Thankyou Spain for long weekends...

As in November, there was another long weekend in December, meaning we got Thursday and Friday off work. For the last long weekend I headed to Barcelona to see Nat, but this time we decided to stay closer to home, and continue our exploration of Galicia.

Callie, Lydiana and I decided to spend the Thursday and Friday in A Coruna, and then go to Santiago de Compostela for the Friday night and Saturday. I am so happy we decided to go, because I'd heard a lot about both cities, but hadn't yet made the trip up there.

A Coruna was a pleasant surprise, that's for sure. When we first arrived and were walking near the port area, it seemed pretty similar to Vigo, and appeared to be quite industrial too. Once we arrived in the main part though, we found it very different. The city is a lot flatter than Vigo, and it was so nice to have the beach in the centre of the city. We were also pleasantly surprised by our hotel - it was clean, the room was big, and it felt like a sleepover with our three little beds lined up in a row.

My friend Miguel, who is from Vigo but studying in Coruna, met us for lunch on Thursday, and kindly offered to show us around the city. We must have walked miles, literally round the whole of Coruna, but we had such a nice time. We probably wouldn't have seen everything that we did had we been sightseeing alone, so we were really grateful to him!

 

Miguel had put us in contact with 2 of his friends from Coruna who came out for drinks with us on the Thursday night. It was so nice to hear about the city from people who actually live there, and it was a really chilled night with some lovely people! On the Friday daytime we wandered around the city some more, had breakfast in the cutest cafe ever, and then prepared for the next stage of our trip... Santiago!

As we had been told by many people, Santiago was a beautiful city. It reminded me of an English University town, like Durham. It was made up of small streets dotted with buildings with just so much character. I was worried that because people had told me so many times how nice it is, that I would be disappointed, but I definitely wasn't. We kind of stumbled across the cathedral by mistake, and I cannot explain how impressive a building it is. I never thought it would be that huge! We wandered over to our hostel, which had the most incredible view...from my bunkbed I could see the cathedral... was definitely one of the best views I could have woken up to! We went out for drinks in the evening with Sheila and Marshall, two other auxiliars from Vigo who are both lovely. Again, a really relaxed evening with lots of giggles and silliness.

This weekend is definitely up there with my best memories of Vigo (which really are beginning to add up!!). We arrived back to Vigo very sleepy, but also very content with the places we had visited, the atmosphere in both cities, and the people that we had spent time with along the way. I cannot wait to head back to both cities in the New Year to explore them further. And I have decided that I would really like to do part of the Camino de Santiago next year, having met many pilgrims and heard their stories. Who's with me?!

Galicia...you're capturing my heart!

Catherine x