Day 5 - Betty Swallocks

We went without aircon last night to help with Steve's allergies which had the desired effect, however it also meant that the room was a sweat box, add to that last night's kebabs and you can imagine our joy to be moving on to another town.

Upon checking out the hotel tried to charge Steve twice, we think that this is Spain's plan to beat the recession. We also couldn't find out how to get out of the underground car park, we'd tried everything from banging the door to blasting our horns and revving our engines. It turned out that there was a button to press, damn them and their advanced technology.

Getting out of La Coruna would have been impossible without the sat nav, entire streets are double parked and the one way systems make no sense. But we were soon on our way to Vigo via Santiago.

The roads were pretty poor, those that didn't have road works were so bumpy that Steve thought he had a flat. There were also a million little towns which kept the speeds quite slow, luckily though it wasn't a long journey.

We stopped for brunch before we got to Santiago and ordered some food and drinks. Three courses of cakes arrived and all in all it was another expensive meal at 4 euros.

We decided to push on to Santiago where we'd stop for lunch, we'd probably be hungry by the time we got there. It turns out however though that Santiago was literally thirty seconds down the road.

We stopped anyway and took a look around. The city is amazing and the cathedral really was a sight with the entire altar being made of gold and silver, it's well worth a visit if your in town.

Back on the road it was another rubbish ride with heavy traffic and roadworks everywhere we went, we stopped at a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere for a late lunch and ordered the menu of the day. This comprised of a potato flan for starter, grilled potatoes for the main course and a tart for dessert. I think we only had the tart as he'd run out of potatoes. At the restaurant there was another Spanish biker on a Triumph Sprint, he wanted to know why none of us were on British bikes, so we told him they were crap.

As the temperatures soared above 30c we decided to just crack on and take the motorway to Vigo,  this was going well until a slight sat nav error took us to a toll road but it was worth it to speed up the journey. Vigo was difficult to navigate so the sat nav more than made up for its earlier error and got us to the hotel.

After pealing off our leathers and a quick shower we climbed up to one of the recommended sights. This involved walking up a very steep hill, climbing about a thousand steps and then climbing a grass verge. You should have seen the views though, although we couldn't because the crest was surrounded by trees. Tim wasn't put off though and asked if we wanted to waste any more time seeing shit monuments and ancient crap or should we go to the bar.

On the way to the bar, Steve forgot the green cross code and if it wasn't for Tim shouting at him, would now be a bonnet ornament on a lucky Fiat drivers car.

The first bar suffered from Spain's service problem where it took twenty mins to order a drink and twenty mins for it to turn up, oh and I mustn't forget that 'vodka and red bull' translates to 'water'. We moved on.

We stopped at an Irish bar next and watched the Spain vs Italy semi final which turned out to be a good game. Each time we ordered a drink it came with a free bowl of crisps too which kept us going. The Spanish were not really that bothered with the game though, however when they won there was a mild cheer before they all went home. Way to celebrate guys.

We too decided to head home and get an early start tomorrow to beat the traffic and heat, let's see how that works out!