Where did the sea go?

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Where did the sea go?  A strange question to ask you may think coming from 2 people on a ship. But this morning dawned with the thickest fog imaginable and at one point we couldn't even see the water below our balcony.  So our arrival into La Coruna was very slow and accompanied by the low, loud moan of the ship's fog horn.  But we didn't dock until 11.00 am and by then it had lifted enough to see a bit of the port so we headed off to explore.  And we're really glad we did.  La Coruna is famous for having an ancient lighthouse that began life in Roman times and is still in use today.  With our free tourist map in hand we headed for the bus and found our way out to this lovely headland.  But it is only lovely if you look towards the sea.  The back end of the town is here and it looks like something out of a Russian spy movie.  The town planners had a serious love affair with concrete and they built their very own ghetto out here.  It's odd because the city is known as the City of Glass.  In the old part of the town, all the houses and apartments have massive windows that look like the back end of a galleon at sea.  But not at the end of the modern town.  There they just do concrete.  Lots and lots of it!

When we arrived, the fog was still thick enough that you couldn't see the top of the lighthouse but by the time we'd had a good meander round the lovely parks the sun had started to burn the fog off and the sky turned blue and so began yet another brilliantly summery stay in port.  

On the way back to the ship, we stopped off in the old town and found the main town square that is talked about in all the guide books.  And deservedly too.  It was gorgeous.  As this was a feast day, all the restaurants were full of local families enjoying a long, leisurely lunch.  So it would have been rude not to join them! We ended up eating Italian food in an Argentinian restaurant here in Spain.  And it was really lovely.  In fact so lovely, that we weren't at all hungry for dinner tonight so actually gave it a miss!  

Instead, we headed for the theatre as they'd managed to arrange for a local dance company to come aboard and put on a wonderful flamenco show.  They were absolutely brilliant - great music, fabulous singing, wonderful costumes and seriously good dancing.

We hung around then for the main show of the evening and it was the best show of the entire cruise.  A comic juggler.  And yes, I know, that's not the sort of act that would normally get you off the sofa and out to a theatre but this guy is doing a UK tour and we're definitely going to try and track him down.  His name is Grunway Thom and he made me get really bad tummy ache from laughing so much.  And I was not alone.  It's a real treat to be in a packed theatre and have people laughing out loud and wiping the tears streaming down their cheeks.  He is one seriously funny guy.

So tomorrow is our last full day at sea.  Fingers crossed for a calm crossing of the Bay of Biscay and - boo hoo - back into Southampton on Friday morning.  

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