Vigo

We left the ship to explore Vigo. Its a much larger place then we expected... although tbh I hadn't given ut a lot of thought. Its a real mish mash of old and new and having got a map from tourist info we decided to follow the walking trail to the Monte Castro... the highest point of the town. 

Most of the town was pretty much as everywhere else... lots of traffic... lots of people... one or two interesting buildings and a lot of shopping. We headed to the art gallery - this has been a year of gallery visits so we we seen o reason to change now.  The Museo de Marco is housed in the towns ex prison building and its very grand. In fact, I think that on this occaision the building might have been more interesting than the art.... 

Although the visiting exhibition by Susanne S D Themlitz was strangely compelling. It was a huge varied collection of eclectic items... found, salavaged, manipulated and arranged in lots of ways - weirdly inspiring - and mostly enjoyable to look at. I liked her paintings, I was lesz taken with the made sculpture but it was all interesting.  The permanant exhibition upstairs left me feeling unpleasant and I wadn't taken with it at all.  

We left the gallery and started a slow meander up the hill. This was aided greatly by a whole street of 'escalators' - the kind you get in airports and it really took the strain off walking up the hill.   The rather striking horse sculpture at the top of the slope was visible for a long way and marked the turning for the castle.

A short further unaided ascent took to the castle ruins.  Quick coffee stop - sat in the sunshine and then upvyo the view point where we had a stunning 360 panoramic view of the surronding city and forest beyond it.

It was beautiful up there, glorious sunshine and clear blue skies.  We wandered around for a while and started back down... coming down the other side of the hill mainly by steps and we realised we had really fained some hieght without really noticing it. The steps took us into the old town

 My command of the Spanish language has completely deserted me but I did manages to order dos cafe con leche si vous plait 🤣🤣🤣

By day Vigo is an interesting experience but the town is famed for its christmas lights display .. so after 4 hours exploring we headed back to the ship for an afternoon nana nap and then wandered back out once it was dark. 

The lights were stunning.

But as usual Dr Grumpy said the best light of all was this one.....

who am I to argue...