Getting there
With a lunchtime flight, we’d not normally worry about getting to the airport on time, but flights to A Coruña leave from Gatwick, so we stayed overnight to save ourselves the hassle and angst.
We’d heard such horror stories about airport services in the last month or so, mostly caused by staff shortages due to - you’ve guessed - the pandemic, so we allowed plenty of time “just in case”. There didn’t seem to be that many people about however.
Maybe they were all in a long queue at the check in?
Most certainly not!
In fact, it was a pretty smooth ride the whole way on a three-quarters full A320 Airbus. Perfectly comfortable for such a short flight; just under two hours
A Coruña is a fairly new regional airport with around a dozen flights per day, so in no time at all our luggage was there and we were ready to go. We had had a small panic last evening when, even though we had completed all the Coronavirus passenger forms for entry into Spain and specifically Galicia, my Hero got an email with another certification requiring us to upload our vaccination certificates (again) and have them validated. Of course, we followed all that to the letter and added yet another document to our folders. But did anyone want to see it? No. All that was requested was our original vaccine certificate; the 2D barcode we have used all over the place - not that it was scanned or given any more than a brief glance.
Whilst my Hero got the rental car sorted out, I noted that all the cars passing me were white.
As was ours - mostly! The attitude to such things is rather different from the next likely place we’ll pick up a rental car, Switzerland. Nevertheless, I went around taking photos of the several small bumps and scrapes on this pretty new VW Golf and off we went.
Roads in Spain are good with very little traffic compared with home. So it was a fairly easy drive to Santiago.
We didn’t even use the motorway, but stuck to ordinary rural roads as we usually do in such circumstances.
Arriving in the city, it wasn’t quite as we expected. But we had good directions from the hotel and our satnav was giving excellent advice too.
No worries!
There was even a spot to park right outside the hotel: We are staying in the Parador.
This evening, we chose to eat in the less formal of the two restaurants here: Enxembre. Very good it was too.
Returning to our room - sorry, suite! - later , we reflected on the way it takes all day to fly anywhere. We had got up early this morning, taken a two hour flight, driven here and the day is gone.
But here we are!
Just two years later than intended.
