Roadtrip: Cádiz

After our amazing visit to Gibraltar we had a less amazing night in a small hostel. But the next day we drove to Cádiz.

Cádiz was just another 1,5 to 2 hour drive away and we started with our usual "breakfast at noon". Since it was not possible to check in at the hostel yet we had to leave our stuff in the office and trust the hostel guy, which was a bit uncomfortable. We went to the city, got some nice breakfast including a coffee, orange juice, 2 toasts and butter and jam for 3 € each.

Then we bought some food and went back to the hostel because we saw a notice about a "Free City Walking Tour". At first we thought it starts at the hostel but then it turned out that we have to walk 15 minutes. After some trouble with finding the place we finally arrived, and discovered that the tour hasn't even started yet. Probably because it was "Spanish time" ;-). But therefore our guide was very good. The Trip started at the city hall of Cádiz and then went on to some other old buildings.

One interesting thing we learned about Cádiz during the tour is the special kind of building stone that is used through the entire of the city. It is called oyster stone and was used for building a lot of the buildings you see in the City. It is a sedimentation stone that actually contains very recognizable shells and feels very strange, but looks quite nice. By today it is forbidden to harvest the stone from the coast where it originally was taken from because it serves as a natural protection of the city, but by now this type of stone can be created artificially as well.

Cádiz consists of a very beautiful old town and a new part. Our guide told us that for the locals people living in the new part are not fully recognized as "real" citizens. Another interesting thing are the towers. You see little towers on many buildings all over the city because back in the days when Cádiz was a very important trading city the tradesmen used them to put up colored flags, indicating to the ships in the harbor what goods they trade. The shipmen could then walk straight to the buildings and start to trade.
For very strange reasons there is a so called "window tax" in many Spanish cities. (In Cadiz there is even a "solar panel tax" 🙁) Therefore people started to close up windows of their houses with bricks to pay less.

On our tour we also saw a roman theater and near that a place with Phoenician settlements where more scientific work needs to be done to complete the restoration. But for political reasons this project is on freeze for several years already because the funding for it magically disappeared.

The Cathedral of Cádiz is my favorite building in the city. Although we did not go inside it looks very interesting from the outside since you have 3 different styles of architecture an materials in one building. Also there is a top view map built into the pavement in front of the cathedral.

What is also very interesting is that on many house corners in the old town you see big metallic objects. They turned out to be old cannons. This is because horse carriages and later cars used to ruin peoples houses. after Napoleon left Cádiz his troupes left a lot of cannons behind and the people started to mount them to their corners to protect them. Cádiz is also known to be a very, very windy city and that is one of the reasons the old town has such small streets in the first place to protect the people from the wind.

The others where pretty tired after the tour through the city and decided to go straight to the beach, while me and Jasper went for a really nice lunch in one of the streets of El Populo, a district of the old town.

Before heading for the beach we also made a quick visit to the Castle of San Sebastián, with was one of the defense buildings in the harbor. From there you can have a very nice view on the cityscape.

And last but not least are some really cool trees. We were told they had been planted by nuns, that imported the seeds from Australia.