Day 23, 13th September Cadiz (Seville) Spain

 Had a little later start today as we couldn’t get off until 11.00am so after wishing Julie a happy birthday and breakfast we joined the queue to get off. Cadiz was founded 3,000 year ago by the Phoenicians and is the oldest city in Western Europe. The port was extremely busy as there were 5 very large cruise ships all in port, but everything ran smoothly.  Out in the city to have a look around we decided that the amount of people waiting for hop on hop off bus would mean quite a wait so decided to again get a taxi which has been and was again an excellent means of seeing the town. We negotiate the price with the driver for how many hours we want and on most occasions it has been cheaper or the same as the hop on hop off bus, and another advantage is they can go to lots of places the bigger buses can’t get into.  They know the history of their town and make sure you see everything quite often places that aren’t well known but are worth looking at and give you time to have a walk around look at things and take pictures. We went straight into the old town through one of the three 13th century archways known as El Populo, La Rosa and Los Blancos not sure which we one we came through, and started at the promenade which is where they like to walk along as its right on the Atlantic and very beautiful, from there it was off to see some beautiful squares with lovely gardens as well as some amazing churches, one of which had the most amazing altar in gold. He said that quite some time ago they had a massive earthquake followed by a tsunami that devastated this area but the old Cathedral and Churches all survived unscathed. There is also remains of the roman Theatre which dates to 1st century BC  not a lot left but you can see part of the stone walls and doorways. We went and had a look at the old fort right on the beach as well as the beach and city baths made famous in one of James Bond movies, where Pierce Brosnan (Bond) meets Halle Berry (Wicks) when she comes out of the ocean. This city is so beautiful and is spotlessly clean with hardly any graffiti anywhere, actually nearly everywhere has been very clean without much graffiti. We arranged to have a surprise dinner in the Caneletto restaurant for Julies birthday. The meal was lovely we shared lamb cutlets and veggies, sirloin strip and gnocchi with braised beef, for dessert I had tiramisu which was amazing and Pete and Julie chose sorbet which was 3 different flavours just as we were finishing dessert they came out with a cake on a plate with Happy Birthday written on it which was a lovely way to finish our dinner. After dinner we went to the late show to see Simon Palomares a comedian who is from home he was the café manager in Acropolis Now a very funny guy, from there we went out on the deck as we were passing from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean via the Gibraltor Straights, we could see the lights from both continents, we were closest to Morrocco and you could easily make out the buildings and some special lights they had on the side of a mountain.














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