Voyage Days 8 & 9 - Wednesday 26 November and Thursday 27 November 2025 - in port at Vigo
Wednesday 🌤️ sunny spells, 14°c dry but cold overnight. Up for breakfast at 0730h. Several guests were on early breakfast for their transport to Porto. Over the early part of the morning, everyone slowly drifted away with the last 10 leaving together in a fleet of taxis. Angie and I made plans to walk to the port office for information on getting to and from the city. We found we could walk to the central part of the city in about an hour. We decided to do that but we did get the number of a taxi and details of the bus stop in case! It was a fairly interesting walk through the car loading quay adjacent to the Marina. Here thousands of cars per day from the Peugeot production plant in the city were loaded for export on a constant stream of car specialist car carriers. On the other side of t he harbour we passed the ship building and fishing part of the port. We stopped for a coffee opposite the major shopping mall next to the Liner Terminal and from here we soon found the tourist information office. We were told about a couple of walking tours that we could do and some of the more interesting features of the city. As we left the office we spotted an open topped bus tour about to leave so made a quick decision to join that and leave the walking tour until tomorrow. It only cost €7.50 each for a two hour tour with 3 stops. It was just enough to give a good overview of the city’s major sites, history and economy. First stop was the Castelo de Castro, a fortification set on the highest peak of the old town. Looked indomitable! Following that was the cultural museum and then a stop at a beautiful beach overlooking the mouth of the river estuary. We got back to the Tourist Information Office  around 2pm and found a restaurant for lunch. From here we returned to the Marina by taxi and kept busy relaxing and writing up notes for the blog. It was strange to be on a ‘not so crowded’ ship, with only the crew and four other guests for company.
The photo gallery for these two days will be merged as it was not easy to get decent photos from the top of a moving bus. Hopefully this will give an overview of our experience of the city.
​Thursday ☀️Clear first thing 🌥️ cloudy later 14°c dry. I woke up at 0700h. Angie had a bad night with her cold and I didn’t sleep well either. After breakfast we spent some time tidying up and read for a while, not want to leave too early for our trip back to Vigo centre. Our plan was to walk out of the port to the bus stop but the route number that we were given by the port office did not seem to run from that bus stop. After picking up some throat sweets from the Pharmacy we got a Taxi to the Tourist Office and started by climbing the hill up to the city’s main square. After a stop for coffee we kept climbing to find our way to the Castro Fort. Angie did not want to climb all the way to the fort, so waited for me while I went to take photos. The views over the harbour and the river were spectacular and using my zoom lens I got some good photos. I found my way back to Angie and we returned to the town centre for lunch around 1400h. It was a pretty basic restaurant and we were advised to sit inside otherwise we would have been bothered by feral pigeons and gulls. (They were undeterred  however. While we were eating a couple of pigeons managed to fly in when the door was opened).  An hour later we got a taxi back to the Marina after looking at some interesting sculptures by the Liner Terminal. The new guests had started to arrive, including Kathleen who was with us on the Iberian Peninsula trip in 2022.   Before dinner we had introductions. Fernardi and Anya made Angie a birthday cake and we all wished her a Happy Birthday after dinner. We are now looking forward to setting sail for Madeira and then Tenerife.