¡Listo!

Last Tuesday, when my parents were here (!!!), we decided that we'd go to Cádiz, a city in the southern part of Andalucía famous for its huge celebration of Carnaval (the Mardi Gras of Spain), for the beaches in it and the surrounding area, and for its magnificent location.  Here's a picture of it from the air:

A picture much like this one will be adorning a wall in my room next year.  Seeing this spit of land from the air is amazing.  (Even better are the satellite images of the peninsula.)  In one of the places we went, there were actually drawn progressions of the development of the city, dating as far back as the first century, maybe even B.C.  I don't quite remember.

Which brings me to some interesting facts about Cádiz.  It is thought to be the oldest, continuously-inhabited city in the Iberian Peninsula, and possibly all of Europe, with a history that goes back all the way to the Phoenicians and later, the Roman Empire.  The Romans actually had quite a few strongholds in Spain, such as Cádiz and Itálica, which I blogged about back in January.  Cádiz functioned as one of the most important ports in Spain, functioning as starting points for some of Christopher Columbus' voyages, as well as a home base for the Spanish fleet.  It endured lots of hardship at the hands of others, namely raids, attacks, and occupation.  At one point, the English burned it down.  But it remained strong.

Because it's not very big, we were able to make a fairly decent day trip out of all the sights to see in the city.  And it was great!  We saw the famous cathedral, went up the Torre Tavira (which is still the tallest point in Cádiz and has been since the 17th or 18th century -- I'm not sure which), made it to one of the castles on the waterfront, touched the Atlantic, and got back to the train station in time for our trip back home to Sevilla.  The only downside to the whole trip was that it was (a lot) colder than we expected it would be, and it was not very nice weather.  That is to say, it wasn't very sunny.  So a lot of the pictures I'll post are dark and grainy.  But oh well.

My personal favorite part of the entire day was going up in La Torre Tavira and looking out over everything in the city.  Its oceanic isolation really makes you feel like you're on the cusp of the earth, with everything laid out like puzzle pieces on a glass table.  That may seem overly florid, but it's crazy when you can see it.  To be nerdy, it made me feel like I was stuck in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.  (If you don't know what that is, I don't blame you.  But that's what it made me feel like.)  My parents really enjoyed the tower too, as is evident by this photo:


Other things we enjoyed: THE FOOD.  In the torre, which has a camara obscura that shows you a real time picture of all the things going on in the city, there was a man that presented the show and talked in really, really good English.  So we asked him where we would recommend us going to eat.  Now, Marisol told me before I went that I needed to try some seafood there, because evidently, it's really good.  (Naturally, since Cádiz is practically in the ocean already.)  He recommended the Garbanzo negro, a nice little tapas bar right outside the tower.  So we went -- and found out he was right.  We had really good seafood croquettes, potatoes with a mojo picón sauce, some really good olives, et cetera, et cetera.  But the best part of the whole meal, at least for me: arroz negro con chocas.  (Or something like that.  I don't remember exactly.)  This translates to: "Black rice with diced squid."  I, for one, am a strong advocate for exotic food.  But what I found out this was turned out to be beyond even my imagination.  The rice is black in this dish because it has been tinted with squid ink.  (!!!)  And it was SO GOOD!  Oh my goodness.  If you ever see it anywhere, especially if you come to Spain, I recommend you try it.  I'm setting you up to be let down later, but seriously.  It was one of my favorite things so far.

I realize that the paragraph about food is the largest in this post, but I guess that's okay.  The city was pretty quiet while we were there, which was nice.  We could relax a little bit, take everything at our own pace, and just take it all in.  It's nice to be able to do that once in a while.

Overall, Cádiz to me seemed really eclectic.  Old, but new at the same time.  Rustic but loud and outspoken.  Traditional, yet ready to break free.  I could only imagine what Carnaval must've been like: tons of people gathered on this tiny spit of land at the edge of the continent, partying until the sun rose once again.  Kind of crazy to think about, right?  I'm surprised the peninsula didn't sink.