Sep 2008

There is a saying that in La Coruña no one is a stranger, and we found this out pretty quickly! After getting off our train from Lugo we headed to the bus stop to get the bus into town. There we met a lovely old man who was just sitting at the stop, waiting for someone to talk to. He quickly struck up a conversation with me (in very fast Spanish!) telling me how great it is that I can speak Spanish and experience the culture. He said Spain is the best country in the world, and very romantic, that Galicia has the best food, and that La Coruña is at the end of the world and has great beaches! He was so cute and funny. I didnt think he would ever let me go, just kept talking and talking and talking (and even wanted to discuss the news in the local paper with me!). He didnt know where Australia was and was quite confused when I kept telling him it wasnt in Europe. He started talking to Ben and when I told him that Ben doesnt speak very much Spanish it didnt stop him! He started talking to Ben in full speed Spanish with Ben just nodding his head and me laughing. It was great! Eventually we said farewell to our new friend and headed into town with a great start to a new city.

La Coruña is on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and our first beach stop, so we headed straight to the beach of course! The sunshine was great and we couldnt have asked for better weather.

We had a great time exploring the headland sites, including a Roman fort which was converted into a lighthouse and still works!

We got around the headland in the most awesome trasport! These really old trolley cars!

The inside was so cool, and really clean considering how old it was!

At night ofcourse we had to explore the tapas scene. Here is a view of one of the streets we visited:

and one of the best places we found was this jamoneria, which had jamon hanging all over the roof and was appropriately named the king of Jamon!

Ben enjoyed some good tintos there

We also found another great tapa bar which had excellent seafood! We are making it our mission in Galicia to try every type of shellfish on offer before we leave :-)

La Coruña emblem:

We love the skull and crossbones

Only a few days into our trip and fresh from our stay in a decent pension in Santiago it happened to be our 10 year anniversary!! Being on a quickly organised 4 month holiday on our way back home we didn't have too much time to organise anything too extravagant, so Rishi researched the best Paradors (Historic building hotels) for the area of Spain that we would be in, and it happened to be in a beautiful walled Roman town, Lugo
The accommodation was exactly our style, not to over the top, and was only opened this year

The room was great with a huge surprise of having a 42" plasma on the wall!

All the staff were super friendly and our stay was exactly what we wanted
The town was reasonably large for a walled Roman town and the walls are still almost entirely intact, but unfortunately most of the houses inside the walls haven fallen into disrepair and many have been knocked down, the area of our Hotel was the most intact and there were quite a few beautiful old buildings being renovated

Most of the most impressive old buildings had been converted into museums in the early 20th century by wealthy locals, this museum was a real highlight with a broad collection of local antiquities and even modern artwork.

Rishi was delighted to find and unusual self serve pop corn machine in the old town!

We stayed one night in luxury in our Parador, so to really enjoy ourselves we found the best restaurant in town and had a great meal
Rishi had the Merlurza(Hake) which is a great local fish in Spain

And I had the Lubina (Sea Bass) which I was warned when I ordered was done in a special style consisting of a very! creamy sauce (very indulgent!)

The meals were great, but the dessert was the real highlight, unfortunately no photos as I was too shocked to get the camera in time. But Rishi had a Delicious speciality of a crepe like thing stuffed with some sort of house made triple cream which is then warmed up again, very creamy.
But I had the flaming Leche Frita which is basically fried milk, but this speciality was then flamed with brandy, the waiter was quite excited about it and set up his little tray and brandy in front of us (with the rest of the restaurant also watching) he then poured the flaming brandy over and spooned it around to flame it right up and kept pouring more, and then got a bit too cocky and spilt the flaming branding down his arm! luckily it burns at a low heat! but he ran of to what I assumed would be to rinse his arm off but came back in about 1 second with a cloth to wipe up what he had spilt, but after a smile I was sure that he was ok and I was safe to eat my dessert!
It was a memorable evening!

Its kind of ironic, but we are starting our journey home from the end of the pilgrammage route (el camino) through Spain, Santiago de Compostela.

We were both pretty excited to be heading back to Spain, a country we have visited many times during our trips (mostly at my insistance I must admit). As soon as we got off the plane I was grinning at the prospect of getting to practice my Spanish on a daily basis. The fact that it was a beautiful, clear, sunshiny day helped a lot too! Santiago is a beautiful city. We quickly managed to find a great little pension run by a very friendly lady and settled in for some sight seeing and eating!

this is the view from our window:

Being in Santiago our first stop was the famous cathedral, which really is very beautiful

Our other major task for our stop was to sample the seafood! Galicia (North-west corner of Spain) is famous for its seafood, and in particular the octopus. We found plenty of pulperias around town, it was just a matter of finding the best one!

To start the night off right we had to have our first caña (beer) which in Galicia is acompanied by huge amounts of FREE tapas

which can lead to people going a little crazy..... the beer is really cheap

We eventually made it to this great pulperia:

which had excellent pulpo!

and after several tapa stops we found these great street buskers with heaps of people dancing right infront of the cathedral!

I think we started the trip off pretty well, though our heads and bodies complained a little about it the next day :-) Thanks Santiago for a fun two night stay! On with the pilgrammage!

Well, the year has flown and our visas are up! Its time to leave Ireland and start heading home. It wasnt our original plan! but spontaneity can be a good thing :-) The UK wont have us (bast**ds!), so we decided to take one last Euro trip! woohoo! The plan is to take four months getting home, backpacking through Western and Eastern Europe and Thailand before flying home to good ol Oz. We hope you will all join us on this trip and log into this blog (you can subscribe to receive automatic updates) where we will post our journey along with some photos of our adventures. See you all in January!

Love,
Rishi and Ben

Bye Bye Apartment!!!

Goodbye Dublin!