The wonderful portside town of Cadiz

Hola!

My roommate and I woke up at about 6:30 this morning and headed up to breakfast. Breakfast was really good this morning. They had raspberry yogurt!! This may not seem like a big deal to anyone else, but they usually only have cherry and “plain.” Finally a change of food!

Everyone was outside trying to get pictures of the port but, It was still dark so most of the pictures came out blurry. All you could really see were a ton of lights in the distance. We finally docked at about 08:00 and Ali left to go on a trip to the Spanish coastlines plus a visit to Gibraltar. Their group was the first ones off. I left the ship with my friend Kyle around 9 to go explore the city. We were soon joined by his other friend, Cal. We walked around for about half an hour until Kyle told us he had to go back and leave for his “Churches of Cadiz” tour. We walked as fast as we could, but we just couldn’t make it in time. So we headed back to the city to explore and find a place to eat for lunch. We spent a good 3 hours walking around the town and beaches. The beaches are absolutely gorgeous! There is a long stone walkway from one of the old beaches out to an old fort, San Sebastian, which was built to protect the city against an invasion from the French. It was a good 10 minute walk out to the fort! Kyle dubbed it “The Little Wall of Spain.” The actual fort was closed so all we could do was get to the gate and turn around.

The Cadiz city orientation started at 13:00 and I didn’t want to miss it, so we tried to stay close to the port. Of course, things never go quite as planned and we got a little lost. We ended up almost on the other side of Cadiz (the town itself is not that big.) Luckily, we realized we were going the wrong way and hurried back the way we came. I got to the orientation meeting with about 5 minutes to spare. Whew!

The description of the tour says “part bus and part walking.” What they didn’t mention is that the bus portion lasts about 10 minutes and the other 3 hours is walking! We went to a lot of really cool sites. We saw the old official Cathedral of Cadiz and even went into the crypt. Halfway through the tour we were allowed some free time in a local market for shopping. I didn’t have time to eat lunch, so I was really hungry and decided to try some “local cuisine.“ I can officially say that chocolate gelato ice cream tastes wonderful in Spain :). The best part of the tour was visiting the Museo De Cadiz. In the Archaeological department they had a sarcophagi and an old reconstructed pit with skeletal remains. I took about 20 pictures of that. It was awesome!

When I got back to the ship around 5 o’clock my feet were killing me! I decided to go up deck and soak my sore feet in the pool. It felt WONDERFUL! After finally getting some food in my stomach, my friend Andrew and I decided to look for a free wifi spot to use our laptops. It turns out there is a park with free wifi about 5 minutes from the ship! It was awesome to finally use face book again. I tried to upload my pictures but it kept saying “error.” I’ll try again when I have free time on Tuesday. When our laptops died we decided to walk around and do some evening shopping. I bought 2 postcards and got a DBZ figurine out a small gumball type machine for one Euro. Leave it to me to find the anime in every country! I was exhausted by this point so we headed back to ship. My day ended with watching a documentary about the Christian/Jewish/Muslim influences on Spain.

Tomorrow I’m going to visit the old Spanish towns of Ronda and Arcos! I’ll be gone from 09:00-20:15 so the blog might be a tad late. I’ll do my best to get it posted by tomorrow night.