerged, blinking into daylight as we were shepherded towards the back entrance of Sylvia Ana, which you can now see is a hefty old piece of transport infrastructure,

and along through eerily empty and highly industrial spaces, up stairs and into the passenger area.

I suppose they must have  boarded all the foot passengers before letting vehicles on; I wonder what the drivers thought. Anyway, we ended up wandering around what is really quite a large ship, which has two floors of passenger accommodation, multiple lounges, several cafeterias and  many shops, looking for somewhere to sit.

I’d fondly imagined going up on deck to take photos of departure and arrival, but that was simply not an option, so we sat down, with no clear idea as to how long the crossing would take, to await entry into Uruguay.

It took about an hour and a half to get over the water – less time than I’d imagined – and then we disembarked into

another queue. Which went round a corner to

another queue.  An official carefully kettled us up for a while until he judged we non-natives were getting restless, then let us through. To a final queue, where everyone’s backpacks were scanned (this seems to be A Thing in South America).

At last, we were free to explore!

Colonia’s not a big place

and the bit that attracts so many tourists, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, is tiny – about half a kilometre from top to bottom, and 300 metres from left to right.

However tiny, it has an interesting story, and to have it explained to us we were met by a nice lady called Lourdes, who was to be our guide for the day.  And a very pleasant day it turned out to be, as well.  We had about an hour with her before some free time to walk round and explore, and then a final hour or so with her and a driver to explore further afield.

It was clear, as we walked out, that the ferry terminal at Colonia used to be a railway station.

The main destination of the railway was Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, some 180km away.

Lourdes explained a little of the background of Colonia.  It’s an outlier, in that its heritage is Portuguese, rather than Spanish like all of South America that isn’t Brazil. The Portuguese got here first (among the Europeans, that is) in 1680, and realised the strategic value of Colonia’s location. This pissed the Spanish off no little and they captured the site a couple of years later. However a treaty in 1683 returned the site to Portuguese control.  For the next  150 years, possession shuttled back and forth between Spain and Portugal, Fortifications were built (along the dotted line shown in the second map), to try to make it possible to keep control of this strategic place

but most have been demolished.  It is possible in some places to see areas where the walls stood and also foundations of the original buildings.  Because the old town is now a UNESCO heritage site, the relatively few inhabitants have a duty to maintain and if possible improve the old town area.

We passed a mural which shows some of the historical dress and dance of the town.

It’s an attractive place to walk around

although one has to be careful over the uneven footing.  Wherever we went, we came across scenes like this, where Portuguese traditional buildings (the red one above) sat beside newer buildings which were constructed in a Spanish style (like the white one).  The road itself is traditional Portuguese – the edges slope towards the middle so that water can wash down towards the river, which is behind as you look long this street.  As well as rain water, domestic washing water and sewage would be emptied into the street, so it must have been pretty unpleasant at times.

Today, the houses sell for in the order of a million US dollars and come with the obligation to maintain them in the traditional style. Looking at them, however, tells a great deal about the financial situation of the original owners.  If the roof tiles were one deep

they were poor.  If two deep,

better off. Wealthy families would have tiles three deep.

I think we were quite lucky to have arrived reasonably early, as it was quiet as we first walked around;

it got busier later, but never oppressively so.

A pedestrian area in the middle is the Plaza Mayor, the main square

and there are some retail opportunities for those seeking ethnic wosnames.

There’s a largish church

(not the original one, but a newer, Spanish styled one) with a lovely calm and plain interior.

Many of the houses originally built in Portuguese style have been extended in Spanish style

and the two cultures come together at one road junction

where you see a Portuguese road on the left, with its characteristic channel, but on the right the Spanish road is (what passed in those days for) level.

An old convent’s remains is used as the basis for a lighthouse

which is still active.  Many of the major roads are lined fetchingly with London plane trees,

and there are splashes of colour in courtyards or painted on walls in several places.

It’s an attractive place, with its engaging history of conflict between the Portuguese and the dastardly Spanish and we enjoyed walking around the small area of the old town.  But our brains were now utterly full, having been overloaded the day before during our tour of BA and today from all the information that Lourdes gave us. So it was Time For A Nice Lunch.

We sat for a couple of hours outside ¡Qué Tupé!, which as far as I can see means, literally, “What a wig!” We think it might colloquially translate to something like “what a cheek!” but that’s just guesswork – our waitress couldn’t help us with more info.

It has a similarly lovely interior

including one of those beguiling mobiles which I find so attractive.

 

There was some live entertainment.

I think the woman was of Welsh extraction, because she sang far too loud, far too often and flat.

We had a little more time to look around at some of the quirks of the place

before meeting up with Lourdes and her driver and heading out of the old town. The main site she took us to was a bullring.

It has quite an amazing story behind it.  It was built in 1908 and a Moorish style, as part of a larger Real de San Carlos Tourist Complex and opened for locals in 1910. The ring itself was huge –  50m in diameter with seating for over 8,000 spectators. The Real de San Carlos complex included not only the bull ring, but a ferry dock (for carrying tourists from nearby Buenos Aires), and a huge “pelote basque” building – a major enterprise.

Which was closed down two years later, after only eight bullfights were staged, because the government banned the practice.  I mean, good for them, but it must have been a bit of a blow for the operators.

A casino was also built and began operating after the bullfights were forbidden, and the whole complex only operated until 1917. Today only a racetrack from the complex is still in use.  Renovation work is being done, and the site is partially used for events these days.

Above you can see old and new brick together, as well as foundations from other original buildings.

Our final stop, on the way back to the ferry, was a football ground which had been delightfully decorated around its perimeter

and then we were taken back to the ferry to return to Buenos Aires and Argentina.  The return journey took just an hour and the distance is 45km, so it’s not really a surprise that passengers weren’t allowed outside during transit.

We had the evening and most of the following day to ourselves before our Southern Ocean and South America trip ended.  As I say, the narrative is a bit non-linear; we used some of the day to visit El Ateneo, which you’ve already seen, and an evening event, which you haven’t;  and there’s a bit of our first day here that I haven’t told you about yet..

That’ll be in the next post, then.  See you there?