Category Archives: Travel

The charming streets of Cadiz

Cadiz is like the other Spanish cities in so far as it is clean and light with car movement minimized and good design showing through. It is a small town of about 120,000 yet it has different heritage walks clearly marked on the pavement like the trading one highlighting sites from when this city was the queen of the waves.

Students sit on the steps of the Cathedral using free Wifi

The same forward thinking Council is testing free Wifi in some plazas and has produced  “7 Hours in Cadiz” so that cruise linerettes can maximize their experience. Signs of anything before the largely 18th century makeover are hard to discern though.

It is said that Cadiz is the oldest city in Europe. IN THE 12th CENTURY BEFORE CHRIST (imagine that!) some of my favorites, the Phoenicians started to trade here with the local tribes. Wine, oil, dyes, and glass were traded for precious metal.

Later Hannibal took the region over and when he was defeated the Romans made this the SECOND MOST POPULOUS CITY AFTER ROME.

The Visigoths destroyed Gades (Cadiz) in the 5th century and then the Moors were here for 700 or so years before those right wing Catholics reconquistored. Isabel and Ferdie might have sent Columbus to America from here a few times but they presided over a bloody awful Inquisition. In Seville we saw the park where the executions were held and there are a few Museums of Torture about.

So there ……   history in a nutshell except for the bloody Spanish wars amongst themselves. I can understand why Goya and Velasquez were so dark.

Phonecian sarcophagi could be 12th century BC. Imagine that!

There’s not a lot of anyone left to see except for the Spanish and my hunt for the Phoenicians had to be satisfied with the  2 sarcophagi to be found in the excellent little museum. About 10000 years old!

My fascination with the Phoenicians goes back first to Jezebel who introduced the god Baal to the tribe and for her trouble the husband, lover of Hebrew gods, had her beheaded. She went to her grave in full makeup hence the connotations with the name. The woman would not be bowed.

Then there is Dido, or Elyssa, who was pissed her brother inherited the throne; she married a rich man; tricked her brother when her husband died and fled with her mates to found the city of Carthage. She is said to have loved Aeneas and killed herself when he left to found Rome.

Enough history…. Most tourists in Cadiz are Spanish speaking and the place isn’t full of the ubiquitous tapas bars. Food is therefore better.

Some of those steps led to the Cadiz Museum where there was such a fascinating exhibition I had to research it later. Post IT City is a series of  photographs and videos from all around the world of people who temporarily occupy city spaces for example, “an industrial estate that becomes an illegal race circuit at weekends, the use of the building-site city for the adventures of explorer nerds, variants of the squatter phenomenon, the use of different wastelands for occasional meetings (nomad camp, rave), the conversion of a daytime campus into an night-time area of sexual transactions”.

As a one time urbanista I was grabbed. Planning vacuum meets art meets humanity. The exhibition comes out of Barcelona; there’s a book and web references.

A rabbit goat? What planet are we on?

We visited the markets and amongst all the great food was this rabbit!

24000 steps on the last day in Cadiz.

Seville is a city of plazas….small squares full of orange trees with the bitter Seville oranges falling to the ground all over. No good picking them in a desperate search for vitamin  C in this land shy of vegetables. They are too bitter.

I climbed the old Moslem minaret which is now the bell tower to the Seville Cathedral.  Vistas of whites buildings with the bull ring built in the 1700s showing through. The Islamic influence is not so obvious here.

The busy baroque Cathedral proudly displays a certificate from the Guinness Record people saying it is the biggest in the world; it might reluctantly admit that St Peter’s and St. Paul’s are grander if the ceiling heights are included in scale. The Della Robbia’s are an elegant respite in so much gilt.

Gilt Gilt everywhere gilt!! This lot is in the Cathedral

Ah! Catholic Spain! It might be fading but it still has some class acts. In the nearby OTT baroque church you get into for the same ticket, a bone of St Barbara is on display and yet another fragment of the true Cross. That was a bloody big Cross He had to bear given the number of fragments in existence.

A vibrant town

African photograpers on display!!

Seville is deceptively fascinating. There’s the art show in the street, the buskers, the tram running past the Cathedral with the gentry spilling in front of it waiting to go to a formal wedding, the estates with their skaters’ ramps down by the river, street art and a bustling city centre. There’s even a man feeding pigeons in the park where the executions were held during the Inquisition.

Finally a genuine local tapas bar…Morales…huge pottery wine barrels, a local clientele, dry white and anchovies on fresh cheese worth the trip to Seville. Even better, a thunderstorm breaks the heat and my sinus seems to improve.  We’re checking the pedometer, about 17000 steps today albeit slowly in the heat. A tick for the heart foundation.

Even a rollerskating gnome has to rest

Carmen came from here so what is more natural than a re-enactment in the park?