The day began as yesterday, usual sleep till 9am, breakfast with eggs on toast. The difference being that today we are heading out one man less. We have actually switched our plans a bit to stay an extra night in Lugo, not only for this beautiful accommodation by mainly because Martin needs a comfortable place to work for a day.
Us three headed out for more adventures whilst Martin has his business to attend to over the Internet.
We decided to visit the Roman Baths and Roman bridge just on the edge of the city.
It was about 20-30mins walk from the centre of the old town.
First we tried to go to a lookout point at a park just outside of the Lugo wall. The lady at the tourist information centre said we can get a really good view of the bridge from there.
Once we got there, a whole line of trees blocked our views! Perhaps the last time the lady visited was a while back? Not giving up we walked along the whole viewing side of the park, finally a small clearing was found. Here is what we saw.
Ok, not a spectacular view right? And where is the bridge? It's actually the one on the lower left over the river.
Not quite what we were expecting as I imagined some ruins, but that one is obviously still in use even now.
Following the map we headed down the hill to take a closer look.
Here we are just by the river. Perhaps I'm not studied enough in my classical history, but the bridge looks modern enough to me.
Either the bridge has been having ongoing repairs and maintenance, or the Romans are miraculously great engineers for it to have withstand time so well. Cars is still being driven across the bridge everyday.
So here we are thinking, maybe the baths will be more interesting.
We were told by the tourism lady that the baths has been built over by a modern hotel. All we had to do was ask at the reception to go visit the ruins under the building. I thought it sounded incredibly Indiana Jones, hidden ancient ruins under a hotel! Adventure here we come!
We walked towards the hotel along the river bank. A moment earlier Dominique and I were still wondering if there were snakes in the river. Not soon after we finished chatting did I spot one!
After much pointing and staring from us Kiwis who do not have snakes in the wild in NZ, we entered the hotel. The receptionist kindly pointed us to go down the stairs and there are two viewing rooms.
As soon as we headed down a couple of steps, a familiar smell arose. The smell of Rotorua!
Whao, this must be a very open spring inside the ruins!
Once we got down to the lower level, we understood why the hotel was built over the ruins, it was also a modern day spa!
Here are the ruins inside the hotel. Not much description and lighting. It felt like two unfinished rooms inside the hotel waiting for remodeling.
After the Roman Baths in Baths, UK, maybe our expectation was a lot higher. We can only laugh and say that it was quite a different visit!
A little disappointed we had to hike back up the hill into the old town again. Lunching on some mini croissant and coke from a nearby supermarket, we decided we will make the most of our day by visiting the remaining churches on our tourist map.
We visited three and all of the were closed! Yes, siesta in fact applies to smaller churches too!
Not a spectacular day right? We gave up then and headed to the supermarket for our dinner food then back to the apartment.
Me, I had a lovely 2 hour snooze before coming back out to blogging and helping (directing) with the dinner preparation.
Our dinner
We stayed at the apartment and chatted for the rest of the evening, I'm glad we will be leaving the next day as we have totally ran out of ideas for what to do in this city!
For me, there were many comical aspect to the day, who would have thought ancient ruins can be treated in such an off hand way? And siesta for churches? I suppose priests need their lunch breaks too!
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Location:Carril de Flores,Lugo,Spain
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