A much more relaxed Spain

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Our trip to Cadiz began a little rough.  My roommate Fernando and I left to catch the train a little bit after everyone else.  When we arrived, I didn't see Vic, Tyler, or anyone we were traveling with.  I noticed one other girl from the Fundacion and asked her if she had seen them.  She told me no, but I could use her phone to call.  So I call Vic, and it turns out the train is completely full and they left to catch a bus.  It was leaving in 10 minutes.  Fernando and I began to walk to the bus stop thinking we could catch it.  Now, Fernando is one of the most laid back guys you will ever meet.  I wanted to run, but he said don't worry, we'll be fine.  So we continued walking until there was only about 2 minutes until the bus left.  I told Fernando it was time to run and we ran.  We literally got to the bus as they were pulling away and they stopped and handed me the one ticket they had purchased for me.  Luckily for Fernando, the ticket was wrong, heading FROM Madrid TO Toledo.  I would have stayed with him anyways.  Continuing the story, we bought tickets for the next bus, which left in 30 minutes.  Our plan was to meet up in Madrid and have the others buy our tickets beforehand.  We made it to Madrid and even had some time to relax.

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The busride to Cadiz was quite interesting.  I managed to fall asleep for a little while, but then I awoke to the most horrible bumpy road.  In a daze, I looked out the front window only to see flashing arrows telling which way the road is turning, kind of like on a videogame.  It reminded me of PeeWee's Big Adventure when they are driving in the dark and all you see is more and more dangerous roads.  I looked out the window to my left and realized that we were literally on the top of a mountain.  There was a drop-off that I really did not want to see, and the bus was bouncing all over the place.  I was more fascinated than scared because the rocks and the silhouettes were so incredible.  I wish I had some pictures, but they wouldn't turn out.

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When we arrived in Cadiz, i was a bit sad because it wasn't that warm.  In fact, I was cold.  I had only packed tshirts and one thin soccer warm up jacket for the entire trip.  On the contrary of what I was told about Cadiz, it only reached about 70-75 degrees, and the mornings were more like 40-50 degrees.

Our first mission was to find a hostel.  For the first time, I didn't book it online in advance.  We walked from hostel to hostel, looking for a cheap and semi clean place to stay.  When we got to the fouth hostel, they were being really rude and creepy.  They wouldn't let us see the room and basically said, "What the hell do you want?!  Take it or leave it!!"  So we said leave it.  We went back to a hostel that cost about 3 dollars more, but the man at the desk was incredibly friendly.

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Our next mission was to see Cadiz in one day, because the next day we were going to El Puerto de Santa Maria to visit my Dad's college buddy Fred and his wife Annette.  We started by walking along the coast.  As I found out from Fred, Cadiz has been inhabited by the same people uninterrupted for about 3000 years.  That makes it the longest inhabitance in Spain.  It is a peninsula surrounded by a wall, which explains a lot.  It would have been incredibly difficult to attack Cadiz based solely on the wall around it.  As we walked around the wall, there were orange trees, parrots, and some beautiful gardens to visit.  As we walked, it began to warm up, and we started to just love Cadiz and the weather.  We made our way to "the tower" of Cadiz in the center of Casco Historico, which was the old part of the city we stayed in.  We couldn't seem to find it, so we asked some Andalucians on the street.  It turned out that we were only about 100 meters away, and the tower was pitiful.  We all laughed because the tower was about as tall as a small 4 floored apartment complex.  We decided not to go up the tower and returned to the hostel to take a nap.

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We woke up around 7 pm and when we walked out of the hostel, the city was alive.  The streets were filled with people shopping, going out to eat, and going to bars.  We decided to take a bus over to Tyler and Patricks hotel room on Playa Victoria.

To be continued very soon