Cadiz, Spain

Written by Dave:

As we were checking out of our campsite in Tarifa, we asked if there were any stops on the way to Seville worth making.  They said Cadiz was worth a visit, so we plugged the info into our navigation, and headed for Cadiz.  It wasn’t much out of the way, so was an easy stop to make.  Coming up to Cadiz, we drove by miles of beautiful sandy beaches and turquoise blue waters.  They looked incredibly tempting, but we needed to get into Cadiz so we pressed on.

Cadiz was a beautiful mix of old and new, and was fun to drive through.  There really wasn’t any parking for a camper however, so we kept driving.  After going through a few narrow streets leading out of town, we found this strip of parking near the marina.

It was a bit of a walk back to Cadiz, but by now we are seasoned walkers, putting in many miles a day.  Even Luie keeps up walking everywhere on his own two legs.  Quite impressive.  We had a nice view of the old city from where we parked.

As we walked in, we saw many people fishing off the wall.  Didn’t see any fish being caught, but it looked like fun.  Here is a view of the walls as we approached the older part of the city.

Once we crossed through the walls, we emerged into a park.  In the park were the largest rubber trees I have ever seen.  You can see the scale of the tree with Luie in the picture.  In the US these are a little house plant.  These were huge like the giant banyan trees in Hawaii.  Quite impressive.

We walked out of that park, and right into another one.  This one was much bigger, and a bit more refined.  We saw a tour group just leaving it, so decided it must be worth a visit also.

They had these dinosaurs in the park near a water feature.  I wanted Luie to go up and pose with it, but he thought the dinosaur was too scary.  No amount of talk would convince him otherwise.  I decided I would walk up to it and show him how tame it was.  When Luie came up to it, I couldn’t help myself.  I copied the dinosaur pose and growled at him.  He decide to growl back.

The streets were fun to walk through, as there was a lot of interesting architecture to see.

You can see the mix of the old and the new as you move through the city.  This building was renovated, but they tried to retain as much of the old as possible into the refurbished church.

Many places throughout the town, the streets popped into these large squares.  They are natural gathering places, with many outdoor eating options.  Being off season, it wasn’t very crowded and we were lucky to have the place mostly to ourselves.

We got a bit hot walking around, so decided to try out a local frozen yogurt shop.  I got chocolate with kiwi and strawberry.  It was delicious, and cooled me off well.  It was fun to sit down and enjoy the surroundings for a while.

Here is the family in another square.  It really was a great town, everywhere you went.  Cadiz was an awesome stop off point on the way to Seville.

As we made the long walk back to our camper, the kids chatted happily about their favorite moments in Cadiz.  We then switched to what wonders we might find in Seville.  We loaded up and struck off for the two hour drive to Seville.  What wonders will we find there?