ESPANA!!! Cadiz, Flamenco, and Great First Day

LAND HO!!! The day started out early. I woke up at 6am and quickly got ready so that I could watch us dock at the port. I got to the deck by 7 and I was already kind of late. We could already see the lights from Cadiz which was still a bit far away. But the most ridiculous part was that it was 7am, and the moon was still ruling the skies. The initial lights from the sun had just barely began showing around 7:30, and didn’t actually rise until 8/8:30am. I’ve never seen such a late sun rise. There’s always a first I guess. As we got closer and closer, I felt my blood pumping faster and faster. When we got to our port, two tugboats came out and helped us parallel park next to two other large ships, which took like 20 minutes. Everything is so much slower on sea board vessels. And finally we touched land, 8:30am. BIENVENIDOS A ESPANA!!! There was the city, calling me, and I was so excited and ready to explore. I celebrated by having breakfast for the first time in 9 days, and boy did it taste good. That’s right, the first meal I had in Spain was Milk and Cereal. We then all went to Kathryn’s door and banged it until she woke up. She was like, “What???!!!” “We are in Spain!!!” “Already?” “Yeah, come on and get ready, we r leaving.” After picking up my passport, I collected my backpack and other things, and headed out to the dock. As I stepped off the gangway onto Spanish land, it really hit me that I was visiting my first European country and first country on my voyage. Standing on solid land that wasn’t wobbling like the ship felt really good, but weird at first. We immediately left out on our Cadiz City Orientation tour. We drove in an A/C bus along the coast for around 20 minutes before departing the vehicle and taking the rest by foot. We started out by visiting the “New Cathedral” of Cadiz. This stop was by far my favorite place of the city. It was absolutely magnificent, I’ve never seen anything like it... yet. The Cathedral was massive, the ceiling were 100+ feet into the air, and there were domes and pillars everywhere along with a few windows along the top, giving the cathedral a very misty and mysterious feeling. One word: EPIC!!! Along the sides in multiple nooks were statues and paintings of various saints and patrons of the time, each of which were surround by more smaller sculptures and paintings of angels, important people, etc. And in the center of the whole place was a single altar, also surrounded by big pillars, statues, and beautiful paintings near the ceiling. And underneath this altar was a large room, which had a very humid and musty smell. At first I just thought it was because we were slightly underground. But then I saw many paintings of people along the sides of the room’s corridors, and more statues at the end of these corridors. Our tour guide told us that behind each of these paintings was the tomb of that person, and in one of the corridors was the waxed mummy of one of the saints. After hearing this, I got this good spooky feeling standing there. From the cathedral we made our way to the city hall along the narrow alleyways of the city. There we went into the wedding room of the building, also very amazing. From there, were visited various museums, which were interesting, but nothing as stupendous as the cathedral. In one of them, however, I heard a very interesting story. There were two large artifacts, and the finder of the first one apparently knew that there was a second one. After spending his whole life looking for it, he died. His family sold their house, and when the new owner demolished the house, guess was he found; the second artifact. Funny, the other man searched for it his whole life, and the entire time it was under his bed. I feel like we all are like this man: we all look for things and ways to find ourselves in the world, when everything we really need is simply inside us all, we just need the wisdom and willingness to look inside ourselves and discover this on our own. After the last museum, I broke off from the group with a number of others in the group to get some lunch. We found a small pleasant Spanish bar. We asked the waiter for 3 menus. After waiting for 5 minutes he brought out some food. We thought that it was a complementary appetizer for the orders we would be making, but then he brought out more food. I asked him about this, and then asked for a “Book with the food options.” When he brought these out, we realized what he was doing. The very first item on the menu was called “Menu” which was a 5 course meal, consisting of small quantities of various dishes. Unfortunately for me and two others in the group (also Indians), there were no vegetarian friendly options at the restaurant we all stopped at. So we asked a few locals, and they directed us to a cafe with Empanadas, which were bread stuffed with spinach, cheese, and mushrooms. I didn’t really enjoy it, so instead I decided to have an “ice cream” lunch, which was actually great because it was really warm that day. We then regrouped with the rest of the others, and continued to walk around the city, along the various alleys. After walking for 1.5 hours, we found ourselves at a beach on the other side of the island. Which was when I realized I left my water bottle somewhere :(. From there, it took us another 1.5 hours to get back to our ship, at which point it was 5:30. After a quick dinner of pasta and rice pilaf on the ship (I think I’m going to have to stick to the ship’s food in Spain, because finding vegetarian food was quite difficult), I made my way for the next trip: Authentic Flamenco Night, leaving at 7:30. We first drove to a small bullring, were we got to see an amateur bullfight, which was bloodless and did not feature the matador killing the bull at the end. In reality however, the “bull” was only a cow with smallish horns, and the matador was actually three people, including a boy who looked like he was in high school, distracting the cow at different times. At one point, however, the cow was really close to ramming into the boy, but fortunately if barely missed at the last second. The whole scene was not bad, but nothing that amazing. But then came the dancing. From the bullring we made our way to a small authentic looking restaurant, where they indulged us in tapas, beer, and Sangria (none of which I had). The Flamenco dancing then began featuring a guitar player and singer and male dancer and three female dancers, and I was nothing short of blown away from what ensued. The dancing was energetic, full of passion and emotion, and simply fabulous. It was music was fast paced, catchy, and just great. This continued for some 1.5 hours or so, after which the two younger female dancers stayed behind and began dancing with us. I didn’t really join in, but the second I hear the Maque Rina, I had to get in. The rest was just lots of fun and memorable, and featured a human train. We left the restaurant around 11, with the entire bus singing songs all the way back, all 40 minutes of the drive. Back on the ship, I made plans with Ben for the next day Ronda trip, and now time to go to bed, as its 2am and I need to wake up at 7 tomorrow.
The experience in Cadiz was just great. The city was so pleasant and looked vintage in a good way. The thing I liked most about it, was that everyone was walking. There were very few vehicles especially in the alleys, and the roads were primarily for pedestrians, with an occasional car forcing everyone to move to the side. The only thing I personally did not really like was the stench of fish in certain areas, like around eating parts of the city. Otherwise, the architecture was great and walking along the alleys was really relaxing and enjoyable. The flamenco night, as I said before, was just so much fun to watch and then participate in. Watching the dancers, ignited a fire and energy in the dancers and all of us watching them. If we all put that much passion and energy in everything we did, we could do anything we wanted and enjoy life to the fullest. This day was amazing: I saw great things in the city, saw a great show, and met many people during the trips. And to thinks, this was just the first day of actual travel in the countries. A great way to start an epic journey. Bring on the rest of the days!
-Nimish
September 4, 2010