Lugo

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I only spent a day in Lugo after walking from Leon on the Caminos de San Salvador y Primitivo, but it deserves its own post.

Tourism in Europe during the summer is completely out of control. Cities like Madrid and Barcelona are inundated with tourists, which means long lines, a ceaseless flow of tours and scams, American fast food chains, junk shops with souvenirs made in China, and even worse a loss of cultural authenticity. Even midsized cities like Granada and Cordoba have elements of this, despite the broiling heat.

But most smaller cities like Lugo (and Leon, Zaragoza, Valladolid and probably a couple dozen others) fly under the radar. If you speak a bit of Spanish, I recommend prioritizing these cities even if you have to skip the big ones entirely. If traveling for you is not a checklist (i.e. Plaza Mayor, Sagrada de Famiglia, etc.) and you’d enjoy equally impressive yet relatively unknown architectural wonders and authentic restaurants and bars, you could do far worse than Lugo.

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Photos

New and Old
Looking through the roman wall to the outside.

Cathedral
Empty on a Tuesday morning.

Roman Wall
It takes about a half an hour to walk the entire thing.