England and Iberia Day 15

La Coruña, Spain AND AN ECLIPSE!

Posted by Brian Hart on August 12, 2026 · 21 mins read
  • Start of day: La Coruña, Spain
  • End of day: At sea

Big day! Big, big day.

La Coruña

A vertical digital signboard set into a marble-and-timber wall in a ship's elevator lobby, glowing bright blue. White text reads WELCOME TO LA CORUNA, SPAIN, then below a dividing rule, ALL ABOARD, then GUEST — 3:30 p.m. and CREW — 3:00 p.m. At the bottom is the Celebrity X logo beside CITIZEN, Eco-Drive, PURPOSEFUL POWER, and the line Precision Partner for Today's Port-of-Call. A small red fire-damper inspection plate is mounted on the pale wood panelling to the right.

La Coruña is well-situated for this evening’s viewing of the total solar eclipse.

Sherri and I were off the ship early-ish to explore, get food, and get our steps.

The waterfront area has an impressive facade: The waterfront of La Coruña seen from an empty granite quayside under a flat grey overcast sky. A long unbroken terrace of tall buildings faces the harbour, their facades entirely covered in the city's characteristic white-painted glazed galleries, tier upon tier of small window panes running the full length of the block. A row of green trees and street lamps lines the promenade in front of them, with a small wooden kiosk and a red vehicle at the left. In the foreground, low granite block benches step down toward the water, where a red and white fishing boat and a line of dark pontoons are moored against the harbour wall. A small Spanish flag flies at the water's edge and one person in a dark jacket walks along the quay.

We had a loose plan to follow a circuitous trail along the coast toward The Tower of Hercules. It’s the oldest Roman lighthouse still in service, and a UNESCO World Heritage site, so it seemed worth a look. After about 20 minutes, we started to get hungry for breakfast and diverted into the central part of town – still on the way towards the lighthouse.

We peeked into a few cafes before deciding on El Chef Urbano, on Avenida de Navarra up in Monte Alto.

I had ham on toast, which in the photo kind of looks like I’m chowing down on a raw ribeye: Looking down at a slice of dark, thick-crusted toast spread with grated tomato and piled with draped slices of cured Iberian ham, the meat deep red and marbled with ribbons of white fat. It sits on a sheet of greaseproof paper printed in black with mock Victorian newspaper columns, engravings of a coffee grinder, a stove and a pointing hand, and the words FINCH & SON, STREET FOOD and 1897. The paper lies on an oval acacia wood serving tray with a visible grain, set on a dark brown table, with a folded napkin at the left edge and the corner of a phone at the bottom.

The restaurant had stuffed animals around, so I took an opportunity: A selfie of Brian indoors beside an oversized plush teddy bear that stands taller than he does. He is at the left of the frame with short receding light brown hair, smiling slightly at the camera, wearing a navy rugby shirt with white and grey horizontal stripes and a white collar. The bear fills the right half of the frame, pale beige and fuzzy with a cream muzzle, dark brown nose, stitched smile and a small red ribbon bow at its neck. Behind them are walls of raw pale pine boarding and a cream painted column, lit warmly from a fitting out of shot.

Fed and coffeed we continued our walk towards the lighthouse.

An ornate cast-iron street lamp painted rust orange, standing on a pink brick promenade under a heavy grey overcast sky. Its tapered column is moulded with layered shell-like reliefs at the base and branches at the top into sweeping Art Nouveau arms filled with a lattice of open circles, carrying a red enamelled lantern at each end. A pigeon perches on the crossbar. To the left is parkland with a row of dense dark evergreen trees over dry yellowing grass; to the right a line of parked white and grey cars and a large white van runs along the kerb, with more matching lamps receding into the distance.

For future travelers wanting to visit inside The Tower of Hercules, either get there early or buy tickets in advance online. We arrived around 10:15am and they were sold out until 1:00pm. Still, we enjoyed great views from the outside.

And here’s a closer view from my Instagram1.

After some time soaking up the views, we made the long walk back to the ship to pick up the kids and bring them out into town.

Doesn’t this kind of look like Conan? A shopfront sign photographed from street level against a grey concrete building. A black rectangular panel with yellow and white rules and small hop-cone motifs reads CANECA FURADA above CERVEXERÍA ARTESÁ. Beside it, a projecting black box sign carries a cartoon of a white beer mug with a face, gritted teeth and a plaster on its forehead, topped with a billowing orange head of foam. Two wire hanging baskets of ferns and trailing pink flowers hang from the awning below. On the floor above, frosted windows for a language school read Teaching English Since 1991 with a purple flame logo and the phone numbers 981 210 864 and 604 037 751 beside a green WhatsApp icon. A small white sign on the pillar below reads in English please! Bundled black cables run down the wall at the right.

This building in the cruise terminal area was having some sort of Simpsons expo that I now regret not checking out. The glass frontage of the Sala Municipal de Exposicións at Palexco, a modern building of blue-tinted mirrored panels in a grey metal grid that reflects a clear blue sky and a wavy white cloud band. Two large exhibition posters are mounted at ground level. The left one, headed SALA PALEXCO VIÑETAS EXPO, reads JACOBO F. S. DE ARCHIMBOLDO A MARCOPOLA and shows a cartoon of a giant pink dragon in red shorts reading papers over the shoulder of a small man drawing at a drafting board. The right one reads UN PASEO POR SPRINGFIELD, OS SIMPSON NA COLECCIÓN DE RAÚL GARCÍA and shows Simpsons-style caricatures of two men, one grey-haired with glasses and a moustache, one bald in a red jacket holding a beer glass, with Bart between them. Both run Do 30 de xullo ao 27 de setembro and carry QR codes and Concello da Coruña and Xunta de Galicia logos. A woman in a black top and denim shorts stands reading a leaflet by the entrance doors at the right, above a broad flight of stone steps.

A shop called American European Market on a narrow old-town street, its name in blue outlined lettering on a white fascia flanked by two red and white stars, with red and white candy-striped pilasters either side of the open doorway. The windows are covered in brightly coloured neon-style outline decals of cartoon characters, game controllers, an alien head and a heart. Inside, shelves of colourful packaged sweets and drinks are visible along with a glass-fronted cooler lit bright green. Above the shop is a grey stone facade with a long black cast-iron balcony in an elaborate scrolled pattern and tall shuttered windows. Several people stand on the pavement: a couple in the doorway, the woman in a white vest and patterned wide-leg trousers looking at something in her hands, the man in a dark t-shirt and beige shorts; a man in an olive t-shirt and mustard beanie by a heavy carved wooden door at the right, beside black bags and a display of handbags laid out on the ground; and a woman in a brown tie-dye top in the near foreground.

A laminated A-board poster on a tiled pavement outside a café. On a black background, white capitals read ENCARGA TU EMPANADA DEL ECLIPSE, with a glowing orange ring of an eclipsed sun set behind the word EMPANADA. Beneath it, EN MASA DE TRIGO O DE MAIZ SIN GLUTEN and SÓLO DISPONIBLE POR ENCARGO. The lower half shows photographs of a golden lattice-topped pie sliced open to reveal a jet-black squid-ink filling with chunks of white seafood, captioned CHOCO Y CALAMAR EN TINTA, with further images of a plated dish and a whole cuttlefish on a board below. Behind the sign are the café's glass frontage with shelves of jugs and pink mugs, a handwritten notice about 9:30 opening, and a shaded terrace with seated customers further down the street.

A narrow pedestrian street in bright midday sunshine under a deep blue sky. A dense canopy of green vine leaves is trained across the street on wires about halfway down. The buildings on the right have white-painted glazed galleries stacked above a black wrought-iron balcony and, at ground level, a wine shop with bottles and hanging glasses visible through the window and JAMÓN lettered on the wall. Two people sit at a small red-framed café table on the terrace, a bearded man in a pale shirt leaning forward and a woman in a white top with a glass in front of her, and another woman with dark hair sits at a table in the near right corner. Two large wooden barrels serve as standing tables against the wall. On the left a green OXFAM Intermón projecting sign hangs above a shopfront, and two red drum-shaped tables stand in the near foreground. Further down the sunlit street a person in a white top walks past a row of closed shutters.

We arrived at the market too late to see most of the vendors. Still, cool building. The interior of a covered market hall, looking down a wide central aisle with a green painted floor. A soaring white parabolic concrete vault arches overhead, pierced by two curving bands of skylights, and ends in a tall arched window filled with a grid of small panes in dark green frames, with a second smaller arch inside it. Rows of empty stainless steel and pale green tiled fish counters line both sides, numbered 9, 10, 13 and 14 on hanging signs. Most stalls are cleared and washed down for the day, with a wet patch on the floor and a black wheeled bin at the right. A handful of people are gathered at the far end, including a woman in an orange top with a bicycle and a man in a white shirt behind one of the few counters still holding produce.

For lunch I did a solo visit to the BK and sat just under that sign. Not going to lie, my Whopper really hit the spot.

A tall arched window set in a rough grey granite surround with white-painted mortar joints, housing a Burger King. The upper arched pane carries the chain's logo, the red BURGER KING lettering between two halves of an orange bun. Through the lower pane, the empty interior is visible with orange and dark wood tables, black and pale wood chairs, pendant lights and a stone-clad column, and the small line A LA PARRILLA DESDE 1954 on the back wall. Daylight and a stretch of grass and pavement reflect across the glass. In the foreground on the pavement outside are black metal café tables and chairs branded Estrella Galicia, with a QR code sticker on the nearest table top.

Back onboard and sailing away, we spotted the Tower again.

The Tower of Hercules seen from the water on departure, across a stretch of deep blue sea with small whitecaps breaking on a low pink granite shoreline. The square Roman lighthouse tower stands in silhouette on the crown of a bare grassy headland, its stone warm brown in the haze, topped by a smaller lantern stage and cupola. A pale path traces the ridge of the headland below it and tiny figures are dotted along the skyline. To the left, a long low modern building with a heavily ribbed concrete facade runs along the shore beneath a hazy hill, with a line of pylons and scattered trees between. The sky is a pale washed-out blue.

Total solar eclipse

Funny story, we didn’t even know this was an “eclipse cruise” until two days after we booked the cruise. We waited too long to book, and so by early June, when we sat down to do it, there weren’t a lot of options. This one fit the bill perfectly: 14 nights (to make the long travel worth it), Celebrity (a brand we know and like), interesting ports, and our preferred type of stateroom. Only once I started to look at the itinerary more closely did I make the realization. And then I started to get excited. What a bonus!

Onboard, as you saw yesterday, there was an informational lecture on what eclipses are and what to expect for this one. The staff made preparations for how to position the ship, and how to communicate that. The ship provided eclipse glasses for everyone. We were ready!

We had a sit-down meal at one of the restaurants around 6:30, securing a seat by the window on the port side2, mostly by luck. As we ate and looked out the window, we formed the idea this might be a good place to watch the eclipse. We didn’t know how crowded the top decks would be, and here was a front-row seat… with drink and dessert service!

We conspired with the waiter that our plan was to eat slow and kill time until the eclipse. He was onboard. There were lots of empty tables at this point.

As time went on, though, we realized we’d miss the partial eclipse, since that was happening to the aft. We ultimately decided to head up to the top deck and take our chances with the crowds.

It ended up being a much better choice than staying at our window spot. I’d expected the top deck to be wall-to-wall crowded, people jostling for position, but it wasn’t like that at all. We had plenty of room to view the partial eclipse from the aft before they turned the ship, and then had a nice spot up top next to one of the hot tubs for totality. Having people crowded nearby was, for me, a feature not a bug. The excitement was contagious.

Looking steeply down from an upper deck onto a crowded outer deck of the ship in warm low evening light, with the flat dark blue Atlantic filling the left half of the frame beyond a glass balustrade. Dozens of passengers are packed along the green-striped deck and the timber handrail, nearly all wearing dark cardboard eclipse glasses and tilting their faces up toward the sun out of shot. Among them are a man in a bright yellow jumper, a man in a pale blue shirt, a woman in a white dress, a young girl in a pink dress and several people in caps and sun hats; some hold phones up to photograph the sky. A curved white section of the ship's superstructure and a large tinted window cut across the right of the frame, reflecting more of the crowd.

Passengers packed along the curved glass balustrades of the ship's upper decks during the partial phase, nearly all of them wearing cardboard eclipse glasses and tilting their faces up toward the sun out of shot. The lenses catch the light as bright rectangles across dozens of faces. Several people hold phones up to photograph the sky instead. The crowd is in summer clothes — a man in a turquoise polo, a woman in a coral jacket, a girl in a white sweatshirt and sequinned skirt, a man in an orange cap — and stands two tiers deep along the curve of the rail. A white ventilation mast and a corner of the superstructure rise at the right, and the flat pale sea meets a hazy twilight sky behind them.

And then, at 8:28pm, it happened:

Totality, photographed through a veil of thin grey cloud. The moon sits as a flat dark disc squarely in the centre of the frame, ringed by a narrow band of pale golden light from the sun's corona, brightest along the left and right edges where faint flecks of red and orange show. The glow diffuses outward into a soft halo before fading into the surrounding sky, which is an even dull olive grey mottled with darker drifting cloud. No landscape or horizon is visible.

I made a conscious effort to be in the moment once totality hit. It’s something I’ll remember forever.

Footnotes:

  1. Obligatory smash that follow button. ↩

  2. The ship’s officers had informed us yesterday they would turn to port prior to totality. ↩

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