{"id":1520,"date":"2018-01-11T23:14:32","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T23:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1520"},"modified":"2018-01-13T08:16:51","modified_gmt":"2018-01-13T08:16:51","slug":"vigo-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/vigo-spain\/","title":{"rendered":"Vigo, Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, we arrived in Vigo, Spain. It wasn’t Lisbon (which was where we were supposed to be), but that was okay, as far as I was concerned; we’ve only been to Vigo once before, and that was a three-hour stop on the Marco Polo, on a return journey from the Canaries a couple of years ago. The visit had lasted from 9pm until midnight; long enough for us to take a walk through the city and get a rough feel for it, but barely enough to really get to know it.<\/p>\n

In lieu of the escort duty we’d previously been assigned to in Lisbon, Tracey and I found ourselves escorting a three-hour coach tour billed as ‘Leisurely Vigo Views’… another title to add to the long list of city tours that might be titled something like ‘City Panorama…’ or City Highlights of’…<\/p>\n

Tracey’s coach had some microphone issues that ended up with having to change buses, and fall behind schedule; I’m sure she’ll have written a full account of her adventures, which can be accessed via the ‘Tracey’s Blog’ link in the left-hand menu…<\/p>\n

From my perspective, the tour went relatively smoothly. Unfortunately, the weather was a bit changeable; when we’d left the ship, it was raining heavily, the sun came out from time to time, but those moments were few and far between, and the rain showers continued on and off throughout the day.<\/p>\n

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Our first stop, having driven through the main part of the city, was a photo stop high up on a local promontary sporting a small chapel. The chapel wasn’t open to look inside, but the views across the city were worth it. It was here that one of the passengers started giving me some grief about my art classes…<\/p>\n

He told me that he’d turned up at ten minutes to two, only to find that all the places in my class had been taken, with everyone sitting down and working. I tried to explain to him that, actually, the class didn’t start until 2pm, and that the only reason folks were sitting down was because we’d finished setting up at 1:30, but he wasn’t having any of it. His demeanour changed rather rapidly from friendly to angry and steaming, accusing me of bad organisation, and insisting that if a class is advertised as starting at 2pm, people shouldn’t be allowed to sit down until then. Again, I tried to point out to him that if we’d done that, and allowed the queue to grow as it had done, then if he’d turned up at ten to two and joined the back of the queue, then he still wouldn’t have got in… there were thirty-odd more folks in front of him. Unfortunately, he was on a roll, and I swear steam was comming out of his ears as he wandered away from me, chuntering and moaning about the state of affairs… I told him that if he had any better suggestions as to how the class might be run, then I was all ears… he didn’t like that at all… his anger rose, and he just raged on at me… hm… such aggro, I could well do without…<\/p>\n

Fortunately, I managed to avoid Mr Grumpy for the rest of the tour (or maybe he was avoiding me).<\/p>\n

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Our next stop was at a mansion house situated in a large park area of the city, which housed a museum and featured extensive gardens. Our guide told the group that they were free to choose whether to look around the house or to follow her as she walked through the gardens. The stop would last 30 minutes, which wouldn’t give enough time to do both. The group split more or less fifty-fifty; I chose to stick with the guide, as the rain had stopped momentarily, and the gardens looked quite interesting.<\/p>\n

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Without any bright sunlight, the gardens weren’t quite as vibrant as they might have been, but it was a pleasant enough walk nevertheless, with its Eucalyptus trees, ornamental ponds and arched pathways.<\/p>\n

I took a brief glance inside the house, mostly to check out the toilets (it’s part of the escort’s job to report upon the state of the loos), and was told that one of the passengers had fallen on the stairs. Oh boy, I thought… that’s all I need… a medical disaster on my watch…<\/p>\n

The lady in question, however, refused any fuss whatsoever, both herself and her husband insisting that she was okay and an accident report was not needed. I tried to insist, but they were German, and didn’t appear to understand a word I said, so I let the matter drop and reported it to the guide. On arrival back at the Cruise terminal, she helped the German lady, who was now visibly limping, complete an accident report; as I hadn’t witnessed the incident, no input was required by me… phew!…<\/p>\n

Our final stop was at a five-star hotel, where the passengers were treated to Tapas (little savoury nibbles) and wine or tea and coffee. I have to say that they were extremely generous with the wine, with folks going back for seconds and thirds, on the pretence of wanting to try both the white and red.<\/p>\n

An unremarkable excursion, then, but one that our escorting duties will, hopefully, have bagged us a few brownie points with the Shore Excursions team…<\/p>\n

We left Vigo at around 4pm, and are now heading towards our next destination, which will be Madeira, in a couple of days time. In the meantime, we have another sea-day, and another two watercolour classes. This evening, we discussed the aggro we’d had from the first classes, and our concern regarding the high probability of people turning up ridiculously early to future classes and impeding the set-up process. What we wanted was an official line on how any further aggro might best be dealt with. As a result of this, they’ve changed the wording on the daily programme to read; ‘Please note this session will be available on a first come first served basis. Seats will not be available until the class is ready to start’… Fingers crossed it all makes a difference…<\/p>\n

I mentioned that Jan, one of the other crafters had suffered a nasty fall the other day. Sadly, a visit to the hospital in Vigo has confirmed that she has broken her shoulder in two places, meaning that she won’t be able to continue with her classes, at least for the immediate future. This means that Peter (The Wood) Counsell and I will have to take up the slack. The knock-on effect of that is that I will now be running painting classes on every sea day, with no days off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, we arrived in Vigo, Spain. It wasn’t Lisbon (which was where we were supposed to be), but that was okay, as far as I was concerned; we’ve only been to Vigo once before, and that was a three-hour stop on the Marco Polo, on a return journey from the Canaries a couple of years ago. The visit had lasted...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1524,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions\/1524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}