Cadiz, Spain

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

What a gorgeous day in Cadiz!!

We walked around in a maze of little streets to start our day.

We came upon a tiny church in the street wall. Inside was beautiful!!

We ended up at the sea, which makes sense because we are on a peninsula. Castillo del San Sebastián was out in the water, so we took a wonderful walk out to it.

This front-end loader was cleaning up the beach.

This was going to be the potd before the miracle parrots appeared.

Only rarely did the water spurt out of this little hole. I enjoyed waiting for it. Surprise!

I cannot get enough of round lids on guard towers next to the waves!!

Careful of that last step, it’s a doozy!

Beachy Keith

Scenes from a fort

Back on the shore, I turned around. That’s where we were.

Is this a naturally occurring dog? Did someone do this dog’s hair? I have so many questions.

We walked on to the cathedral. It is very noticeable and easy to find. What a pretty walk along the ocean. It was an absolutely beautiful weather day.

This bird was talking to us. I talked to him for a while. It was nice.

The cathedral was about $15 to get in. We googled interior pictures and decided no. We sat in its shade and enjoyed live accordion music. It was about as perfect as it could have been. In the movie version, Maren was at home deftly handling all the morning chaos, along with Mollie’s birthday (including stop at Starbucks for a new summer drink) and I was in Spain, looking like Amal Clooney (wearing a hat) and Keith was 35 years old. We were texting just using our brains because it was a movie.

We walked down a street and found a shop called Ale-Hop. It was so good!! I wanted a musical, walking crab SO MUCH! Why? Absolutely no idea. NO idea. Something about it was just calling to me. I left him behind.

We found Mollie a birthday present (in Spanish!) and Spain pants. What are Spain pants, you ask? Pants you buy in Spain!!!! How great are they? SO GREAT! We thought they were a skirt. I put the stretchy top over my head to see if it was too squeezy and something was not right. I quickly took it off, so as not to break it. When it fell on the floor, we saw it was PANTS! I had been in one leg. Not good. I was already wearing my otter shirt that kinda went with my Spain pants. SPAIN PANTS!

There was more walking and window shopping and sitting in plazas. What a wonderful time. We popped into a snack shop to get a pistachio Magnum bar (the signs for them were everywhere! They are in Spain. We are in Spain for more days!!!) and they had 7UP Zero! We looked for our favorite European (and Japanese) potato chips – chili/paprika. Nothing. But we decided to go for a bag of Jamon. I was NOT expecting the amount of JOY I received for 1 euro and just a smack of ham! I washed it down with a not-Coke Zero as Coke Zero is currently not our fav) and watched the sun shine on the ocean and wow.

We enjoyed a fountain, then walked by a street and saw our boat. Just sitting there. Hi boat!

As we walked across a park toward the boat, a bucket list thing happened. BUCKET LIST!! It actually might be my only bucket list item. I could make a list of cool things, but I don’t have one. I’ve been to Japan. Oh! China! I would like to see some China. But the one thing I have always thought would be great was to see cool birds just living somewhere. Just being the birds. AND IT HAPPENED. I found hide-in-the-grass parrots, just hanging out in a park. I watched them for a long time. I took at least 50 pictures, because I can’t see and I can’t tell if they are blurry (well, they are blurry, but usually only to me). The internet says they are monk parakeets. They stayed on the ground while we watched. When two moms with strollers came by and saw them, they chased them into the trees (POTD). I watched them there for a while. I took pictures. I sent a picture to the boys. Alexander’s immediate response? “Those are free. You can just take ’em.” He makes me laugh!

Kristine and Julie took an excursion to Conil, just a little south of here.

They beached and walked through the cute town. According to Mike-apedia, Conil is where the Spanish and French set sail for the battle of Trafalger.

So many shells on the beach! There were none on our beach. Interesting.

It was breezy on the beach!

I love good logos!

We played Broadway trivia and got beasted. There were lots of finish the lyrics of songs we didn’t know. The duo that got 20/20 were the same duo that got 22/22 in Disney trivia when I watched them write answers before she finished the question. Staff have confirmed they re-use quizzes, so …not very sportsmanlike. It was fun regardless.