November 4 - Vigo, Spain

Love ports with no planned excursions!  Got up leisurely and, for the first time, had breakfast in the Captain's Club Elite Lounge...very nice continental breakfast with good choices including specialty coffees and great service.  Kept us from overdoing at the buffet or wasting time in the Main Dining room where breakfast service is usually slow.

We decided to stop at the Tourist Center very close to the dock to get directions to El
Castro - the Citadel, one of the three forts that guarded the town.  It is located above the port on a hill at the top of the city.  What we didn't know was that not only was it straight uphill (which we assumed if it was at the top of the city) but entailed climbing hundreds (seemed like thousands) of steps some of which were steep and uneven.  We met another couple from the ship that were headed in the same direction and began to climb.  It was a lovely, sunny morning that got warmer as we climbed....sweaters peeled off pretty quickly.  By the time we got to the bottom of the steps, the other couple dropped out but we continued to the top!  Although we thought we deserved it, no one offered us a Gold Medal for achieving such heights :)
The views were beautiful entailing lots of pictures (0f course).  Strangely, since this is a local park, there were no T shirt stands or vendors of drinks...they could make lots of money from the stalwart few to make it to the top.  After a brief rest, we started back down a bit surprised and happy that we found a winding path down with lots of shallow steps.  If only we had discovered that way up.  There were NO signs anywhere to give directions.  So...we became tour guides and told everyone looking for a way up the best route that we had found...such nice people we are.

When we got back to the lower city, we bumped into our friends Tina and Tim and wandered through the old part of town with them visiting a local market, buying a few shawls and stopping for coffee for the girls and Belgian beers for the guys in the sidewalk area, that, of all things, was part of an Australian Bar with lots of those signs that say things like "Kangaroos and Wallabies 5 Km".  Then we headed back to the ship, taking pictures and stopping in a local food market along the way.

Back on the ship, we had lunch and relaxed, reading, napping and enjoying the good weather on our balcony.  The evening show, after dinner, was an amazing British singer who had played the lead in Les Miserables in London.  We thoroughly enjoyed her and were pleased to know that she will do another show later in the cruise where she will perform requests from passengers.  A brief stop to observe a friend doing well in the casino and off to our cabin glad to know that tonight we get an hour back.  One of the joys of a westbound Transatlantic cruise is the 25 days along the way that get us back home on local time without jet lag.  And tomorrow is another sea day before a stop in the Azores.

Pictures of our climb up to the Castro and walk around Vigo with Tim and Tina show what a nice day it was - a relaxing one after our unanticipated hike to the top of the town.