Cadiz, Spain - October 31, 2012

This city was a very pleasant surprise as we did not know much about this city or port in our itinerary. We have learned that Cadiz was founded by the Phoenicians in around 1100 BC making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in the Western world, Cadiz was the first Guadalquivir fortification. The city lies on a narrow stretch of land surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and based on this geographical location on the Gulf of Cadiz near Gibraltar it is easy to see how this city became a major hub for all trade in Europe and the East. The 16th century saw the renaissance of this city, as its port became the main commercial port for the recently discovered new world. It should also be noted here that Christopher Columbus sailed out of this port in his first Atlantic crossing in 1492. The weather was fine today for our visit, a bit of low cloud this morning with the sun breaking through at times, the real good news is no rain. With map in hand we were off and walking. The tourist map and the city layout are great here, the maps contain four walking routes all colour coded but the best part is that the sidewalks have the corresponding coloured lines drawn on them, all you need to do is follow along and all the viewpoints are noted and in many cases the history of the landmark is included on the map. Awesome and very reassuring that you really are not going to get lost. We knew this city was geared up to welcome tourists as not did they have these maps available for us but they also brought on two city representatives to help and answer any questions that we might have had. So a great day, here are some pictures - on thing on our pictures, we stopped in a local place for lunch and Jan thought it would be a good idea to order a dish called the fish of Cadiz, well as you saw from the pictures in the local market we got some pretty interesting fish served to us and for those of you that watch the amazing race, I wanted to ask for my next clue when we finished our lunch...