Day 7: Cadiz

Our trip to Gibraltar yesterday was fun but a bit tiring, so we had a less adventurous day planned today - visiting the nearby town of Cadiz. When planning the holiday I had initially hoped to stay in Cadiz, but it turned out to be a difficult place to find any kind of accommodation with parking. The place we are staying in in El Puerto de Santa Maria is around 30km away from the centre of Cadiz, so we had a short drive towards the town this morning. Cadiz is really unusual in that the city is located on a narrow strip of a peninsula sticking out into the sea, so we approached it via an enormous bridge. The first thing we noticed as we drove around looking for parking was that there was a huge cruise ship docked in the port. Oh dear!

Once we'd parked up and started to explore the town we did run into a few groups of tourists on excursions from the ship, but luckily not too many

First impressions of Cadiz were that it's a really lovely place. There was a bright blue sky, lots of palm trees and some beautiful buildings.

We'd parked not far away from Cadiz cathedral, which is really enormous.

It's one of those cathedrals where you can't fit the entire building in one photo

The cathedral was set in a big square, which was already decorated for Christmas. You might just be able to make out on the photos that the trunks of the palm trees are covered in fairy lights.

We hadn't come to Cadiz armed with a map, so we just decided to wander around the streets and see where we ended up.

There were lots of pretty buildings, some with enclosed balconies which were a bit reminiscent of Malta.

We soon found ourselves in Plaza de San Antonio, one of the town's main squares.

One of the buildings here made me think of Portugal; part of the facade was covered in beautiful blue tiles.

I also loved this tree with purple flowers on the other side of the square.

The geographical situation of Cadiz means that the town is almost completely surrounded by the sea and before long we got our first glimpse of it.

We decided to walk along by the coast and admire the views.

As we walked, we came across various fortifications.

We also found some beautiful gardens

The photos from today are going to look odd, because it was a strange combination of being cold enough to need a jumper but sunny enough to wear sunglasses

As we were walking through the gardens we saw this tree with an enormous trunk

Leaving the gardens, we walked alongside the coast once again.

We were able to enter one of the coastal fortifications for free and explore.

There were some great views out to sea from the walls.

Facemasks were compulsory, even though we were predominantly outside.

After the castle we came to one of Cadiz's beaches.

It seemed like a nice proper sandy beach, though it was a bit cold for anyone to be sunbathing on it today.

A bit further on around the coast we saw another castle in the distance.

We were able to walk towards it via a long pier.

This is the castle of San Sebastian. It wasn't open today, but it looked impressive from the outside.

We made our way back along the pier, towards the centre of Cadiz.

It was after 1pm now, so we figured Spanish breakfast time would definitely be over and we should be able to start looking for some lunch

We continued to follow the walkway alongside the sea.

As we got closer to the historical centre again we got an amazing view of the cathedral.

I thought it was pretty when we were in the cathedral square, but I hadn't realised that it also had this enormous dome

Did I mention that it was really windy in Cadiz?

When we'd finished admiring the cathedral we found a little restaurant for lunch. We both had the menu of the day, which involved chicken soup (although to be honest, mine seemed to have more ham and egg(!) in it than actual chicken) plus spaghetti bolognese. It was really good value, at €11.50 each

After lunch we had a final look at the cathedral...

...and walked through the cathedral square, in search of one attraction in Cadiz which we hadn't yet managed to find.

I'd read in the guidebook that Cadiz had a Roman theatre, so I was keen to see what it was like. When we eventually tracked it down, it seemed like it was rather on the small side.