This morning the Queen Elizabeth docked in her maiden port of call, Vigo in Spain. It is pronounced as vee-go, rather than Vigo, the town about seven miles away from us in Tyne & Wear called vy-go.
We had been here once before, 11 years ago, so we were looking forward to exploring this beautiful city further. Vigo is well known for its fishing industry, particularly the rope-grown mussel cultivation, and we could see many of the floating platforms from which the mussels are bred and produced.
The urban area of Vigo is built over both a Celtic village (Castro) and a Roman settlement. In fact, it is generally accepted that the name of ‘Vigo’ comes from the Latin word Vicus. During the middle ages the small village of Vigo was part of the territory of neighbouring towns, mainly Tuy, and suffered several Viking attacks. Today, Vigo is the largest city in the Galician region of northern Spain.
We set off on our coach excursion, which took us all along the gorgeous coastline; until now I had never realised that Vigo is, in fact, quite a popular tourist holiday destination and there were lots of pretty hotels and holiday homes. We arrived at a hotel which had put on a spread of Spanish tapas for us, including delicious jamon serrano and some olives and Spanish omelette. We were also given some of the locally-produced red and white wines, and we ended up buying three bottles for 10 Euros for later consumption on our stateroom balcony. 😉
We also looked around the local craft and souvenir stalls before our leisurely coach journey back to the Queen Elizabeth in time for lunch. As I may have mentioned previously, the food and drink on board Cunard vessels is superb. Sometimes, however, you just want something simple and for this you can go to the Golden Lion pub for a traditional British pub lunch, for example fish and chips, Ploughman’s lunch, cottage pie etc. Eating can almost become a hobby on a cruise ship! 🙂
Later on that night we went to the theatre for the evening show. Tonight it was a Scouse comedian called John Evans; he was very funny. We then went along to the Golden Lion to take part in the trivia quiz; for Trevor and I this is a nightly ritual on our cruises and sometimes we even win!
The resident Golden Lion pianist, Simon John, was playing Elton John songs all evening and he wanted to do Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, for which he needed a female voice to sing Kiki Dee’s part. I’ve done this one in karaoke before so Trevor volunteered me to get up! It was good fun, and it makes yours truly the very first passenger to get up and sing on the Queen Elizabeth, ever! 🙂 Whoo-hoo, fame at last.