Day trip to Pontevedra and Spain's west coast

We got a fairly early start, hitting the road at just after 9:00am for the two hour drive to Pontevedra. 

Pontevedra itself is only about 83,000 people, but the built up areas continue all along the coast and as you reach the beaches, it's quite busy. 

We found somewhere to park for free, and walked into the city.

First on the agenda was to find an ATM that has zero fees. Many of the ATM's here in Spain have very high fees when you use a foreign debit card to get cash. Some of them are as high as €7 ($11 CAD, $8 USD) per transaction. So it makes sense to find the zero fee ones when you can, and these are often smaller banks so they don't have as many branches. The most common one in Spain that has zero fees is Unicaja Banco.

Then we went and wandered around the central area...

Scenery along the way.

A very odd "art" display.

I love palm trees!

Probably because you know you are in the right type of climate if you are in a country that has palm trees! 

We came across a small church that has a dome that you can climb up a tight circular stairway and then walk around a the base of the dome. It cost a reasonable €1 ($1.56 CAD, $1.13 USD) each for the privilege, so we headed on up...

It was actually pretty cool!

View out a small window at the top.

View from the second floor.

Looking up where we had been.

A decorated pumping station building in the park.

Seagull and a pond.

War Memorial.

The ruins of the San Domingos church are located right downtown.

The San Domingos church was built between 1383 and 1450. It had deteriorated by the mid 1800's, and was actually scheduled to be torn down in 1895 when it was saved. There really wasn't much left by that point, but what remains is now protected.

How old is this tomb?

The side of that building in the background is different.

Fountain.

Where is everybody?

We came across another interesting church.

All made of wood.

This church also had a €1 fee, this time to climb up the tower to see the bells and the view. Once again, we figured that was worth the cost!

They were renovating some of the decorations on the outside.

View of Pontevedra.

The church bells.

Kevin and the bells.

Good thing we weren't up there at the top of the hour!

We're finding that a lot of the old buildings in the central area are unoccupied and run down.

Still, it makes for some interesting sights!

Scenery along the way.

These town get pretty quiet during afternoon siesta!

We made our way back to the car, and took a drive out to the beaches at Sanxenxo...

It is pretty built up all along the coast.

The beach at Playa de Baltar.

Path down to the beach.

We walked around the point to Playa de Silgar.

The beach would not normally be this busy at this time of year, but it was an abnormally hot day!

There are a lot of holiday apartments here.

We went for a walk along the malecon.

View from the other end.

Some kind of art thing where you look through a hole.

the Circle of Wishes.

The Madam of Silgar.

Not sure.

The malecon was lined with these statues.

Then we walked back to the car and headed home.

Scenery along the way.

It was another good day. Late afternoon was getting quite hot though. Today is supposed to be the same. High of 26C by noon, but up to 33C by late afternoon. So we're headed out to enjoy the morning so that we can come back for siesta when it's too hot out.

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