Hello again, Blogonauts!

On Saturday we bid "Adios!" to Seville and began our cross-country sojourn in our rented Citroën Picasso.

Along the way we stopped for lunch in Lebrija, a delightful small town rumored to have several "bodegas." This part of Spain produces copious amounts of sherry, and the bodegas are the warehouses that hold heaping barrels full of aging, fortified wine. They also offer samples to customers for tasting and happily sell bottles of liquid lightning to the public.

Unfortunately, since we drove into the village at lunch time (a.k.a. "siesta" in Spain), we could only find one Bodega open for business: Bodega Gonzalez Palacios. The clerk was preparing to close, but she allowed us to take a peek at their stored stacks of barrels and at their tasting room. And she offered us a sample of their most recent vintage. Let's just say the wine was every bit as fortified as a Spanish castle, and we all surrendered our glasses unfinished. It was, after all, before lunch, and we were driving.

Lebrija also has a cathedral that is planted on the site of a former mosque, and just like Seville, the church's bell tower was converted from the mosque’s minaret.

From Lebrija, we made our way further south to our day’s destination: Cádiz, on Spain's Atlantic coast.

Cádiz is a former capital of Spain and holds several distinctions. It has long been a major shipping port, sitting as it does on a peninsula with both easy access to the Atlantic and a sheltered bay. It was the site where Christopher Columbus launched his second voyage to the New World. And it is also the location where Spaniards, in 1812, first wrote their constitution that established the constitutional monarchy form of government. (Generalissimo Franco suspended the constitution during his time in power, but once his rule ended in 1975, the old freedoms returned. The Spaniards are grateful, and Cádiz is preparing for a grand celebration for the constitution’s 200th birthday next year.)

Even though I earlier made note of Seville’s width-deprived streets, they are like boulevards when compared to the long, narrow, straight alleyways that laughingly pass as streets in Cádiz. Access to our hotel required us to worm our car through impossibly tight squeezes until finally we could deposit it in a parking garage.

Yet in spite of these drawbacks the city’s historic district remains charming. Little café-dotted plazas appear at random throughout the city. There also remain over 100 houses where watchtowers were constructed in the 17th & 18th centuries so their merchant-owners could track their ships’ status, either sailing nearby or anchored in the harbor. Once we climbed to the top of the tallest in town, the Torre Tavira, where we also got a chance to view the city through the mirrored/prismed Camera Obscura. Afterward, we wandered along the beach until we could go watch the sun set from atop the town’s ancient fort.

On our second day in Cádiz, we took a walking tour around the city, before paying the obligatory visit to the Cádiz cathedral. Bob and I also toured the archeological museum which showed where ruins as far back as Punic and Roman civilizations have been excavated. Then in the evening we walked out to the end of the spit of land where sits the Cádiz lighthouse. Next we twisted and turned our way across southern Spain to reach Granada. More on that upcoming!

Blog to you later!