Cadiz, Spain: Day 2

Yesterday was our second day in Cadiz, and Jill and I began it with an 8 AM breakfast, and then boarded a bus headed for Arcos, a small town about a half hour away from Cadiz. There we had a one-hour walking tour, including churches and beautiful views. Arcos is very high up and the streets are VERY small (the bus could not enter), so we had a very exhausting/hot walk up. After the tour I stopped in a little store in one of the alleys and bought a present for James, which will most likely end up being mine as I find that generally, my taste in gifts is much less to his enjoyment than to mine.

After our walk around Arcos, we again got on the bus for a 90-minutes drive to Ronda, another city in Spain. Here, we ate lunch at a local restaurant (pork and a very interesting interpretation of French fries) and then embarked on a three-hour walking tour (ohmygod) of the local sights. Our tour guide was an adorable Spanish man in a cowboy hat who seemed to know just about everyone we passed in the town, and he took us to several sites with INCREDIBLE views and, most notably, the oldest bull ring in Spain. Afterwards, we had some free time to wander (and blister) before heading the two-and-a-half hours back.

From the time we left to the time we returned, Jill and I had spent a total of eleven hours away (and mostly walking/sweating) so we were exhausted when we arrived back. We decided to have an early night (relative to our lives right now) and get dinner at 10. Unfortunately for me, I was not in the mood for seafood and therefore had a very, very, very hard time finding a restaurant to eat at. We are, in fact, ON the Atlantic. I gave up and we settled into a table on the outside patio of an alleyway seafood restaurant which, unlike most Spanish restaurants I’ve seen, serves breakfast (I vowed to return one morning)! The sangria we had was delicious and the shrimp tortillas I picked were very good, though they did include my mortal enemy: onions. I didn’t realize this until after I had eaten the first three, so I was already full and felt no need to burst into tears that everything, everywhere has onions and I will likely starve to death.

We came back to the ship around midnight. The port we are at is under construction and confusing as the close entrance to the ship closes at 11 PM and the far entrance is only open to cars until 11 PM. It took us quite awhile to get back (I put my poor feet through so much yesterday).