We got up under leaden skies and had a good breakfast of more Galician soup, cheeses, ham and a croissant and checked out of the last Parador of this trip - they're a great, reliable chain - and set off for the coast in stages.
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| Interior of the Parador |
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| The Monastery (Parador) on Top of The Hill |
First we left Monforte de Lemos by winding down the hill of the Parador and retracing our steps to back to the N-120 which we followed for 30 miles until we reached the city of Ourense. There we managed to find a connector road to the freeway A-52. We thought it might be more interesting to take a back road to the ocean and so turned off onto the PO-255, marked as a scenic drive in the Michelin atlas. It immediately became apparent that the 255 is a tiny road winding in and out of steep valleys and through planted eucalyptus forests for 40 miles - more stressful than a pleasure. But we did see a flock of goats lounging on the road, and at one point, passed a woman with a staff herding a few cattle with a chihuahua as a sheep dog!! The fiesty little critter didn't know he was the size of a loaf of bread and maneuvered those beasts right through a gate!
The road suddenly widens a few miles outside the port/university city of Pontevedra, where we drove around endless roundabouts and got on the AP-9 toll road north. This stretch of coast consists of four long jagged peninsulas sticking out into the Atlantic with a beautiful coastline, lots of opportunity for great eating, and some unusual, shellfish and fish. We drove down one of the points of land through vineyards where the famous Albariño grapes are grown - wine and shellfish - what could be better?
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| View from Our Room At the Gran Talaso |
We struggled a bit finding our lodging, the Gran Talaso Hotel, on a cliff at the end of a wide beach packed with hotels, and just parked the car in the street of their driveway to unload our baggage. We were assigned a parking space on the -3 floor and wound down and down, probably below sea level, parked the car and found our way to our room on the 2nd floor. The room is small, but has a corner balcony and a fantastic view of the beach and the peninsula south across the water
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It was 4-ish and we were getting peckish; the kitchen was closed, but we managed to get two small ham sandwiches and cokes which revived us, and we took off on the 5-mile boardwalk that goes from our beach to the next inlet which is less developed, the beach being backed by dune grass and wildflowers. We saw many sail boats out racing, a group of which had squared-off sail tops which looked unusual.
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| Squared-off Sails |
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| Beach Board Walk |
We went down to dinner at 8:30 and had a great shellfish feast. We shared crab crepes with a light cheese sauce and creme of veg soup. And then shared our mains: 10 razor clams and 12 zamburiñas (medium sized scallops) grilled in their shells with lemon and butter! For dessert we split a Spanish version of cannoli. And a great bottle of Albariño. We went to bed with the light surf crashing below and the lights, but not sounds, of the town below.
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| My Razor Clams |
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| Bob's Scallops |
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