Carnaval and Cadiz

February 21, 2010

I was able to sleep somewhat on the bus trip from Granada to Cadiz. I was a little glad that our bus had arrived an hour late because we could only check into our hotel around 12 pm so when we arrived, we wouldn’t have so much time to kill as we did before. However, at 7 am, the bus stopped. At first I thought it was just to have a break, drop some people off. But it wasn’t for that, it was so that they could clean/mop the floor of the bus. None of us were very happy to leave the warm bus to go outside so that they could clean it.

We arrived in Cadiz around 10 am. My initial thought is that we would try to find our way to our hotel which was not on Cadiz, but on Santa Maria. Instead we relaxed and went to the beach. It was a very beautiful day. The sun was out, it was a little cloudy but really nice. We stayed there for about 45 minutes and then started to think about how to get to our hotel. As we walked through the city we saw people with costumes on from men dressing up like women to space cadets like Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story. We also saw an assortment of sweets as we walked around. There was one stand that had chocolate-covered apples, candy-coated apples, pieces of fresh coconut, and these long sugar-creamed filled taffy that were at least 2 feet in length.

To get to our hotel, we took a ferry across the bay to Santa Maria from Cadiz. The trip was only about 30 minutes long and it was still sunny out so it was pretty warm on the ferry. Once we got to the other side, there was a huge crowd waiting to get on the ferry to get to Cadiz for Carnaval. From there, we had to walk about 45 minutes to our hotel. It was Sunday and on this day of the week everything is closed, except places to eat. So we started looking around at places to eat later on in the day. We saw an assortment of different restaurants that looked really good. So far that morning all I had to eat was the taffy and the rest of my potato chips from the night before.

We eventally got to our hotel and it was so nice. It was actually a resort with a four star rating that we only had to pay like 16 euro per night. They also had a spa there which is probably what they mad most of their money off of. Our room was apartment style with a big kitchen, two bedrooms, a fully equipped kitchen-pots, pans, dinnerware, glasses, oven, refrigerator, toaster, microwave-everything we would need to make a meal for all of us. Another good part- we didn’t have to wash the dishes at all!

Once we got there we got settled and some people took naps but I couldn’t so I just watched the winter Olympics in German on the television instead-that’s right we had channels in German on our TV. I didn’t really pick up on any new words but it was interesting. After settling down we went out to find some food. We found a nice little café halfway between our hotel and the port. I had the number two, which was chicken, French fries, two eggs sunny side up, and these tater tot type of food that is fried and stuffed with items such as meat, cheese, or/and potato. They’re so good! We also got bread to eat with the eggs and these tiny little breadsticks which were called something like ‘picos’ which are really typical in Andalucia. The meal was a little pricey- 5.50 euro but that’s a pretty good meal at a cheap price for most restaurants here. After getting some good food in our tummies we headed back for Cadiz to enjoy some of the festivities. We arrived just in time for a parade that was fun to watch. I reminded me of floats during Oktoberfest but ten times better with much more color and lights-as colorful as Mardi Gras in US would be I suppose. The parade was actually kind of short. I really enjoyed all of the costumes though, they were so creative and most times the theme didn’t have a purpose but to be fun. One float was a tribute to Michael Jackson and all of the people were dressed up like zombies from the Thriller music video.

After the parade we walked around a bit an came across the Cathedral in Cadiz. It was pretty but would have been better if there wasn’t a stage in front of it for music and garbage all around from the people. The last ferry was going to leave at 10ish or so and therefore we couldn’t stay out there for everything so we decided to start the head back. When we arrived at the ferry gate, some workers asked to see our returning ticket, which we hadn’t bought. Oops. They told us we could got back to Santa Maria either by the bus or train so opted to take the bus. We ended up having to wait around for more than an hour for it and met some interesting people. There was a group there from Australia so we talked with them a bit and saw a group of people dressed up like Waldo from Where’s Waldo.

Our bus finally came but it took them forever to get it all set up. One worker was organizing the change on the bus with the other worker, they switched driving spots and then for a while they had the wrong sign up for the destination and after 10 minutes they realized their mistake and we were finally on our way back to the hotel.

When we got back, we all started to watch the movie- The Shawshank Redemption which was good but I was one of the few to turn in early. I hadn’t taken a nap that day and sleeping on a bus half of the night-the other half staying up so that no one doesn’t take our stuff doesn’t really help.

The next day was just miserable. It rained all day. We needed food so we went to Super Sol and bought spaghetti to make for lunch and dinner-we even had enough left over to eat some for breakfast the next day. For myself I had also bought some yogurt to eat for breakfast, a strawberry yogurt drink that turned out to be like strawberry milk and therefore wasn’t that great. With Ken and Adam B. I split the cost for some bread at a small bread store. Lunch was so filling and even better- it was really cheap compared to going out to eat again.

While we were at the store, it was sunny out and the walk back to the hotel was really nice with the sun but by the time we had gotten done with lunch it was pouring outside again. This happened on and off. At some point we decided to go to the beach when it was nice out but on our walk it started pouring again so most of us headed back. We decided to watch Unbreakable on a computer and that was good. Later on we all played Family Feud…so even though we were stuck inside most of the time because of the rain, we were all still able to have a fun time.