Baiona

After a night in Baiona Paul and Consuelo are leaving us to return to the UK - for another holiday in Tuscany! They have been the best guests; great company as ever and mucking in with all the watch keeping and cleaning.





 

Caroline is also returning to the UK to check on the house at home and leaving me here on the boat for a few days before returning with Jamie on Saturday. Tom is hopefully joining us next week somewhere near Lisbon.

Baiona is the friendliest place, where everyone seems to be happy and animated. It has the European cafe culture where people promenade along the seafront and eat outside in the many restaurants that line the streets of the old town. In the back streets young children sit in their pushchairs alongside their parents eating paella long after bedtime and their older siblings tear around the square and get happily scolded by their parents.





In the town square last night a full orchestra was playinig a concert for the The Festa Da Arribada. The fiesta itself is held in March and is a celebration of the arrival of the CaraBela “Pinta” (Small three mast ship – “The Painted”) with news of the discovery of the New World. This doesnt mean Christopher Columbus was in Baiona, but rather his contemporary Martin Alonso Pinzón who was captain of The Pinta one of the three ships that sailed with Columbus. The Pinta was seperated from the Santa Maria, arriving in Lisbon about the same time, in a storm off the Azores. Its alledged, like many other stories regarding the discovery that the Pinta arrived first in Spain causing a competition and bad feeling between the two Captains. However, Columbus and not Pinzón was invited to the Spanish court to accept the prizes. This doesnt stop the town of Baiona celebrating.




Off to the shops now to prepare for the arrival of Fatty, Jam and Beth.