Cadiz, Spain: This is our last mainland Europe port, then we stop in the Canary Is. and head west to Ft. Lauderdale. We’ve been alongside all day, and should be setting sail soon.
This a.m we did a taxi tour of the city, with a driver who had workable-if-limited English. He drove us around for an hour, we made some stops for photos which will likely show up at the other DrC’s blog. Afterwards we sat in the terminal for an hour or so using the free WiFi to do some surfing.
Cadiz is a clean, attractive city right on the water, looking across the strait to North Africa. It was a major departure/arrival point for colonial galleons and is very old, a Roman theater is here and before them the Phoenicians were here, as well as the Carthaginians somewhat later.
Ships once sailed up the river to Seville but it silted up and then Cadiz (pronounced CAD iz) came into its own. This echoes the way Ostia was followed by Civitavecchia as the port of Rome. I guess the ancients couldn’t dredge out the silt without engines to provide power.
Yesterday in Gibraltar we stayed onboard as we’d “done” the Rock before and had no need to do it again.
