So, Lisa’s mother is an artist who has worked in numerous mediums and formats throughout her life. One of these is photography; we had her work hanging in our home for years and years (only stopping because of the great divestiture before moving to Portugal). Somehow – I do not know this part of the story – she developed a relationship with a gallery in Barcelona: Fotonostrum and they have displayed at least three of her photos as parts of exhibitions. However, at the conclusion of the exhibitions there have been attempts to ship the photos to her home in San Francisco and it just never seems to happen. Recently, we were told that the latest exhibition that included her work had come to an end, and they needed to leave the gallery by the end of May or they would “go into storage.” Yeah, storage in a nice farm upstate. Rather than try and sort out mail or courier options that had been fruitless for months, we decided to try a different approach.

And thus it was that I took the most curious ramble yet. I started by catching a 6:30AM bus for Porto. If you haven’t cottoned to it, bus travel in Portugal as compared to the US is a lot like the differences in train travel. Here, it’s relatively inexpensive, widely available, and generally a clean and pleasant experience. The next segment of the trip was my favorite, for reasons other than the amenities. I caught a direct flight on Vueling, a low-cost airline I had never heard of before. They were about the same as the others, with cheap base tickets that get more expensive pretty quickly if you add features, and flights for which “no-frills” is a pretty reasonable description. So what was my excitement all about? For the first time since we moved here, I finally took one of these flights with no additions. Normally we’re at least traveling with some luggage, and maybe care about what seats we’re sitting in (like, two seats next to each other at a minimum). But all I had this time was a backpack that fits under the seat. And it’s just me, put me where you want. It was great! The fifty-euro ticket actually was a fifty-euro ticket.

Barcelona airport is easy enough to navigate and I hit the curb with little difficulty, and caught a cab. (I would have gone public transport but I was on a schedule and, shockingly, the signs were in a language I understand even less that Portuguese.) Then the hose kinks start appearing. Fotonostrum was changing locations soon, but the address that I harvested from the email signature of my contact person was for their new, still-unused location. Who does that? Well… Spanish artistic types do, apparently. So, a second cab is hailed and the old location is achieved. Interesting side note: Barcelona is still a city of taxis. I don’t know if they’ve got laws limiting rideshare services but this was classic, New York-syle cab hailing and it never took much effort. I was pleased and surprised.

There’s a clock ticking in the background. I have a 3:30PM reservation for a train, but if I get my business tended to I could catch an earlier, 1:30PM, train. That appeals to me greatly. Why a train? While two of the photos are rolled and in a tube, the third is mounted and can only be transported flat as-is. We just didn’t trust baggage handling (or overhead compartments) to preserve the photo, so settled on the train as a viable alternative.

So, tick tock. Even with the delay of an extra cab ride it’s still only about 12:15 and the gallery is approximately 20 minutes from the train station. It takes me an embarrassingly long time to figure out where the door to the gallery is, despite having an accurate address, but eventually I get in and speak to a nice, artsy Spanish youth…. who explains to me that my contact is currently conducting a press conference(!?) and nobody else knows what I was talking about. In their defense (and my amazement), a press conference actually is going on in the gallery, which impressed me. Good on the Spanish for lavishing such attention on a little gallery of no particular import that is discussing their move to a new space.

My hopes for a timely exit dwindle, and I rummage for a place to eat. I settle on Pizza Local where, despite the name, what I had was a “straciatella with burrata” that was mind-blowingly good. Sadly the photo is “nom medias res” but the idea is a layer of burrata that covers the entire plate evenly, then drizzled with oil and seasonings. This is used as “dipping sauce” so to speak for fresh-baked flatbread. Woof. Post lunch a very nice woman at the gallery promptly hands over the tube and the mounted photo… at about 2:00PM. Alas. We’ve been to Barcelona Sants train station before, although this time I’m just passing through. Boarding the train was easy enough, and as a high speed train we were flying through the Spanish countryside at just under 300kph. Wheee!

The next kink in the hose is that my train terminates in Madrid and I catch another one to get to Vigo. That train goes out of a different station, but the train operator’s website implies that they have purpose-made transfer busses between stations. Whether that’s a lie or just the signs were in Spanish is up for debate; what I know is that I couldn’t find the bus, my train had been running about a half hour late, and I had 45 minutes to figure it out or I’d be spending the evening in scenic Madrid. Several “what the hell let’s see what happens!” decisions later, I sit down in my seat with about 3 minutes to spare. Fun! Fortunately, after this the only adventure was when there was only one seat left on the bus from Vigo to Braga and they didn’t take cash, so I had to scramble to get a ticket on their website. As I am writing this in my office in Braga, you can guess how that turned out.

All told, the trip took about 19 hours, which is honestly not that bad in my opinion given how much was packed in. The photos made it safely and now await the arrangement of the last leg of their journey, back to the United States.

Since we don’t tell a lot of driving stories, indulge us for a moment while we tell you of the wonder that is Via Verde. This is a national pay service for cars that puts a sensor thingy in your vehicle (you may be familiar with this tech if you have turnpikes or other toll highways in your area), but a surprising variety of services are also tied into it. Municipal parking lots? Sure. Charging your electric vehicle? Why not! Ferry crossings? But of course. Paying at drive-thru pharmacies? Weird, but also sure! It’s a pretty cool thing, especially since it covers the entire country. Should you ever rent a car in Portugal and the agent asks you if you want Via Verde, the answer is “yes.” And if they don’t ask, probably because they don’t enjoy explaining this to Portugal noobs, make sure to ask for it. You’ll pay a few euros up front, and then a couple of invoices will roll in a month or two down the road once Via Verde settles up with your rental agency. Totes worth it.

Aaaaaannyway, armed with a Via Verde-enabled rental, we pointed ourselves northward and beat feet. The drive itself is nothing special – it’s national highway all the way to the border and then similar roads on the other side. The whole drive is only an hour and a half give or take depending on the traffic. There aren’t even any interesting connections, as Vigo is right there on the highway. This meant that it was easy to get our first look at this quaint little town… which is significantly more metropolitan than Braga! It’s funny, the only time that Vigo has ever come up in conversation for us it’s been people talking about getting away to the beach or else visiting the “charming Christmas market”, and it somehow never entered the picture that the population is significantly larger while, at the same time, the population density is nearly triple that of Braga. The net effect is that compared to our home town’s almost suburban vibe, Vigo comes across like a big-boy city. Whoops. This doesn’t “matter” of course, it was just a funny realization.

We scoot through part of downtown on our way to our hotel and start to get glimpses of the market. It’s early afternoon at this point so there aren’t any lights, and being just past the lunch hours a lot of the sidewalks are rolled up. It was kind of like being in Las Vegas at 10 AM on a Sunday – yeah, things are still going on, but it’s pretty mundane. We make it into our digs at a Marriott right on the water, which might sound lah-dee-dah but we were along the part of the waterfront that doubles as a perpetual county fair, complete with bumper cars. Think less Club Med and more Atlantic City. We got settled in and then made the short walk to one edge of the market.

Confession time (from John at the moment): I had no idea what to expect from a “Christmas market”. I’ve never seen one, I’ve barely talked about them with anybody. Braga does one but by all accounts it’s pretty modest. So color me surprised but a little giddy that my first exposure to the market in Vigo was… a half-mile lane stacked with street food vendors, craft vendors, street food vendors, pop-up wine tasting “rooms” and, dare I say, street food vendors? We were actually pretty hungry and dinner wasn’t until 9 or so (hola, Spain :p) so we dove into these amazing … um… things. Basically, take “pigs in a blanket” only use full-size chorizo and scale up the bun accordingly. It was bonkers good. Lisa had an empanada variant that she also super enjoyed (our friends both joined me in hot sausage & bun goodness). There was a lot of other nummy-looking goodness, but the one thing that left a lasting impression were these giant palmiers. Like, as wide as my forearm giant. Crazy good.

Since dinner was going to be so late (hola, Spain) we all went back to the hotel to reset and relax a bit. Oh what a difference a couple of hours makes. Our walk to Marabu (the restaurant du dinner) went through a couple of major avenues in town, and now the lights were on. [pictures]

Dinner was at Marabu, courtesy of a recommendation from good friends who spend a lot of time in Vigo. Short version: our friends are good at recommendations. Although, we almost didn’t find out. Despite our late reservation (hola, Spain) we were actually the first people there, and the restaurant gave almost every appearance of being closed. After a few minutes we were ready to bail but one of us spotted movement in the darkness inside so we abided with something resembling patience. Eventually they did open, and we were sooo glad that we stayed. The star of our meal was a slow-cooked ribs (“slow” as in “twenty-six hours”… hubba hubba) shareable entree. When it was brought out our server broke out these wooden Wolverine claws and gently shredded the meat, which was obligingly sliding off the bones by that point. Thus prepared, we rolled tacos at the table and had little bites of heaven for awhile. The atmosphere was cozy and elegant, the service good and unobtrusive… I’d say we give it an eight-thumbs-up recommendation, just don’t make a reservation close to opening. We lingered over dinner so long that, combined with being a Sunday, we actually had the lights mostly to ourselves as we made our way back to the hotel. It was nice to be able to linger over the displays without feeling like we were blocking traffic.

And with that, our little one-day excursion to Vigo was over. We made it back with no problems the next day and (bonus!) we had a car to do some bulky shopping for a day. All four of us came away from the trip already brainstorming what our next, longer visit would be like, so it’s safe to say we had a gay old time.