Cadiz, Spain

Today was another long and grueling excursion in the port city of Cadiz. What was supposed to be a fairly mild tour turned out to involve 2 1/2 miles of walking.  We were also supposed to take a train ride, but that never happened as the stop we were supposed to go was closed and they substituted another venue without telling us.

Little did I know that I would be spending most of the day touring a winery. Wine tasting and wineries are Michael’s bailiwick, not mine.  However, this one was actually quite interesting. The day started out sunny and cool, like 59°. It did warm up to the mid 60s. We boarded the bus for a panoramic tour of Cadiz with a guide who had a very heavy accent, making it difficult to understand what she was saying. I think Michael gave up trying to listen to anything she said. 

Cadiz was founded in the 12th century and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe. It is a typical Andalusian city with well preserved historical landmarks. The older part of Cadiz, within the remnants of the city walls is commonly referred to as the old town and represents a large area of the total size of the city. You will not find any private home here as everything is in multi-story apartment buildings.  It is on a peninsula that on one side is the Atlantic ocean and the other side is the Mediterranean Sea.  The beaches and sand dunes are quite lovely and I can imagine people out there in the evening after sunset during the summertime enjoying picnics.  

Our ship docked right downtown and this is the view we had from our veranda.

During our panoramic tour of the old town, we saw lots of old city walls, gates, castles and other structures.   It’s tough taking pictures through a window on a moving bus, but here are a few that I was able to capture.

Here is a map of the area that will help you understand how strategic this place is as a port as well as how small the city really is.

After the city tour, we drove to Gonzalez Byass, a winery that specializes in Brandy and Sherry.  It was started in 1835 and is still in the family. Today, the family owns 14 wineries, producing premium wines and spirits in Spain, Chile, and Mexico. As this place has grown over the many years, it included entire city streets.  The entire compound was huge. There was one bodega (wine cellar) after another, the largest of which held over 5,000,000 liters of Sherry.  There were an additional four more humongous bodegas.  Every wall was white washed, and there were red geraniums planted in pots everywhere. There were grape vines that grew 10 feet tall and their foliage created shade over the streets.  We also saw huge wine barrels that were signed by celebrities, including the queen of England, Steven Spielberg, and even Winston Churchill, and Orion Wells.  

After the tour by a knowledgeable nonrelative, we repaired to the tasting room. I have been to many tasting rooms, but never have I seen one like this one. It was huge and had multiple rooms. Everything was set up for us and there was a glass of sweet Sherry and a glass of dry Sherry.  Mr. Wine snob, A.k.a. Michael, actually liked the sweet Sherry and wanted to buy a few bottles to take home. We do not travel with bottles of booze in our suitcase.  

Our tour guide told us about one of the wine makers who spent so much time in the bodega that he practically lived there, and he became a caretaker of the mice that ran around in the bodega. Not only did he feed them food, but he made it very easy for them to drink some of the wine, which they loved.

After our visit to the winery, we walked around the town’s side streets before we got on the bus to go for lunch. Cobblestone streets everywhere.

We got back on the bus and drove for about 45 minutes to get to the lunch venue. Europeans love to walk, and walk we sure did today.  There were several in our group who have trouble walking, including yours truly, but I did OK even though the pain in my right leg was present. We were dropped off for lunch about a quarter of a mile from the restaurant.  When we got to the restaurant, there were two bus loads of other Vikings waiting for their busses to come and get them. In the meantime, with all the crowd huddled around the entrance, staff from the restaurant came out with glasses of beer for everyone.

We were warned there was a lot of food by the folks that went in before us.  The first course consisted of carpaccio, cheese and shrimp with shells on them.  There were rolls and crackers and potato salad.  The waitress then came and plopped a pitcher of beer, a bottle of wine, and a pitcher of sangria on the table. I had a Coke Zero.  The next course was some sort of vegetable and shrimp fried up like a potato pancake. It was a little too greasy for my taste. And then we were serve the main entrée which was brisket and french fries with gravy on top of it. And for dessert we had flan. If you left hungry, it was your own fault.

After lunch was finished, we then had entertainment. There was a guitar player, a male singer, and a female flamenco dancer.  I don’t know why the singer used the microphone at the beginning of the show, because later in the show, he was just as loud without it. I believe everybody enjoyed the show.

Morocco

Tangier coastline 

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I am going to combine our stops in Morocco into one post. Morocco is a very interesting and diverse country.

Morocco is located in the northwest corner of Africa. It’s a country that boasts a diverse range of landscapes, including deserts, mountains, forests, and coastlines. The population continues to grow significantly every year, and there are lots to do and see, meaning there are some interesting facts about Morocco to learn.

• Morocco was the first country to recognize the United States as an independent nation in 1777.
• Morocco has more cell phones than people. There are 44 million cell phones and only 35 million people.  They are quite tech savvy.
• Morocco has two national languages:  Standard Arabic and French. Most Moroccans know at least three or more languages.
• Morocco grows an abundance of citrus fruits, like mandarins and clementines. Some are sold at local markets, but most are sent elsewhere. Around 112,000 tons of dates are exported every year as well. 
• They are also the only exporter of Argan Oil, made from a tree endemic to Morocco. Agriculture makes up a huge percentage of the economy here.  
• Morocco is home to the highest ski resort in Africa.
• Two-thirds of the world’s phosphates are in Morocco.
• Morocco has the second longest monarchy in history, just behind England.  It is a constitutional monarchy with a 300+ member Congress.
• The film Casablanca was not filmed in Casablanca. It was filmed in Hollywood on a soundstage.

OK, that’s the fun stuff now. I will describe what we did while we were here. After my last post which detailed our circling the port of Agadir, we finally docked around 1 AM. The reason why we went here is so that people who were going on the overland trip to Marrakesh could get off. We did go on an excursion and if I had to choose a port to drop, this would be one of them. 

We took the included tour that could easily have been handled by having a panoramic bus tour. However, we wound up walking through the streets of Agadir, walking through the botanical gardens and then went to some stores for shopping products that contain Argan oil.  We then ventured to the Atlas mountains and rode a cable car that took us up to the Kasbah or Citadel if you like. It offered great vistas as well as camel rides. 

Agadir 

The Kasbah

Today we were on an eight hour tour of Casablanca and Rabat, the Imperial City.  Today was a rainy day and we went on foot to visit sites in the pouring rain.  After walking half a mile just to get to the bus, we were very fortunate in that we got a very good guide. It took about an hour and a half to go to Rabat on the Expressway. Our first stop was to see the Imperial Palace where are all the country’s business is conducted.  The king does not live here. 

The Imperial Palace

We went to a rather beautiful mausoleum that houses the tombs of many past rulers. It sat across from what was going to be the largest mosque in the world, but when the king who was building it died, the project died as well. They did manage to finish the minaret, and many years later, they actually built another mosque close to it that had matching brick tiles as the original. There are a lot of mosques in Morocco. According to our guide, they exceeded 12,500.  Rabat is very clean and with lots of trees.

Mausoleum

Minaret

Unfinished mosque 

Mausoleum guard

Part of the unfinished mosque

Our next stop was the Kasbah.  I elected to stay on the bus as my right leg was giving me a lot of problems. Michael said it was absolutely stunning inside.  The Kasbah, otherwise known as a citadel or a fort, is still home to many people, and the architecture inside was stunning. We walked past a number of homes, little shops, outdoor vendors, and then finally it all opened up with a very picturesque view of the river.  We kept going and had a very untimely snack break. Untimely because lunch was going to follow immediately after the snack. They provided mint tea, which was very good, and various kinds of cookies. Following the snack break we walked through some beautiful gardens and then it was time for lunch. 

We ate lunch in the old city called the Medina. We walked down narrow alleyways to arrive at the restaurant. If you did not know a restaurant was there, you would’ve walked right by it.  We were served a typical Moroccan meal in a restaurant that was in a building that was over 200 years old.  The first course consisted of bread and several different salads, potato salad, rice, cucumbers, and tomatoes, and a salsa type dish. After that, they brought chicken out in clay pots.  They use a lot of saffron in Moroccan cooking.  The food was served family style. The final course was fresh fruit, dates and almond cookies. It was a very nice authentic Moroccan meal.  No alcohol was served. 

We then went for the hour and a half ride back to Casablanca where we stopped to look at another mosque. This mosque is the second largest one in Africa and can hold over 25,000 people.  Our final stop was to the Sook for some shopping. Here again I stayed on the bus because there’s nothing I want to buy. Michael did go and he came back empty-handed.

It wouldn’t be Casablanca if there was no Rick‘s Café. As you know, Rick Café was fictional however, an American Kathy Kriger, who loved the movie and lived here in Casablanca created Rick Café and decorated it just like in the movie. She died in 2018.  Next time!

All in all, it was a very exhausting day, but we did learn a lot and thoroughly enjoyed the tour. We came back to our cabin and crashed. Michael has the cold that I had a couple of weeks ago and feels like crap.  We listened to the port talk for Tangiers and decided that we would skip the excursion there because it was mostly walking around visiting a museum and going to a vegetable market and more shopping. We do not buy souvenirs anymore!

Off the coast of Morocco

The magical mystery cruise light continues…

Today we were supposed to dock in Agadir, Morocco. But the sea gods had other plans. After leaving the Canary Islands last night, we were in heavy seas and heavy wind. The wind during the day was Galeforce and the seas were broiling all day making for fun walking.

We were supposed to dock at 4:30 PM, but the captain came on and said it was not advised due to the high winds, and that there was very little protection at the dock. Many people were due to do an overnight off the ship to Marrakesh. They were to be bussed four hours to Marrakesh and then have a late dinner so, here we are at 7 pm just going round and round in circles waiting for the weather to break so we can enter the port.

We are sitting on deck seven, and you can see the spray has come up onto the windows.  The water has calmed down significantly since this morning, but it is still rocking and rolling.

This is our current course!!!

We were supposed to have a local company come on board to entertain us, but obviously that’s not going to happen. So tonight’s entertainment is the movie Casablanca, which is our next port of call.

And today I finished Michael‘s sweater. I just have to block it.  I am calling the sweater Neptune. It fits him beautifully and he loves it. 

Tenerife, Canary Islands

Tenerife is the largest of the Canary Islands and is a great place to travel. British, Nordic and German tourists come in the tens of thousands every year to visit its spectacular beaches and lively nightlife. It is also very popular among holidaymakers from the Spanish peninsula, especially during Easter time. It offers lush forests, exotic fauna and flora, deserts, mountains, volcanoes, incredibly beautiful coastlines and spectacular beaches. The entire island is a Spanish province named Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which leads to inevitable confusion with the capital city Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

For more information on this island click on this link: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Tenerife

Today we had the included tour and we realized that we had done this tour on May 3, 2019. Michael kept insisting he had never been here but once we got to the final stop, he recognized the McDonald’s! Ha ha ha. Unfortunately, we had a guide that was less than adequate and on the way back to the ship, she played loud awful Spanish music of some kind when all we wanted to do was just rest and be quiet.  Oh well, can’t win them all. 

The island is small and is made up of 323 volcanoes. There are approximately 1 million people who live here.  Our ship docked at a most incredible breakwater.  The capital is a very modern looking city and the island is quite mountainous. You can see homes snaking up the valleys in the mountains.

Downtown 

Homes snaking up the mountain 

We started off at noon on our excursion to the botanical gardens.  The weather was absolutely glorious, sunny and in the mid 70s. It doesn’t get any nicer than this.  The gardens were quite lovely but mostly greenery. Next, we went to the resort town of Puerto de la Cruz.  Here we just walked along the boardwalk and then stopped to have a drink and people watch. There is an incredible waterpark here.  All in all, it was a very pleasant day.