May 14, 2012: Malaga, Spain (The Alhambra)
	May 12, 2012: Lisbon, Portugal (Day 2)
	Return to the Index for Our Cruise to Europe

From the Ship's Log:   Sunday, May 13, 2012 Cadiz, Spain 8:08am      Pilot embarked 9:02am      Safely docked 6:47pm      Vessel undocked and underway

We spent two interesting days in Lisbon, and then spent a night at sea before our second country of the trip- Spain.

Arriving and Docking in Cadiz

One of the reasons we left Lisbon in late afternoon rather than early evening was to allow time for the 15-hour trip to Cadiz, and the ship needed to dock in the early morning there.

The trip down from Lisbon was about 290 miles and, according to the ship's log, we traveled close to 20 miles an hour for the trip. By a little after 7 in the morning, I was up on deck as we came around the peninsula and I had my first look at Cadiz:

Coming In to the Cadiz Harbor

We seemed to be coming in to the harbor relatively slowly, so I went downstairs to have a quick breakfast.

(Mouseover Image if Video Controls Not Visible) A Panoramic Movie of Cadiz, Spain

While I was having breakfast, we started to come alongside the dock, and so I took a couple of pictures through the windows of the Lido Restaurant. I caught the end of the pier and then the yacht harbor that we passed as we slowed and came alongside the cruise ship dock on this early Sunday morning.

I went back up on deck- actually to the observation deck just in front of the gym- to make a movie of Cadiz as we were just settling in to the dock and tying up. You can watch that movie with the player at right.

While I was up here, I thought I would try to take a series of pictures of the harbor area around the Noordam and stitch them together later. As usual, I had some problems with the lighting changes between pictures, but you can look at the resulting panorama using the scrollable window below:

I went back downstairs to the suite to find that Greg and Fred were just ready to have some breakfast, so I joined them and then the three of us got ready to go ashore.

Our Initial Walk into Cadiz to the Plaza de la Constitution

We had done a lot of talking about what we might do here in Cadiz. While walking around the city was certainly an option, this was the ideal port for a trip to Seville- about 150 miles north. Seville is supposed to be very beautiful, and we did want to visit, but neither of the shore excursions sounded appealing. So what we thought we might do was to walk over to the train station first thing to see if we could go there by train and return in the afternoon.

We were among the first folks off the ship, and we exited the dock area and followed a main street around in front of the Noordam and along the fenced dock area on Avenue del Puerto. Here are Greg and Fred walking along behind me. We are heading towards the railway station, which our little guidebook said was up ahead of us at the southeast corner of the port.

We passed a German naval vessel that was docked near our own ship, and passed by Plaza de San Juan de Dios- a place we would, as it turned out, visit a couple of times today. Fred, with his eye for detail, was snapping some pictures as we walked along, and if you'll click on the thumbnails below you can have a look at some of them:

We found our way into the train station and went immediately to the ticket counter. This being Sunday, the train schedules were very much abbreviated and, unfortunately, there was no pairing of trains to Seville and back that would have us back in time to be on the ship when it sailed. This was disappointing, for Greg couldn't say enough about how nice Seville was, but Cadiz was an excellent second choice for a place to spend the day. While we were here, we went inside the station itself to see the train platforms. I was impressed by how clean and new everything was, and I was also impressed by the sleek trains that were waiting there for their departures. Europe, because of its population density and its history, did not become a "car culture" as did the United States, and so it is understandable that we don't have the same railway infrastructure as does most of Europe. Our experiences with European trains were entirely great, and it does make one wish that we had the same kind of availability and speed here.

Leaving the station, we stopped for a brief pow-wow as to what to do here in Cadiz. I was carrying a brochure I got from the ship that showed four different walking tours of the city, and so we thought that following one or two of them would be a good idea. They all seemed to converge way back at Plaza de San Juan de Dios, but we noticed that one of the routes either began or ended (ended, as it turned out) a bit southeast of the railway station at Plaza de la Constitution. So we decided to walk over there and then follow that first walking tour route through Cadiz.

We headed southeast (and uphill) along a street called Cuesta de las Calesas. Just south of the station, across the parking area, we got our first view of some of the old city walls of Cadiz. As you can see from the windows, you can still, apparently, get inside them. They offered an interesting contrast with the newer buildings that have been built on top of and behind them. Continuing up the street, we got a good view back downhill at the railway station and the Noordam. There were lots of interesting things to photograph on our way; click on the thumbnails below to see some of the pictures we took along this street:

After about three blocks of walking, we reached the Plaza de la Constitution.

Our Walks Through Cadiz

We are going to take four different walks today through Cadiz. We have a little map with us that shows the route for each one, and the stops along the way. We saw a lot on each of the walks, and took a great many pictures. To put all four of these walks on this single web page would make it unwieldy; it would take a long time to load, and there would be a lot of scrolling involved for you, the reader. So I will be putting each of the walks on its own web page, and you can get to all four of them from here.

For each of the four walks that we will take today through Cadiz, I have provided a map that shows our route through the city. Along the routes, there are numbered markers for the major stops that we made, and the narrative for each walk will be keyed to those numbers. Since the walks wandered all throughout Cadiz, maps at a readable level of detail were too large to display all at once. For that reason, I have put them in scrollable windows.

I could have put each of these maps at the top of its appropriate page, but for you to follow us along would have meant continually going back to the top of the page to scroll the map to see where we were going next. So, we'll do it a bit differently this time. At the top of the page for each walk I will give you a button like the one below to activate a popup window that contains the scrollable map for that walk:

At the end of each walk, you'll be reminded to close the popup map and then given a link that will bring you back to the top of the list of walks below. Then you can choose the next walk you want to follow. When you are done, you can just continue to scroll down this page to look at what the rest of our day here in Cadiz was like.

Now join us on our walks. Click the button for the walk you'd like to follow:

We Set Sail from Cadiz

We were back on board about six-fifteen, and right about six-forty-five the ship began to pull away from the dock. There were two items of note as we sailed out.

First of all, we learned from the Captain as we were moving out into the harbor that Cadiz was on its way to getting its own Calatrava Bridge. Calatrava, you may recall, just completed a bridge in Dallas and is, of course, from Spain. His bridges all have a distinctive look, and this would not be the last one we would see on our cruise. You can look him up on Wikipedia to see pictures of many of the bridges he has built. Anyway, the two main supports for this one are being worked on. We could just make out the scaffolding on one of the pylons under construction. As we moved past the breakwater, we could get a little different view of the Calatrava Bridge under construction.

The other item of note was a closeup that Fred took from the ship of the Cadiz Cathedral.

In the picture at right, you can see Cathedral Square, or at least the major buildings that bound it. In the middle of the view is the Cathedral; the right-had tower is the one that we climbed. A bit to the right of that tower you can see the smaller spire of the Iglesia Santiago, on the north side of Cathedral Square.

Of course you can also see the German naval vessel that was docked there this morning; this time you are looking at it full on from the side. The train station is out of the picture to the left, and Plaza de San Juan de Dios is behind the German ship.

We spent a typical evening with the gym and dinner. Our scheduling was a bit off, so we missed tonight's show; it was a Flamenco guitarist. We were anticipating our trip to the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, tomorrow.

The Doorknobs of Cadiz

I suppose everyone who travels brings back souvenirs to add to a collection of some kind- spoons, mugs and postcards come to mind. Fred started a collection on this cruise, although it wasn't actual objects, but just photos of them.

I don't know exactly when Fred's fascination with European doorknobs, door pulls, door knockers and general door ornamentation begin, but I am pretty sure it was here, in Cadiz. Maybe its because in America there seems to be a limited repetoire (except in the highest-end homes), or maybe its because most of the doors we saw were very, very old, and made the old hardware (or new hardware made to look old) stand out that much more.

Whatever the impetus, Fred began, here in Cadiz, snapping pictures of every odd doorknob he could find- and there were a heck of a lot of them. He tried not to photograph the exact same hardware more than once, or at least more than once in each port; it was difficult to remember, after a while, which hardware you'd seen before and which you hadn't.

Click on the Image Above to View the Slideshow

Perhaps I should gather all the doorknob pictures in one folder and conscientiously delete the duplicates, but that seems like a lot of effort for meager reward (this from the person who is spending all this time to create a photo album that most people do in a matter of hours). But I'll just create sections like this as appropriate.

If you have a particular interest in door hardware, or know someone who does, then this section is for you (and/or them). There are enough pictures here to justify a slideshow to make it easy for you to look at them. To view the slideshow, just click on the image at left and I will open the slideshow in a new window. In the slideshow, you can use the little arrows in the lower corners of each image to move from one to the next, and the index numbers in the upper left of each image will tell you where you are in the series. When you are finished looking at the pictures, just close the popup window.

The Carvings of Cadiz

Fred takes an interest in much of the minute detail on old buildings, monuments and the like- mostly the stone carvings but sometimes the general ornamentation. Where these photos aren't directly related to some activity we did or something in particular that we saw (like an individual church or ruin or something like that), I will gather them together and put clickable thumbnails for the most interesting of them in a section like this one for the various ports or cities or days- whichever is best applicable.

Here are the thumbnails for "The Carvings of Cadiz:"

You can use the links below to continue to the album page for different day.

	May 14, 2012: Malaga, Spain (The Alhambra)
	May 12, 2012: Lisbon, Portugal (Day 2)
	Return to the Index for Our Cruise to Europe