A Coruña; Friday, 21 June, 2024

In the end I actually woke up around 4am and then dozed for a little while before having a shower, grabbing a coffee, checking out and picking up the shuttle back to the airport, where I was straight through security and into the lounge, arriving just as it opened it’s doors, for a quick breakfast before the lengthy walk all the way down the terminal building to the bus gates right at the far end, from where my flight up to A Coruña departed from.

A smooth and quick flight, and through the terminal at A Coruña, and then on a bus into the centre of town. With the early start it meant that I was at the hotel a little after 9am which was clearly too early to checkin. Actually, it wouldn’t have been if I hadn’t been upgraded. The actual room type I’d booked was available, but the hotel had upgraded me to a Junior Suite that wasn’t yet available. Rather than turning down a nice upgrade I left my luggage with the hotel and went off to explore the city,

I headed down from the hotel to the coastal path that runs round the northern headland that A Coruña sits upon and on which some of the key sights are located. After a quick look over the beaches – which looked very inviting until you remembered that this was the southern end of the Bay of Biscay and so the water would be freezing cold, I headed north to follow the coastal path.

Almost at the northern most point of the city, and on a headland above some very perilous looking rocks is the Tower of Hercules, one of the oldest still working lighthouses in the world built by the Romans, but possibly on Phoenician ruins. The lighthouse was repaired in the 17th century and received new cladding to protect the interior Roman core so whilst the outside doesn’t look like it would have done nearly 2,000 years ago the actual structure is fundamentally Roman.

I spent quite a bit of time in the area around the tower before heading over to look inside, which is where I discovered that you have to pre-book visits, thankfully, the next slot was 20 minutes away and still had spaces so I was able to quickly book a ticket, wait around for a little while before heading inside to explore first the foundations and then to climb up the way up to the base of the light for the views out over the city and the dramatic Galician coastline.

Having spent quite a bit of time at the tower I then headed out further onto the headland to explore the sculpture park that’s been installed there, before continuing my walk around the coastal path back round the headland and down to the old city walls and eventually the Castelo de Santo Antón.

The castle was built in the 16th century to protect the harbour from attack, though these days it’s mostly to provide a picturesque backdrop to arriving cruise ships and to house the city’s archaeological and historical museum that I spent quite a bit of time looking around before realising that it was now gone 3pm and my room would be ready so I headed back in the direction of the hotel to checkin and have a little bit of a rest before heading back out again later in search of food.

Of course this being Spain it was way too early for dinner so instead I stopped at a nice Tapas bar just down from the hotel for a quick snack and drink before going for a long wander along the seafront in the opposite direction from my earlier walk – heading along the edge of the city centre and around the edge of the bay, I then headed back inland and by the time I made it back to the old town the restaurants were in full swing so I was able to grab dinner, though the process of stopping after all that walking reminded me that I had by now been up for a very long time with only a couple of hours sleep, so I was very glad that it was only about a ten minute walk back to the hotel and my very welcoming bed