We’re near to a school, so we rise at around 7.00 with the sun and the sons and daughters that arrive at school across the way. Our home is one of those three-storey terraces that grace the streets of many old cities in Europe, ours being the oldest, I need to remind you. The portico is the entrance hallway to our home and the patio is the reception area. So the new patio is on [...]

Explored a further neighbourhood today and enjoyed connecting up the different ‘barrios’ of Cadiz and relishing in its antiquity and the non-touched-up feel about the place. Just staying in our small Hostal, hardly seeing anyone, and being treated like family by the (it’s difficult to call them staff) owner and his helpers, has been exquisite.  Our host is a professional soccer player, out injured at the moment, and is a goalie. He looks like a [...]

A reading day today, combined with our mandatory 5+kms walk through now familiar areas combined with some new discoveries. Being in the centre of the old part can get a bit busy at times and exploring the quieter less familiar areas like today provides time for reflection. While the older parts are what many seem to yearn for, it is the thinking around how to make them more productive that keeps them alive. I’m reflecting [...]

It was time to buy train tickets for when we leave on Saturday. After weeks of changing our lodgings every night, it is great to just stop in one place to wind down, get back into my exercise routine and take the opportunity to get a feel for a place. It also means there is time to make bookings for events that need to be arranged ahead of time. We thought we had plenty of [...]

We went for a walk today along the 3km shoreline of Cadiz, or was it Cadiz? Various names have been given to the continent’s oldest city but it’s been Cadiz now for a very long time. Yet it is the old city that takes true ownership of the name. The long stretch of beach that we followed was outside the city walls and though it is also Cadiz, the old city people refer to those [...]

It was viewing time already in the cobbled street gallery, as the sun had been busy painting the buildings and cobbles slowly, while continually adding more light, creating changing combinations of light and dark in true Baroque tradition, although its technique preceded it by infinite years. We entered the museum of art uncertain of its contents but inspired by the natural paintings already seen. The primary painter was a Spaniard named Francisco de Zurbaran, a [...]

We paid our seven euros and were led across a dimly lit room of 50 tables with seating for around 200 to a table where ‘Coralie 2’ and 2 Ukrainian names were written, against a wall covered by flamenco artists. One of the artists seemed to have dropped from a photo and was standing silently, wearing a large, bright pink hat with a ‘don’t mess with me look’, as I gingerly sat on my non-favourite [...]

Corrie’s knees don’t like the hills like I do so I climbed the spiral hill (like a real outdoor hill - no steps) on my own. I realised when I got to the top that if you don’t like crowds, it’s a great place to go because many others also don’t enjoy (for various reasons) a steep climb. The view was superb and it was like a tour of the old city in a few [...]

Today it was a bookshop/cafe tour to find a ‘good book’ and the ‘best croissant’. We googled the bookshops and received advice about croissants from the best hostal owner in Spain. We’re staying here for a while and he is determined to ensure, as guests leave, that we are upgraded to the best room. Nothing is any trouble;  he engages us in conversation whenever he sees us, and we get on like old friends. Two [...]

We never go on a walking tour, but today we did. Pablo was very entertaining as he led us with his pink umbrella through the tall and narrow streets of Western Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited city. These streets were so designed to keep the uncomfortable weather away both providing nearly continuous shade from the fiery sun and protection from southern Spain’s mighty winds. As he informed us that Cadiz had one of the world’s first [...]