Gijon, Spain

Gijon, Spain                                                                                      Sunday, June 12, 2022

            Supposed to be a rainy and low-60s day, and we had no tour scheduled, so we took the shuttle bus toward the old city to walk around for a couple hours.  Didn’t even take Jerry’s good camera; used my cell phone camera instead since it’s easier to keep dry.  Most shops and many museums are not open on Sundays, so we had low expectations.

            Right along a short-walled coastline, the old city holds a large church and the underground ruins of a Roman Bath area.  The latter is considered to be one of the most important Roman remains in northern Spain, documented as Rome’s IV Legion Macedonica.  Of note are the fairly newly discovered hippocaust, rooms where hot air was produced for the baths.  The photos will document its importance.  You decide.

            In order to wait for the line to the baths to dwindle (underground and Covid), we went into the Church of San Pedro first.  There was a service going on so we stayed in the back.  It is definitely weird to walk in on services that are going on as a tourist.  We don’t spend long in these situations and we try not to interrupt the proceedings.  After a few pics from the back of the sanctuary we sneaked our way out.  We were not the only tourists to do this.  After the church we went back to the Roman Bath area.  We watched the introductory movie which was all in Spanish and then walked through the underground display.  Low ceiling.  It is not a spectacular ruin in the grand scheme of ruins but it was nicely done.  After the baths we took a walk around the promontory  (bulbous peninsula?) which was a lot of green space with fortification ruins.

Note the very realistic paintings as decoration!

Tower of bottles of the local apple cider

Street art

  

We walked back to the downtown area where the bus had dropped us.  We had a little extra time so we visited the downtown shopping area which had a nice covered walkway but as with Spanish towns on Sunday nothing of interest was open.  Just  restaurants.  We got on the bus back to the boat.  We were early enough to join the bridge game so we did.  We had a nice relaxing afternoon and evening on board ship.