Day 9- Cádiz, Spain

Today I woke up at 6:45 and went out on Deck 5 to see the sunrise and my first view of Europe. I got to spend an amazing thirty minutes watching the sky change colors and the huge sun rise above the rooftops of homes, churches, office buildings, and castles. I actually picked the best place on the ship to watch the arrival into port. The port authorities send in a pilot to our ship to help steer it into our berth. The pilot ship, as I think its called, pulled alongside our ship and without tying on or slowing down the pilot jumped across the water and into the open door on our ship. The pilot ship then sped off leaving us to navigate the rest of the way. It was pretty funny to look straight down to the 2^nd deck and see a man jump from his boat to our ship while both were going about 17 mph (I think Dia told me it was mph but maybe she meant 17 knots? I don’t really know about that information)

 

The crew met for breakfast at 7:30 and got a good view of Cádiz from the aft deck. There is a huge cruise ship next to us that really makes our ship look tiny and boring with its many pools and balconies. We finally touched European/Spanish soil about 9:45 am. As soon as I stepped onto the ground I already felt wobbly. We all felt a little “land-sick” until we started walking down the narrow streets packed with shops of all kinds. We stopped at the ATM across from Lacoste on a side street made of cobble stones and lined with apartment balconies overflowing with flowers and laundry on clothes lines. Everything looks like something that is only seen in the movies, it’s all so quintessential. We headed to the train station for the kids who are going to Seville tomorrow on their own. The train station was packed with SASers trying to get their train tickets before exploring the city.

 

After an hour of waiting in the station we finally embarked on our adventure. We first walked down the street past a beach where we had our first photo shoot of the day. We saw tons of churches, cathedrals, and convents along the way. We made it to the large Cathedral, Santa y Apostólica Iglesia Catedral de Cádiz. We ran into David Geis outside and he recommended going to the Cathedral and the tower. We bought our 3 euro tickets to the Cathedral and took a look at all the statues, altars and paintings. We also went into the crypt and looked at a fake corpse in a glass box. At least I hope it was fake. Then we checked out some souvenir shops before climbing the bell tower to get an awesome view of the whole city.

 

Torre de Poniente gives a 360 view of Cádiz with narration of all the landmarks that can be seen from its balconies. This was the location of photo shoot two for the day. After our climb back down we found a place for our late Spanish lunch called Bar Cafetería cada 2 por 3. We lunched on ham (really more like prosciutto)  and tomato (really a tomato spread) sandwiches and sangria. We ended up chatting with the British waiter and he brought us some potato chips for free. The other waiter later gave us all a free shot of what was supposedly caramel vodka. After we were stuffed we continued our walk to Parque Gevenes where we met some local high school kids in the cave by the waterfall. We finished our loop around the city in time to grab dinner on the ship. We must have gotten fresh produce because the lettuce was green again and there were some great plums. We quickly showered and headed down to the pier to see if we could squeeze on the flamenco trip that the rest of the group was going on. Since I sold my flamenco ticket for tomorrow I decided this would be a good alternative. We got on the bus and made our way to a small town outside Cádiz where we spent the evening.

 

We were greeted with a small glass of wine as we got off the bus in what resembled a ranch. The wine was not what anyone expected and we later learned it was sherry wine. We packed into a stadium of sorts to see the bull fighting. Unfortunately it was less than impressive because it was actually a cow, and a baby one at that. The bull fighting was preceded and followed by two flamenco dancers and a man with a horse that he trained to move like it was dancing with the women. This was fairly entertaining as I had never seen a horse do tricks like that before. After the show outside, we migrated into the “salon” where we were given more sherry and some appetizers. There was cured ham, bread, cheese, and oddly enough, corn nuts. We also tried their sangria which we suspect was non-alcoholic. There was another flamenco show inside with a guitar player, a singer, three female dancers, and one male dancer. As we watched I thought of all the things that we had talked about is music class and tried to count the beats of the music. It was a lot harder than I thought.

 

When we got back to the ship I went back to the room and packed for Barcelona while everyone else went out on the town. Should be interesting to see what fun they get into tonight!

 

+ + +

It took me 21 years, but I finally made it to Europe!

 

- - -

I have to wake up at 5 am and it is currently 1 am!

 

“Welcome to Spain, eat a frickin churro”- direct quote from Gina, regarding what she expected people to say as we disembark

 

on that note, I had a churro. It was good but not like what they have at amusement parks.