Sunday 16th May: Our second and only full day in Cadiz.

This is just a short update as we’ve had a very full day and have only just retired to our room at 9.30 pm.

We woke to a beautiful sunny morning and took a walk along the harbour and beach area which was lovely as we’re missing our beach walks from home a bit.

Our morning activity was a guided walking tour starting at 10 am which was very interesting where we met a lovely young German couple, Marina and Marcel, who we went on to spend time with after the tour and then again this evening for dinner.

The walking tour took us through the historic Old Town and the history here is reminiscent of many of the other Spanish towns we’ve visited in this region: Phoenician origins, then Visigoth followed by the Romans, the Moors and then the Christian Re-conquest period, however, it is all still very impressive though. The Old Cathedral was rather reminiscent of the Cathedral in Cordoba as, having also been built on the site of an old Mosque, it also contained the characteristic Mosque arches. Cadiz does stand apart in one area though in that they were able to keep Napolean out and there are remnants of his army cannons spread throughout the city but are now being used as wall buffers to protect from damage from passing cars!

The tour finished at about 1 pm and we had a drink and a chat with Marina and Marcel before parting for the afternoon. Mark and I went on to the new Cathedral and took and an audio guided tour and hike up to the Bell Tower. This is referred to as the ‘new Cathedral’ but this is a rather relative term as work started on this in 1722 and it wasn’t completed until 1838!

Marina and Marcel then joined up with us again and in searching for a dinner venue we ended up back at the place we had dined at last night, Cafe Royalty. This time though we took the tapas dining option rather than the restaurant one but, I have to say, I think the restaurant offerings were better than the tapas but the company was delightful and so the food really mattered rather little.

Marina and Marcel left us for their 45 min drive back to their hotel but we have made plans to meet up with them again in Malaga on our last night as we overlap for that one evening.

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