Day 6: Galician Road Trip

Did you know Costco has good deals on rental cars? Me neither. Normally, I’m all about public transportation, but there are a lot of paces in Northern Spain that are difficult to get to efficiently without a car, so renting a car for, I think the first time for non-work travel.

Enterprise helpfully “upgraded” me to a crossover SUV, which I didn’t want, but it was the only automatic they had, so I’ll take it. So far, driving in Spain is not too bad. There was one incident where I took the wrong turn out of a parking lot and ended up on a tiny one lane “road” with no possibility of turning around. Which wasn’t too bad until a car was coming the other direction. The nice lady in the BMW had to reverse for like a quarter mile before I could get by her,

Vigo

Why did I go to Vigo? Not really sure. It’s a medium sized, not all that nice port city, and I didn’t realize what a pain it would be to get in the city and park. I had a spot picked out for lunch, which turned out to be closed.

It worked out though because I found a place with good seafood rice. I must have looked sad because when they initially told me that rice could only be ordered for two people and I made an alternate pick, they came back and told me that they would do it for one person. Or maybe they made the normal amount and only charged me for one. It was a lot of rice! The rice was very tasty. It didn’t have the crispy socorrat on the bottom, but that may just be a Valencian paella thing.

Hio

My roadtrip guidebook said to stop here, so I stopped. Apparently this carved pillar tells bible stories, or something.

Cabo Home

Really nice two hour hike along a cliff-side trail down to a pair of lighthouses. Getting to places like this is the big advantage of having a car. Can’t beat the scenery.

One more from the return hike.

Pontevedra

Stopped for the night in in Potevedra, a cool medieval walled city, with a car-free, walkable downtown (and a big convenient free parking lot right across the river).

Dinner at Bar Pintillo: fried studded mussels and a Spanish potato omelette.

Only made it halfway through the omelette.

Fishbowl size gin and tonic, and some fútbol. Atletico Madrid was beating Barcelona 2-nil at press time.