Vigo, Spain – Peter's Travel Blog

We weren’t supposed to be here. Our final port stop, even after all the drama and changes of plan, was supposed to be Lisbon. However, even as early as yesterday morning, the captain made an announcement explaining in full why things were starting to look complicated. It all had to do with the tides and rules being laid down by the harbourmaster in Lisbon, unnaturally early arrival times and the possibility of a delayed leaving time that would jeopardise not only our scheduled arrival back in Portsmouth, but have a knock-on effect with the cruise to follow, if such issues were to upset the smooth operation of changeover day.

Long story short, Lisbon got cancelled and we changed our course for Vigo, in Spain, where we finally arrived today, at almost 3pm – far later than had been anticipated. All of this followed yet another wild and rocky night at sea, with us being thrown around the bed, things clattering to the floor and lightning flashing outside. The odds were, it seems, always against us.

Due to the lateness of the arrival, I was tasked with running a class this morning, which will be repeated tomorrow afternoon (we are due to leave Vigo at midday tomorrow). All of which will leave only one last full sea day before our scheduled arrival in Portsmouth. I’ll be honest; I’m rather looking forward to getting home.

Once we’d docked and the ship had been given clearance, Tracey and I went ashore to stretch our legs. Just to add extra frisson, it was cold and raining – nowhere, not even Vigo, can look attractive in those sort of conditions.

We used one of the city escalators and walked up to the main square where we took a few photos before spending some time in the Gallery of Modern Art, looking at things we struggled to understand. On our way back to the ship, the rain had stopped and we paused by a statue of Jules Verne, who has connections with the city. We were back on board just before it started raining again.