Slowly coastal in A Coruña, Spain and Valença, Portugal.

From Llanes we headed west through Spanish coastal farmland to A Coruña.  Our big plans included the famous Galician seafood tapas, a UNESCO lighthouse, and figuring out our next move.

seafood tapas: check

UNESCO lighthouse: check

(we also found an amazing beachfront cemetery...

... next to an amazing beach)

Everyone we met in A Coruña was friendly, especially the people we asked for directions.  One man pointed us toward our pension and explained how to get there in broken English, and then exclaimed with a big smile, "It's nice to be here!"  We still aren't sure if he meant that he was glad we were visiting, or if he really loved his town that much.

 next move: check

In Valença we explored the fortress and the bordering Spanish town of Tuy, where one of the routes of the Camino de Santiago begins.  Both were sleepy towns, especially on the rainy Saturday we were there.  More nice people including an old man who joked with Jen (in Portuguese) at the market.  We enjoyed our time there a lot.

fortress #745

rainy reflections

cute kittehs

We also enjoyed Jon Stewart, free breakfasts and hot showers at the hotel.  On our last afternoon we got lost looking for a grocery store and wandered around back streets in a middle class neighborhood for an hour or so.

Pretty exciting stuff, eh?  That's how coastal travel should be though...  Slow and meandering with lots of sidetracks and plenty of indoor time because it's cold and sometimes rainy.

Lodging notes: both were hotel(ish) places as this was all we could find.  For being budget hotels they were actually quite nice.

• Pensión Las Rías in A Coruña - great location, good price, helpful hostess, beautiful little room.  Only down side was that there was no tea kettle for coffeemaking in the morning and no breakfast.
• Hotel Val Flores in Valença - right next to the fortress, less than 10 minutes from the Portugal/Spain bridge, great breakfast, good price, lots of channels on TV.

Food notes: other than the calamari and tuna empanadas pictured above in A Coruña, and maybe a pastry here and there, we grocery-stored it.  So exciting, right?!

Now we're halfway through our week in Porto and trying to keep to the "slowly" theme.  It's almost 2:30pm and we haven't left the apartment yet... think we're doing a pretty good job so far.

the soap wrapper ALWAYS knows