Semana Santa/ Galicia

For Spring Break we traveled to northern Portugal and the western coast of Spain.

Day 1- Valença, Portugal

We arrived in the afternoon of the first day which gave us a few hours to explore.  We began with the star-shaped Portuguese fortress which stands guard over the Minho river that divides Valença, Portugal and Tui, Spain.

     This fortress is a piece of military architecture.  It's current polygon walls were upgraded during the 17th century.

 

Believe me, these two were quite thrilled to explore another old walled city.

The city of Valença is known for it's linen.  Bedding, towels, curtains etc. were being sold everywhere.

On the left is a "water wall"? It was as slimy as it looks. The weather couldn't have been more perfect on this day and throughout our entire vacation. 

This is one of the city's many old churches.  They were all very small, but as usual no expense was spared.  Morgan and Mason are looking in from the doorway.

The thickness of the defensive walls seemed a bit extreme.

This was taken outside the gate above and between the inner and outer walls. 

Here we found Kaiya's and Mason's mini-me's.

The first known walls of this fortress were built in the 13th century. 



Some of the old cannons are still aimed at Spain as a reminder of their true past.  This one is aimed at the town of Tui, Spain, which is where we go next.

Tui, Spain

Our destination was the Romanesque/ Gothic cathedral at the center of the town.  The town of Tui suffered repeated attacks by vikings coming up the Minho River.

As expected, Tui was no different than any other old Spanish town:  narrow streets, rock buildings, cobblestone roads,



...and depressing statues of Christ on crosses.  However; this statue was unusually cute and a little smaller than Kamree.

We finally made it to  the 11th-13th century cathedral at the top of the hill. And as you can see, Kamree found it cartwheel worthy!

On our way back to the car we walked through a carnival, and of course the kids begged us to let them try this out. 

We had nearly as much fun as they did by just watching them.

Morgan had big plans to do all kinds of flips on this, but the best he could do was hang-out on this wire.

I don't know about them, but we were well ready for it to be over by the time they were unhooked.

Casa Da Eira

We stayed in a central location at an amazing B&B for the 3 nights of our vacation.  It was in an updated monastery from the 1700's. 

The older couple that ran this place were the sweetest people. We had a difficult time communicating  with them since they only spoke a little Spanish and very little English.

 

DAY 2

We still are not big fans of the European breakfasts.  When we saw the plate on the right with the brown spotted things we thought it was some sort of chorizo and we weren't about to touch it, until Brent bravely tried one.  They were surprisingly homemade cookies and they were quite good.  With those,  hot chocolate and the freshly squeezed orange juice we began each day.

 Vigo

Vigo is the 14th-largest metropolitan city in Spain.  Vigo is in the community of Galicia but only 50% of the people in Vigo speak Galician, being the least Galician speaking city in Galicia.  This picture is taken from the hilltop fortress of Vigo.

   

Castro Fortress of Vigo

This fortress was constructed in 1665 during a war (1640-1668) with Portugal.  It was built to protect the city from the continuous attacks coming from the British navy allies of Portugal.

Inside the fort were beautiful gardens and fountains including this water fountain coming from a hand.

They also had some interesting trees such as this one that was mostly all roots.

And this one that was mostly branches.

O Castro De Vigo

In addition to the fort occupying this hilltop was a 2000 year old Celtic village.   "Galicia is also known as a Celtic region. The native name for this land is Galiza. An ancient Celtic goddess named Cailleach, or 'Calaicia' in Latin, is probably where the name Galicia originated, with the Romans calling the land Gallaecia."

The Celtic tribes had heavily settled the area by the 4th century B.C., and lived in 'Castroes', "circular fortified settlements of several buildings surrounded by a defensive ditch, normally situated on hilltops".   Current datings indicate that this Castro was inhabited for a period of 600 years.

Only a very small part of this old settlement has been excavated, but the size of this settlement is said to have covered an extensive area of this large hill.

Islas Cies

The Cíes Islands are an archipelago off the coast of Vigo.  We had read that they are one of the top tourist destinations in Vigo.  


The ferries only operate during the summer and Easter week (lucky for us).  

The ferry ride lasted around 40 minutes...

and the views were stunning.

In February 2007 the British newspaper "The Guardian" chose the Rodas Beach, on these islands(pictured on the right)  as "the best beach in the world."

This is the middle island looking to the northern Island with the Rodas beach connecting the two.

In the beginning, we headed the opposite way of the crowd to try to find a more private beach.

The kids wasted no time testing out the water.

Although the water was chilly, the weather was perfect.

Brent and Morgan braved the water in search of fish.

These sly seagulls were just waiting for us to put our guard down.  Apparently the world's largest seagull colony lives here.

We had the pleasure of seeing the seagulls in action when they took off with our precious bag of goldfish left on the star towel we were using as a tablecloth for our lunch.  We had all just walked down to the beach when we heard a guy yelling "comida".  I turned to see a seagull flying through the air  down the beach with our Ziploc baggie of Goldfish.  We chased it down as it was just getting to the shoreline and it dropped the bag in the water as several seagulls dove for the bag.  I chased them away just in time and was so relieved that the bag was still zipped closed.  Too bad no one was filming it.  Goldfish are priceless here since we can not get anything similar (thanks Rachelle).

After the first beach we decided to explore a little more of the islands.  To the right is an off limits lagoon as it is a nature conservation area.  The Cies Islands were declared a Nature Reserve in 1980. There are all sorts of marine life within the lagoon including octopi, eels, black crabs, and all kinds of fish.

This is the famous Rodas beach.  It borders the other side of the Lagoon and connects the two northern islands when it is not washed out during high tide.  We decided to explore the far end of this beach.

Morgan  jumping into the very deep (2ft) water.

Actually that looks more like 2 inches of water.

I was afraid 4 hours would be too much time on these small islands, but we could have spent a lot more time here, they were beautiful and we still had much more area to explore.

The kids weren't happy because we were leaving the island, but that they had gotten the VIP seats.

Baiona and the Castelo de Monterreal

That evening we drove along the coast to Baiona.  This 16th century fort was built to protect Baiona from its enemies and the 17,000 pirates along the Galician coast. The Spaniards withstood the 98 fleets of pirate vessels.

We luckily were able to witness this Easter Procession.  It would not have been Easter here had we not seen one.  Baiona's population of just over 11,000 rises to around 50,000 in the summer, if you include tourists. Other than tourism, the major economic activities revolve around fishing.

After finding parking and a place to eat dinner it was nearly too dark to check this out but we did our best. 

Mason pointed out that that ship is not a pirate ship because it does not have cannons.  In fact it is a replica of the Pinta from Columbus' voyage to the new world.  On March 1, 1493, the Pinta arrived in Baiona, when it returned to Europe, making this town's port the first to receive news of the discovery of America.

As we were ascending the walls there was a warning sign stating that the walls were not up to code and to proceed with caution.  We were grateful for the full moon light.

We all safely made it around the walls and back to the car.  The Cies Islas are seen here in the Vigo Bay.

DAY 3- A Guarda, Spain and Porto, Portugal

We began this day driving along the Minho River to the coast to see an old Celtic village above A Guarda, Spain with alleged spectacular views.

These are the Celtic ruins of Castro de Santa Tegra (Santa Tecla), high on Mount Santa Tegra, overlooking the Minho River on this side and the Atlantic Ocean on the western side. 


This ancient Celtic settlement has hundreds of round stone-walled dwellings, dating from at least the 2nd to 1st centuries BC.

This village was re-discovered in 1913, with the last excavation in 1988, yet still only part of the ruins have been uncovered. Houses, stores, workshops, yards, granaries, and even rainwater ditches and tanks have been excavated. The population may have been as many as 3000 to 5000 people.

This is much of what has been excavated with the road being constructed right through the center of it.  

We found one of the larger homes and let the kids choose their own rooms.

We then headed farther up the mountain along an old Christian pilgrimage road lined with crosses to....

..an old hermitage church (this was not the church), museum and look-out at the summit.

From the summit you can see the mouth of the Minho River, the Atlantic Ocean and south to Portugal. 

After A Guarda, we traveled toward Porto, Portugal via the coastline until we ran into a detour which forced us to drive past this amazingly long aqueduct.

 It seemingly went forever in both directions.  We briefly pulled over here to talk to some LDS missionaries passing by.

We spent an hour or so at this beach to satisfy the kids on our drive to Porto.

We ate some  Portuguese food for dinner in the food court of the shopping mall (where we seem to have the best luck) and found the sinks in the restrooms quite fascinating. 

Porto, Portugal

 We weren't quite sure what to expect in Porto and nearly skipped it since it was getting so late.     We hadn't previously known that Porto won the European Best Destination 2012 and 2014 awards. Once we arrived we could see it's old-fashioned charm and it's potential as an amazing vacation destination.

The main attraction of Porto is along the Douro river that divides the town.  We quickly noticed several people on a bridge high above us and debated if that vantage point was worth the climb.

After numerous steps up we made it to the top and just before the sun had set. 

This is on the east side of the bridge.  Our kids argued unsuccessfully to let them ride the train up this track to save time and energy.

This is the beautifully, colourful Porto.

Porto has been referred to as the origin of the name "Portugal"

Finally some "cool" graffiti.

Last Day- Drive Home

This was an old Monastery near the B&B.  We were hoping we could tour it but it was not open to the public while we were there.



The hosts at the B&B suggested we go to this huge park along the Minho river just before the freeway.  

After just a few minutes at this endless toddler park, the kids were bored so we headed home.

Puebla de Sanabria

We spotted this town on our way to Portugal at the beginning of our vacation and planned to check it out on our way home.

This castle, sometimes referred to as the "Counts of Benanvente" was built in the 15th Century.

The castle-fortress, also known as the castle of Puebla de Sanabria stands more than 900 meters, above the Tera River Valley

These three monkeys nearly fell to their deaths off this wall.

Castle of Urueña, Spain

While driving home we could see that there was possibly castle walls on that hill on our left so we pulled off the highway to check it out.

The Church of San Andrés in Villardefrades

At the exit was "Villardefrades" a small town with just 200 inhabitants on the right of the freeway.  We stopped momentarily at this old cathedral.

It is sadly one of the few old cathedrals we've seen that hasn't been restored, yet it's beauty is still evident.

Urueña, Spain

We traversed over bumpy farm roads hoping they would lead us to something.


The closer we got, the more certain we were that there were castle walls.  As we got to the top of the hill we were surprised to see many people and an entire village.

Inside the walls.

Outside the walls.  Kamree took control of our camera nearly the entire time we were here. She got some great pictures of the kids, the walls, cats, stairs, shadows etc.

We felt as if we had stepped back in time being in this quaint medieval village.

The walls date around the 12th-13th century.

The 13th century castle is in the process of being restored.  It has housed the village cemetery for many years after housing many important figures.  It once imprisoned a Portuguese princess who later married a local Spaniard.

We left not the way we entered which was a much better road.   The view was also much better of the castle walls.

Ermita de Nuestra Señora de la Anunciada

Below the castle is this 11th century church with several of it's doors and windows filled in.

On our way home we watched the moon move in and out of the Madrid skyline. The quality of the photo wasn't great since it was taken from the opposite side of the freeway, the far side of the car and zoomed in all the way.