After all the activity of the first week, we’re enjoying a very relaxed week in La Coruna.  We’ve done plenty of walking and some odd jobs on the boat.  It’s taken us a while to get used to the Spanish approach to the day – if you need to go somewhere whilst it’s open you have to go in the morning because everything shuts from 2.00 - 5.00 pm!  Miraculously everything opens again in the evening and stays open until about midnight.  Where everyone goes between 2.00 and 5.00 pm, we can’t work out!

La Coruna is a strange mixture of working industrial port, tourist destination and big city.  There are some beautiful parts to the Old Town – we found a lovely garden dedicated to Sir John Moore today, being the same soldier that the Army Training Centre in Winchester is named after. 

The whole city is built on a peninsula and there is a lovely walk out to the Tower of Hercules; there has been a working lighthouse in this position for the last 2,000 years and this one can be seen from 23 miles away.  The coastline from here to Finisterre is called the Costa del Morte, often just depicted by a skull and crossbones on the signposts, which doesn’t sound quite the right note for the next leg of the journey!!

We’ve made the most of some of the tourist entertainment.  Yesterday we hired a couple of Segways, which were great fun, and in the evening we went to an open air rock concert in the town square.  The Artist was Sergio Dalma, who is apparently famous in Spain and a former Eurovision Song Contest performer.  We were certainly the only ones in the crowd who didn’t know the words to the songs!

There are many sculptures all over La Coruna; you can see some in the background here.  We were particularly impressed with this fountain next to the beach.

The wind has turned westerly at the moment, which isn’t the direction we need for rounding Finisterre from here, so we plan to stay until Friday (5 Aug) when it looks from the forecast as though the weather will change again.  Oh well, more reading in the sunshine until then …………..

Susan