The next morning we arrived in Cadiz, which is the port city of Seville. We were going to take a tour of Seville, however, the bus trip is 2 hours each way, leaving only a few hours to explore the city. We decided instead to take a walking tour of the port city of Cadiz, which is supposedly the oldest city in Europe. We visited the Plaza de Espana, where the first Spanish constitution was signed in 1812. We visited the cathedral, the central market, and wandered through the long narrow streets. The houses are all made from a very porous brick that is made from the sediment at the waterfront. Therefore, with a close look, one can see sea shells and other oceanic specimins in the brick. The houses are very homogenous. By law, each house is required to have a watch tower for each entry way. For example, a house with 2 doors is required to have 2 watch towers. Again, a response to the prevalent pirates. Another interesting factoid is that the cathedral is one color on its lower half and another color on its upper half. The guide explained that Columbus sailed from Cadiz on his second and fourth voyages to America and a golden age of trade with America followed. Orginally, Seville was the primary port, however, ships needed to travel from Cadiz along a river route inland, which was time consuming. Eventually, the ships just unloaded their goods at Cadiz, making Cadiz the primary port. For a time, Cadiz was one of the wealthiest cities in Spain and could afford the best materials to construct their buildings. The Catherdral therefore started being built with one type of stone in the early 1500s. Halfway through the construction, which lasted over 100 years, trade opened with Asia resulting in America's trade with Cadiz drying up. Cadiz could no longer afford the original stone and therefore built the upper part of the cathedral with lime stone. In dryer months, the stone decays resulting in flakes and small pieces dropping from the ceilings (there are now nets overhead to catch these falling pieces).
After the tour, we made it back onto the ship, had lunch, and spent the afternoon with the kids. It was our last formal dinner - one entry was giant shrimp - I have never seen shrimp as big as these. They only gave two shrimp, but they filled the plate. Another entry was prime rib. Our waiter earned his gratuity by getting us a plate of each - what a good man! The entertainment that night was a night at the opera - we decided to skip it and instead picked out the photos taken by the cruise staff that we wanted to buy. We also listened to some Jazz from one of the live bands playing on the ship.
Our final cruise day was a day at sea. The sea days are absolutely essential for relaxing and recharging the batteries after the shore days where you tend to do a lot of walking around while trying to see as much as possible. So we got a workout in and did some relaxing. In the afternoon, we attended an art auction. We bid on a couple of things, but the prices always got bid up out of our price range. We entered a raffle and Sandy and I each won a piece of artwork. This made me very happy as it compensated for my losses in the casino. In the evening, the dinner was casual, nothing fancy. We woofed down our food so that we could make the early showing of the night's entertainment, an acrobat - the kids loved it of course.
The next day, we got up early and had our last breakfast in the formal dining room. People started departing from the ship shortly after 6AM. We eventually got off around 8AM and headed for the mall near the port as our flight was not departing until the afternoon. We relaxed, the kids got haircuts, we had an early lunch at McDonalds, and then we hopped on the subway headed for the airport. It was a little cumbersome handling all the luggage and the kids, but we had plenty of time and did not feel the need to rush to the airport in a taxi. We made it in plenty of time, had a nice flight back (the kids slept the whole way) and proceeded to reacclamate ourselves to our normal lives.
