Our last full day in Galicia featured a visit to A Coruna, the main port and second largest city in the province. It’s a longish drive of about 2.5 hours, mostly over highways that made it easy. The city is surprisingly big, with lots of traffic, especially after a few days in villages of Galicia. We drove through the heart of town heading for our first stop, the Tower of Hercules — another lighthouse!
But what a lighthouse. This is the one you want to see. It’s a UNESCO world heritage site for good reason, situated high on a point guarding multiple harbors with a lot of open parkland along the coast for uninterrupted views. 
Laurie and I split up as she checked out the small visitor center while I headed up the long causeway to explore the lighthouse and surrounding peninsula. We gave ourselves an hour to reconnect. On the way up I passed a Galician bagpiper, sounding for all the world like a lone Scotsman riffing on a simple melody with endless subtle variations. It was a little magical. He was gone by the time Laurie walked up; I was glad I caught his performance.
There was a substantial line to climb to the top of the light which I decided to forego — there were plenty of things to see and do around the light without having to go to the top. Walkways and paths on the headlands, and the waves on the rocks below gave me lots to soak in. Here’s a site that gives background and much more beautiful pictures than mine of the Tower and its headlands.
Just below the light on the point was a sort of sundial that turned out to be a compass rose of the 7 Celtic Nations, with Gaelic names and symbols for each. I feel like I should have taken better pictures of each one, but here’s a closer one I found. Do you know your 7 Celtic Nations? Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Isle of Man, Brittany, Galicia. Now in Gaelic: Alba, Eire, Cymru, Kernow, Mann, Breizh, Galiza. I don’t know why I’m fascinated with this Celtic connection. Maybe it makes Galicia a little less a part of Spain and more a piece of some nebulous lost tribe, of which I’m also a lost remnant.
Laurie and I did find each other after an hour or so, and while I could have stayed much longer to explore the park up and down the coast, it was nearing lunchtime and we had a city to see. So we bundled back into the car and headed into downtown A Coruna. After wandering a good while trying to find the central square and a place to park, we finally found a garage and set out on foot in search of food. We checked out several restaurants before coming upon a pedestrian street (Rue Franja) filled with choices. Overwhelmed and not really sure what cuisine we wanted, we settled at an outdoor table of a parillada with the chef working the grill just inside the window. I had a plate of mixed grilled meats that was very tasty and a nice change of pace from the seafood we’d been having. Laurie still searched for a grilled fish that was equal to Porto’s but again came up short. The restaurant was nothing special (and I can’t find the name) but the street scene and watching the grill were entertaining, and altogether it felt very civilized. An ambiance that’s hard to replicate in America, it seems.
Our lunch place was right next to a very busy ice cream parlor, but I’d seen that TripAdvisor’s #1 “restaurant” in A Corunja was another ice cream place, BICO de xeado. So we set out for it a few blocks away. It gave us a chance to see the 
galerias along the Avenida Merina that A Coruna is noted for. We must have passed a half dozen other ice cream places doing good business before finding our target, which was devoid of customers. We made our choices, pistachio for me and a chocolate/orange flavor for Laurie. Both were nice but was it really better than 10 other places we passed? While TripAdvisor and Yelp often lead me to places that I would not otherwise find, sometimes the results don’t live up to the anticipation. Here was a case where the unrated, anonymous restaurant and probably some of the other ice cream stands stood above the highly rated destination. But we could hardly complain, being little worse for the effort and still having some pretty good ice cream. Mainly it’s a reminder to manage expectations.
We had still not seen the main square, so we wound through a few more streets before coming to the Plaza de Maria Pita. The entire square was filled with seats for a classical concert to be held that evening, which was impressive but made it hard to appreciate the sights or shops of the square. It might have been nice to stay, but we had a long drive home to contemplate. And we had to find our way back to the garage and car, which was a small cause for concern. We made it, and while drive home was uneventful, we both felt like we’d covered enough ground and kind of dreaded the long drive tomorrow back to Segovia. I left feeling that, while there was a lot more we could have seen or done in A Coruna and I might like to go back sometime, I was pleased that we’d chosen the smaller village and quieter atmosphere of Finisterre as our base in Galicia.
For our last night in Galicia we chose dinner at Asador San Rocque, which we kept driving by going in and out of Finisterre. I was hoping for one more shot at good grilled octopus but alas there was none that night. So I settle quite happily for razor clams while Laurie once again hoped for her lenguado. Though the restaurant was an asador, which generally means grilled food, they said they’d only do leguado a la plancha which is in a pan or on a griddle. Laurie tried her best to get them to put it on the grill for a bit, but the end result was still not as good as Porto.
An after the fact aside: in writing this entry, I came across the restaurant O Fragon, a modern looking place on the outskirts of Finisterre. How did we miss this? The website has a cute video showing the little roads to get there, which explains why we never saw it. The reviews are encouraging and I would have liked to try it. Maybe a reason to go back, someday.
That evening, while settling in and packing up, we started to learn of the terror attack that took place in Barcelona on Las Ramblas that afternoon. A man drove a van down the major pedestrian street killing 13 people, then escaped. The coverage was spotty that evening, replaying one or two videos and interviewing witnesses, but clearly a major manhunt was underway and there were mixed reports of other incidents. As always, there was concern over whether this was part of some multi-pronged attack. Then early in the morning after 1am came sketchy reports about another car attack down the coast in the town of Cambrils. About the only thing clear as we went to sleep was that it was sure to reverberate for some time, and we were glad at that point to be in a small village on the other side of the country.
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