Braga

We drove from Santiago de Compostella to Vigo to drop off our car. As I have mentioned before, taking a car across country borders is a huge cost…..like 3 times the cost of dropping it off in the same country, so we dropped it in the nearest city in Spain and had a driver take us from Vigo to Porto. Along the way, we had a prearranged stop in Braga to see the Bom Jesus de Monte. The Bom Jesus de Monte? Is that a Chinese dessert with a baby Jesus inside? No. It’s a church with a very cool set of steps.

Here is the church itself.

Here is the view from the top….specifically from the restaurant where we had lunch. The smog is due to all of the local farmers burning their “organic” material from their farms. This has been fairly common in Spain, but not so much in Portugal.

Here is a shot of the church from further down the steps.

This is from the bottom of the steps that look straight up towards the church. There are more steps but they curve off away from the church view. You know it’s Portugal from the inlaid white and black pattern in the rocks. This type of pattern is everywhere in Portugal.

Off to the side of the path down the steps are these little church scenes. I don’t know for sure, but I think the Roman dude and the guy with the weird crowbar on his right went straight to hell when they died. Not sure who they are messing with, but the lady with the Admiral Stars in her halo is not happy!

After Braga we were off to Porto, where our son Fletcher will be joining us for the last two weeks of our trip.

A Coruna

Our 2nd daytrip from Santiago was A Coruna, and it has nothing to do with Cerveza. This is a cool seaside town that is due north of Santiago (versus Finisterre which is due west). One of the coolest things to see in A Coruna is the Tower of Hurcules.

This ancient lighthouse was originally built by the Romans in the 2nd century, and renovated in 1791, and is the oldest Roman lighthouse that remains in use. Unfortunately they were closed since it was Christmas Eve, but you can go inside pretty much every other day (of course).

They had a beautiful compass rose between the lighthouse and the water that pointed to different parts of Spain.

This quadrant pointed towards Santiago of course has a scallop shell.

This quadrant points towards the west coast of this region of Spain, which is known as the Death Coast.

This section of coastline was referred to as the Death Coast because of how many shipwrecks happened here. There are even stories of pirates setting up fake lighthouses to get ships disoriented so that they run aground.

The statue in the background is supposed to be a conch shell. I think you are supposed to squint your eyes.

They had a fake Stonehenge nearby. Not sure of the signifigance, but it got us to walk over!

Fake Stonehenge or not, it was a beautiful spot and well worth a visit.