A Dufus Goes to A Coruña
I went to A Coruña yesterday, a city on the coast of Galicia—
right there, in fact.
I spent 10 hours there, 6 of which were spent walking, and for 5 1/2 of those 6 hours, I was lost. My feet and legs really hurt today, but I had a really nice time. I will probably go back again soon so I can actually see some things. I went by myself, which was nice because I could wander around and choose places to eat according to my own whims.
The only problem with being a woman walking alone is that sometimes men see you as vulnerable. At about 11am, I was walking down a street and an older man passed me and said “you’re very pretty, aren’t you?” I know that this had absolutely nothing to do with what I looked like, just that no one was with me to possibly object to what he was saying, and one angry woman is a lot easier to deal with than an angry woman and her several angry friends. (Luckily nobody offered me tea in any restaurants, right Laura and Alicia? I guess all of us looked weak and shy and cold that day in Barcelona.)
Also, as I was getting to the bus station at night, an old man who did not seem to be quite with it came stumbling towards me with his arms open and said something, but it was so jumbled together that I couldn’t understand it. I walked by him, and he turned to watch me go and continued yelling and snorting. (I don’t know what it is with snorting, but one time the three Italian girls and I were walking on a main street in Lugo, and an old man walked up to us and snorted very loudly and very purposefully at us. We kept walking, glancing back every now and then, and he had stopped and was staring after us. Very weird.)
Anyway, I took a stupid amount of pictures (14). Here are some of them:
This is the Tower of Hercules. It is basically the symbol of the city. This is a very zoomed-in picture from across the bay. I did not actually manage to see the tower itself.
Feral cat! Actually this was an extremely ugly animal when seen up close, but it was exciting to see a cat!
Seagull splat on the rocks near the cat. Did the cat catch and eat the seagull? Did the seagull wash up onto the rocks? Did the seagull fly into the rocks with such velocity that he flattened himself to death and stuck there? The mystery occupied my mind for 9 of the 10 hours I was in A Coruña.
Man, Ryan is really outdoing himself. He’s got an airline, he’s teaching the world English—what next?! Oh, you think they are not the same person? Well how many Ryans do you know? Yeah, I thought so.
The elevator for men, women, and people who are adamant about not being classified as either.
This is a normal building. Everything about this building is completely, utterly ordinary. There are no vials containing diseases unknown to mankind but a few scientists, no enormous stockpiles of limestone, no monkeys running loose and out of control. Andrew Lloyd Webber is not in here. There is no time portal and there is definitely not a verified-to-be-accurate painting of what God actually looks like. So please go away and don’t tell anyone about the normal building you saw today.
