The next evening I found myself in Cadiz, dropped off by the most hospitable resident in all of Andalusia, Pablo, who gave me a quick tour of the town and insisted I come stay with him and his family in Sevilla after I´d seen Cadiz. I took his number before he left and wandered around the georgeous and wealthy looking town for a hostel. There were few tourists, but many Spaniards crowding the streets and overcrowding the bars and restaurants. I was baffled that such a small town on the Costa de la Luz contained such a dense population! I persisted in my search for a hostel or even a hotel bed, but after three or four hours of futile, sweaty door knocking someone was kind enough to tell me it was a local holiday weekend and Cadiz is Andalucia´s favourite local holiday destination! Luckily, though, Andalucians like to party all night long, so I spent the entire night wandering around the busy, joy filled streets checking out the bars, meeting people (communicating through a mixture of terrible Spanish, almost non-existent English and a bunch of wild hand gestures), drinking many coffees and taking lots of photographs of the town´s quaint architecture. Not a bad night after all!
The next morning I took a tour of the Great Cathedral of Cadiz, first going up into the recently opened, Medieval bell tower. At the top of the tower was a platform surrounded by six iron bells, each of a different size and thickness, the smallest of which was still five times the size of my head! The main area of the Cathedral, which is still used, is a massive Baroque fest of gold brocade and Rennaissance architecture. I tried to visit a few other monuments on the Cadiz sightseer´s ´to do´list, but they were mostly closed for the public holiday. I ended up wandering through the Parque Genoves during siesta where I bumped into some jugglers enjoying their day off at the park. We ended up chatting for an hour or so, before one of the jugglers, who part times as a historic tour guide in Cadiz, decided it was his absolute duty (as an ambassador for the city) to take me on a personal, historic tour of the Castillo (Castle of) Santa Catalina, a Moorish sea front castle in the shape of a five pointed star (you can see this from aerial photographs). Arturo pointed out things I wouldn´t normally have considered, such as that the main part of the castle, and the city for that matter, was built from compressed coral rocks taken directly from Cadiz´s shore. If you look closely at the porous walls, you can distinguish spiral shells and coral formations of all descriptions. My new found guide pointed out many such historic facts in Cadiz as we made our way around the old city. We finally ended up at the holiday´s special parade of the virgin Madonna, complete with band and float (see photo gallery).
I left Cadiz on this happy, fairytale note and slept heavily the entire bus ride to Seville (or Sevilla, as the locals call it). I was greeted at the bus station by a smiling Pablo, welcoming me proudly to his great and wonderful city. He took me back to his family´s home and introduced me around. He then led me to a room all set up with fresh sheets and puffed up pillows and a huge bathroom next door. Then told me to hurry up and get ready because after we ate, he was going to show me HIS Sevilla! Over the next three days we were constantly on the go, from the Juderia (the well preserved Jewish quarter in the centre of town), to the Cathedral Giralda (the third largest Cathedral in the world - it was massive!), to the botanical gardens. We went to the Museo Arqueologico (Museum of Archaeology) in the botanical gardens, where I learnt that Sevilla and Cadiz were actually founded by the seafaring Phoenecians way back in the seventh century BCE (around the time that Homer recited the Odessey). This was way back before Christianity or Islam even existed, let alone their millenia long conflicts of Iberian supremacy! We then walked through Plaza de Americas; a square of little note except for the masses of doves which flock there and which are so calm and tame that they can happily eat out of the hands of excitable, wonder-filled toddlers! Pablo took me all over Sevilla; from weird and wonderful clubs, cafes and restaurants to the prison which held Cervantes while he wrote his famous "Don Quixote" series. Of the sights, probably the most rewarding was the amazing Reales Alcazares; the royal Alcazar palace with its intricately decorated, elaborate architecture and gardens, fountains, hedge mazes, pools and even a real hedge labaryth you could actually hide or get lost in (for a few minutes anyway) - check out the photos because my words fall short!
We ate Sevillian food, met heaps of Sevillian locals, avoided the hot August sun (much to my heat-loving dissapointment), improved my Spanish in leaps and bounds and experienced an amazing, local version of Sevilla I have not since heard any other traveller describe. The highlight, however, was on Friday when Pablo invited me to Casa de la Memoria for a traditional Flamenco performance. In a small, unmistakably Sevillian courtyard, two dancers (Anna Marques and Antonio Molino "Choro") and two musicians (Jeromo Segura and Juan Campallo) whipped up a frenzy of black dancing shoes and guitar riffs as intricate as the Real Alcazar, whilst performing ´Marquesita.´ It was an authentically memorable experience - especially for my last night visiting Pablo´s Sevilla!
On Friday afternoon, having decided to push on to Cordoba or possibly even Madrid, I consulted the internet and found I had more money that I had thought in my accounts; that´s funny. I scanned my emails and saw one from Mum talking, amongst other things, about how I sounded like I was having such an amazing time and had I found her suprise yet. A suprise? Extra travel money? I was still in Sevilla, which is geographically fairly close to Algeciras, where the ferries leave for Morocco from. I had already decided, though, to leisurely head North back towards Barcelona over the next week, where I had a comfortable and paid for flat awaiting me and a whole city to discover. After all, I had already enjoyed an adventurous, wonderful and inspiring two weeks travelling around Southern Spain. On the other hand, Morocco was so close! I still had the phone number of that lovely Austrian couple from Torre de la Pena who had invited me to accompany them to Morocco sometime that weekend ...
Hmmm - North or South?
Next time on Tempest Trails:
- Will Tempest leisurely meander up to Barcelona via Cordoba, or will she make it down to the elusive Morocco for a few days?
- Where do you find the perfect sandals?
- Who was Gus?
Some Tempest time.
Some Tempest channel.
