Cadiz 05/03/11

Crisis averted – found small supply of Twining’s tea bags – not told Carole how much they cost but it is worth it to get her out of bed in the morning! Emptied supermarket shelves of their stock.

Jobs day today; emails for Carole’s work, had trouble sending attachments, very frustrating; got cooking gas – the last one in Cadiz we were told as the Carnival stalls use the same sort. Do some stitching on the sail cover, stuff like that. By 7pm the streets are filled with people in fancy dress heading for the city centre, with bags of alcohol, coachload after coachload, ferry after ferry, train load after train load. It is going to be chaos! Can’t believe all these people will fit in the old city centre. 9pm off to find out!

0300 – Bonkers – Chaos – Huge Fun, streets packed with people in fancy dress, literally thousands of people, carrying bags of alcohol, bands playing, stage acts being performed, drag artistes doing their stuff. Absolutely no sign of any trouble, despite the vast amounts of alcohol. That said we left at 0230 and some bars had only just opened! Never seen so many people in fancy dress. Lots of effort too, not just a silly hat – unlike us – not much fancy dress on the boat, the nearest we have are the oillies so we wore those with ball masks – could have done with sowesters and pipes really to look like salty sea dogs – next time.

I’ve got to hand it to the Spanish – thousands of people, huge amount of alcohol, no trouble – what would have happened in the UK?

Cadiz 04/03/11

Tea situation still desperate, having to visit all markets and alimentacions to search for supplies. As Carole refuses to get out of bed without a cup of tea this is becoming problematic. Have found some Spanish teabags but they are a faint substitute for the real thing.

Went into Cadiz and chatted to the tourist info people and they told us of the parade to “the beautiful people”. We couldn’t resist that and found it was a beauty parade with a difference the ladies parade around the streets on house drawn carriages and end in in one of the grand plaza. Just as the church bells were striking 8pm a burlesque stage show based loosely on Cabaret starts up with all of the girls “doing a turn”. I’d taken the camera and with the “paparazzi” lens and have to admit it felt faintly pervy taking the pictures – with that lens you can see all of the girl’s assets! For a fee I’ll let you see the ones not on the blog…..

One pan pressure cooker stew becoming an art form but as I do the washing up, it’s a good thing.

Wind blew a hooley last night and as the tide came in and we rose towards the top of the sea walls we were gradually exposed to more of the force – fenders squished again but eased as the tide ebbed and the water level fell again.