A Coruña

A Coruña is A Cariffic!! I’m not sure why I’m talking like Thelma from Scooby-Doo, but my goodness, what a cool city. We spent 4 days there and had an A Cariffic time!! Brian read that A Coruña is like Rio de Janeiro. . . a big city on a big ocean. We checked into our hotel and then walked through a large shopping and dining district that was just a block from the ocean.

Here are some highlights from our vist:

Walking along the beach boardwalk, we loved seeing people out and enjoying their city along the ocean – riding bikes, walking dogs, families out walking together. It felt safe. It was chilly the day we arrived but when we finally made it on to the actual beach the following day, we noticed that the sand was really small rocks, shells and sea glass – lots of sea glass! My friend, James turned Brian and me on to sea glass hunting on the Washington state coast. We were so excited to find lots of it there in A Coruña. I think we spent hours picking up the little, colorful bits. By the way, according to the Chinese horoscope I am “the year of the sheep.” The best career choice for sheep – beach combing! Mom and Dad, I’ve finally found my true calling – beach combing – in Spain!

Another afternoon we were out walking and heard some drumming and clapping coming from down the street. My Scooby-Doo mentality told me to investigate this sound that was getting louder and louder. As we turned down one of the alleys we realized that we had walked into a protest. We weren’t sure what these A Cariffic A Coruñians were protesting at first but then we realized that it was an animal rights protest and more specifically, a protest against bullfighting. We joined the crowd that was carrying banners and flags and chanting in Spanish, “Torture is not culture.” People were walking with their pets. It was an organized, peaceful protest. It was our first protest AND our first Spanish protest AND something that we actually felt good protesting about. The crowd walked through the main part of town, gathered in the Maria Pita Plaza and then various people got up and spoke into the microphone very passionately about animal rights and the cruelty of bullfighting. Unfortunately I do not have lots of pictures of the protest – but I have included photos of a 10K run that was also taking place that weekend. Seriously though, bullfighting in Spain is a heated issue. It was interesting and inspiring to see people peacefully organizing and publicly speaking out against it.

If Eliot had a big brother dog, it could look like this guy. He was so cute! A big Eliot. He looked like his name could be Gus. He was part of the protest.

On our final day in A Coruña we visited the Torre de Hercules. The Torre (tower) is 2000 years old! It was built by the Romans in the 1st century AD (can you believe that?) It is actually a lighthouse and is still in operation today! Granted it has received several facelifts over the years but at its core, its foundation – 2000 years old! We climbed the 234 steps to the top and were treated to incredible views of the Atlantic and the city. After we left the tower we walked along the cliffs and saw the tower from a different angle. It now looked like an Irish Castle perched atop green rolling hills above a wild, windy and rugged coast. This part of Spain, Galicia is named after the early celtic people who inhabited this area a very long time ago and something of that celtic feeling still remains. The Stonehenge-like sculptures are a modern addition.

A Coruña was one of our favorite cities. The city even changes their garden design daily to coincide with the days of the week!! How A Cariffic is that?!

12 Oct This entry was published on October 12, 2014 at 4:09 pm and is filed under Spain, Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.