Cadiz 030311

What can you say about this place?

Well, you don’t sail here for the marina surroundings, outside the marina is a bit of a concrete wasteland, next to the commercial container port, but the staff are great.  We spent about an hour in the office sorting out where to get gas and where to get our liferaft serviced; the combined linguistic skills of three marina staff and ourselves got there in the end. Security is excellent although because of the Carnaval (more later) they switch off the swipe card access to the showers and pontoons and employ extra security staff to make sure nobody gets in who shouldn’t; slightly disconcerting but also very secure.

It’s about a 15-20 minute walk along the sea wall to the edge of the old city.

The marina arranged for a taxi to take us to the life raft service centre – it very nearly didn’t get there as I forgot to undo the activation cord before trying to heave the thing off the boat onto the pontoon – just stopped before it went off and I had an inflated liferaft sat on the pontoon.

What you come here for is the city – what a place, if you get chance, come and visit.

It’s just an amazing place.

The old part is surrounded on three sides by the sea and the huge city walls on the fourth leading to a really narrow peninsular to the mainland. There are buildings from the 3^rd century onwards, thousands of bars, some tiny ones tucked away without any signs just a door, hundreds of restaurants and shops all built into the ancient buildings.  Every few hundred yards are grand plazas and tiny squares.   Thousands of narrow streets and alleyways with tall buildings.  You can get to the top of the bell tower of the “New Cathedral” (about 300 years old), the pictures don’t really do it justice but you get the idea.

You can see the marina in the distance from the bell tower.

We took this picture in a cider bar where we had a cheap lunch – they give you a pump to sit on top of the bottle – quite bizarre.

They also have free wi-fi across the city which is great as Carole sorts out her business via the internet and phone sat in a square under the sun.

The Carnaval – Spanish spelling – we’ve fallen across the biggest event of the year, 10 days of carnival and mayhem. All of the streets within the old part of the city are being prepared – from hundreds of extra toilets (there’s even a map of where the extra ones are!) to loads of street lights, stages in every square, and each bar dressed up for the week.  We think it’s a sort of grand masked ball across the city, and the biggest gay festival in the area.  It starts on Saturday.  We plan to stop for the start of it before sailing off for the rest of the week, returning on Thursday when some friends join us for the weekend and the Carnaval comes to a crescendo.

Unusual wild birds around here too!  Any ideas? Plenty of these in the area.