Up this morning at our Ibis Hotel in Faro, bright and rested and ready for the road again. A present that Jan wanted for her birthday was a mug from the Algarve so we made a detour down to the tourist office in the heart of Faro, and bought one. Jan says it is her favorite. The mug itself is unremarkable, but the location and the occasion make it priceless.
From the perspective of several days of rest, the road doesn't look that bad. It is mainly stressful in the cities, where Hal seems to get most confused. As part of his spoken direction to us, he insists on telling us the street names that we are to turn to, look for, be on, etc. Sure, good idea Hal, you bet. But nobody told Hal that most streets in this part of the world are not labeled or signed in a way that a driver and navigator can see them when the world is going by quickly and other road users are nuzzling us in an up-close-and-personal way. I don't even know these people and they are getting closer to me than anyone but Jan gets. But, its all good, its all good. So far we've kept it safe and we are so focused on the road that we hope to keep it that way. Its just that, if you ever come this way, you'll see what we mean.
Headed east for the first time on the trip, to Seville, in Spain, from the Portugese Algarve coast. We were prepared to stop anytime if we felt like it or found something interesting, but the sky was so blue and the air so warm (19 degrees) and the sunroof was open, and ... So we stayed on the road, really enjoying it, stopping only for gas. I stay right most of the time, going to the left lane only to pass and when I do - even if I'm already going 120 - I get into the gas and pass at about 140 then tuck quickly back into the right lane. Not all the time, but if there is anything in my mirror that wasn't there 10 seconds ago I do it so that the fast-movers stay out of our luggage compartment. Its more relaxing that way.
At Seville there is a big ring-road that keeps traffic from the city core, and we took that. We hit a traffic jam just before a big bridge, but it kept slowly moving forward and then we were out the other side and heading south, to Cadiz, just over an hour down the road. Beautiful scenery, you can see from Jan's pictures from the car, mostly flat terrain with hardly a hill in sight let alone a mountain. But beautifully green and lush at this time of year, though in high summer it may be different. But now, gorgeous, smelling fresh and clean. The traffic thinned out, Jan's coffee tasted great, life was good.
Around Cadiz, the traffic interchanges on our map showed the usual big-city tangle, mixed up with an even larger city north and west of Cadiz called Jerez. We broke off from the main path between Jerez and Cadiz, heading inland a little so that we could approach Cadiz from the south. Cadiz is a long narrow city, the old (and interesting) part of it built on a spit of land shaped like a hook pointing north and west. This was the path we wanted to take, as Jan's guidebooks said that the part we wanted to see was up at the end of the hook, the old town, the Moorish ruins and the point from which Columbus sailed. So up the hook we went, slowing gradually from 120 down to 100, 80, 60, finally the city speeds of 50 Kph. It was 4:00 Cadiz time, on a Friday, so I was thinking traffic jam and I was very wrong. The roads were, relatively speaking for a city of 160,000 people, very calm for a Friday afternoon.
We faced the usual problem of finding a hotel. The only help we had from the guidebook was a hostel - a problem for us as they are normally very close to the bus and/or train stations and there is never any safe parking there. So I drove right through the city to the old quarter while Jan looked for hotels. She spotted a couple of likely candidates on the left side of the road, one block off the main beach and nice looking ones that would have safe underground parking. Down, down, right into the heart of the Old Town, finally turned around and found my way back to the main street, Hal long since turned off. Back we went, found our first choice, I sort-of-double-parked (as you do in Europe) ran in got the room and the directions to the parking, ran back, and we were down for the night.
After putting our stuff in the room, we exited quickly and headed for the beach and the old city in the afternoon light. From the beach, walking the wide sidewalk shoulder to shoulder with the beautiful people 'en promenade', everything looked so wonderful. To our left, masses of surfers catching the shorebreak waves, at least 50 surfers either paddling out, riding in, or lined up waiting. A long ride in that kind of surf is about 10 seconds, the wave rises up six or eight feet very quickly, the rider starts out, then the wave closes out right across the face, collapsing, foam and turmoil everywhere. One in twenty will form a shoulder, ridable for about three seconds before that section breaks too, then the whole thing is a boiling mass, surfboards shooting up in the air and rider's arms and legs sometimes visible, sometimes not. They all have tethers from the skeg to their ankles so they don't have to swim far to get their boards back.
Ahead and to the right, growing steadily closer, was the complex of Moorish ruins, walls and buildings and mosques, that had been taken over by the Catholic conquest of this region centuries ago, and turned into cathedrals. But the architecture is dramatically different from the cathedrals of, say, Santiago de Compostella. We took pictures and walked around, it is 5 Euro to visit the 'Catedral de Cadiz' and well worth it, but we will do that tomorrow as the light is fading now and there is so much to photograph for remembering later. A beautiful square lies on the side of the Cathedral away from the water, with shops and tapas bars and wine and coffee and shops and ... The temptation of the tapas bars beckoned softly, then louder, then fairly shouted at us, and finally won out over sightseeing. A glass of wine in hand, a selection of tapas on the table in front of us, the low and softly fading sun shining on the marble of the buildings in the square, and this incredible parade of Cadiz' Chic citizens parading in front of our eyes - as you can imagine it was wonderfully relaxing and gentle and made all the days worthwhile just to be here.
The people were such a show, a lovely glittering lot dressed in their Friday evening finery. They were 'en promenade', there's no other word for it. They were walking to be seen, looking good and knowing it, you could see their looks at each other in passing, assessing and evaluating, judging. As it is the world over. Jan and I sat there at our outdoor table in the square, in the center of it all, enthralled. We were in our road clothes, jeans and light jackets, not trying to compete and therefore not worthy of the glances of the locals. But what a show we saw, it was lovely, as good as London or Paris or New York.
Eventually we moved on, down the narrow winding steets past boutiques and exclusive shops. Jan bought some postcards, I bought some ink cartridges for my fountain pen. See, not speaking the language is no problem. We eat and shop and sleep and use lots of sign language but few spoken words, and we get by.
On the way back, in the dark, we passed a concrete playground just outside the ruined Moorish walls of the old town. There, a crowd of twentysomething guys were playing a game of football under the floodlights, and we stopped and watched. They were playing eight-a-side, seven players and a goalie, on a field that was 3/4 size, so there was lots of running and ball-handling. They did the fancy dribbling (no, dummy, that doesn't mean drooling. Its different over here.) that you see on TV, the fancy footwork with the player changing directions while the ball stays still, then suddenly they are both off in a new direction. Very impressive. Jan was pointing and commenting, commentating the game, quite impressed. She knows now, not yet a soccer hooligan but certainly a soccer fan.
After, home to bed. We have decdided there is much more to see here so we will stay another day.
