4th November- Half a day in Cadiz and Chelsea win 4-1

“Gudmornin ladeese an genelmen”, whoops here we go again. We arrived in to the Port of Cadiz as the sun was shining down and we headed up to the open deck for a breakfast in the sun.

By 9.15 we left the boat and walked a few yards to where there was waiting another of the hop on, hop off bus tours and although they are not cheap when you only have half a day its perhaps the only way to see around this town.

There are some very interesting views from the bus including great shots of the Burgerking empire Cadiz franchise.

Cadiz, under the Phoenicians rule was called Gadir. The appearance of the city is old and quaint with many small cobbled stone streets with shops and occasional squares with street cafes.

Cadiz started out as a trading post in 1100 trading in silver and amber and later it was used by the Carthaginians who converted it to a busy port.

After being reigned by the Moorish people in the 16^th century Cadiz started to prosper due to its strategic location. Columbus sailed from here to America on two occasions and now by Noel and Jennifer. Sir Francis Drake attempted to capture the town.

After leaving the bus tour we walked around town and tested the Spanish language again only this time we tried ‘Senor, dos café con leche and dos cognac por favour, Gracias’ and by god it worked, my Spanish was so good that the waiter could not believe it and sent his younger son out to check to see if that is what we really ordered.

We finished our walking around at about 1215 and it was time to board the ship again as it was leaving just after 1300 hrs for Lisbon.

We had lunch on the upper deck and the temperature is around 24 degrees today and it was quite warm up top and so we headed down for the peace and quiet of our cabin.

We left Cadiz Port around 1.30 pm in the direction of Lisbon where we should arrived tomorrow morning

There is a lot of attention to eating on board and there are some, quite a few actually, of the passengers who are let’s say, weight challenged and when you see this bag of lard carrying massive platefuls of food its quite off-putting. A sight similar to that as just mentioned almost put Noel off his lunch. Noel also thinks that they should have different prices for not only the cabins but also for the size of the plate you take at meals. Perhaps you could have small, large and bloody large plate prices, as one dinner for some of these people would feed us for a week or two.

Ah well… must get an ice cream before going back to the cabin.

We have taken quite a few photos but can only put them on the web when we have sufficient time and with a much lower priced internet rate as to use the ship system would possibly bankrupt us.

Following dinner we went to see a show in the large theatre which seats around 1000 passengers. The show tonight was called ‘String Fever’ which turned out to be an English group of four closely related violin, and similar, players. We did understand that they may not be able to play as their instruments had gone missing having just arrived from England. Actually it was a pity they found them as although they were very clever musicians indeed they did not know where to pitch their act, to be serious musicians, comedians or an act that conducts audience participation. They tried all three and I can say quite clearly that it does not work. However we think our views were in the minority as many people stood up to acclaim their act causing yet another ten minutes delay before we could leave.

Desperately needing a drink we went to the Star Bar which had a German (we think) four piece group playing classical music and they were really excellent and we enjoyed the show so much that we drank all the wine whilst overlooking the fact we were going to save half a bottle for tomorrow. Oh well such is life.

And so to bed and looking forward to seeing Lisbon outside our window tomorrow morning