Cadiz

Cadiz is a province of Spain, and Mary and Robert live in the town of El Puerto de Santa Maria in Cadiz. Yesterday we took the ferry from El Puerto to the city of Cadiz. We visited the main cathedral which I think boasts as having the highest bell tower in the area. We were going to climb up but it would take us too long (stairs – no elevators!) and we wouldn’t be able to look at the other sites, worse we’ll be late for the ferry on the way back. It’s too bad the main cathedral is closed and we were not able to go inside.

We took the bus to Castillo de Sta. Catalina where there’s a small church as well. On the way back, we took a long leisurely walk towards Cadiz Cathedral where we had a snack of small sandwiches in the church plaza.

On our road trips to Utah and Arizona, we saw all kinds of gorgeous rock formations. To those who are not interested in such things, they’ll say, “Once you see one rock on a hill, you’ve seen them all!” But since I’m into things natural, to me they’re all different. Just like all the churches we’ve seen here so far. One would think they’re just churches and you see one church, they’re all alike after a while. But they are not all alike – architectures are different, the altar design, the age of each church and they all have specific and distinctive histories. I find it odd that they’re built quite close to each other. There sometimes are as many as three churches in a big block.

On our way back, they had some procession/celebration at El Puerto de Santa Maria. It’s the feast of Virgen del Carmen and they had a procession both on land and water. On the channel that our ferry went on through, there’s a big boat where they have a big statue of the Virgin Mary. This boat was just going around with its lights on accompanied by smaller boats. By the board walk, there are literally hundreds of people watching and they also have another statue of the Virgin Mary being carried by a group of guys walking in tandem to the beat of a marching band. After the procession was a display of fireworks.

It was past 11 at night by the time we got back to the house. Donna called and greeted Rachel on her birthday. We also talked with Dan.

This morning we woke up a bit early – 8ish. Robert dropped Mary off to work. Donna and I, after a light breakfast, walked on the beach. We headed towards the Club Med resort hoping I’ll get some Wifi signal. There was indeed some signal but they’re all locked and asking for passwords. But the walk on the sand was still nice. Around noon we got a call from Mary and she was inviting for lunch. It was a pleasant surprise to get a call from Romar. We were ready by the time Robert arrived and we had lunch at a restaurant here on base. I’m updating my blog right now but we’ll probably go to the exchange afterwards to pick up a couple of things.

Josie and Nestor – thanks for the comments on my blog. Yes, we definitely are enjoying it here. We’re waiting for Rach’s parents to arrive in a couple of days. Then we’ll be running around some more – Canary Islands the day after and then Rome!

SPAIN - Yeah Baby!!!

Tuesday, July 10
I went on line the night before to print our boarding passes for our British Airways flight so when we got to the counter, all we had to do was check in our luggage. I should have slept through the flight. Instead, I watched a couple of movies, both of which started somewhere in the middle. The first one was with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman as sisters but are actually witches – nothing to write home about and the other one was so forgettable I don’t even remember what it's about. Or is this another senior moment? The flight took about ten and a half hours. We left LAX at 3:30 pm and arrived London Heathrow at 9:35 am Wednesday July 11. At the Heathrow terminal we went to the Iberia counter and got our boarding passes for our flight to Madrid. This one got delayed a few minutes. We were given an immigration card to fill out on this flight. After a horrible descent and an even worse landing, we arrived at the Madrid airport at 3:30 pm. This airport was much newer compared with Heathrow. We followed the rest of the passengers and submitted our filled out forms to a couple of immigration officers. It was a bit confusing trying to get our boarding passes through Spanair for our flight to Jerez. After asking several people we finally figured out that we had to actually go out of the airport to the street, board a green shuttle bus to terminal 2 where we found the Spanair counter. We left Madrid at 5:30 pm and arrived at hot and humid Jerez at 6:30 pm. London is an hour ahead of Spain and Spain is 9 hours ahead of the US. After we picked up our luggage, we saw Mary and Robert already waiting outside the gate. It was pretty surprising that we didn’t have to undergo any customs inspection whatsoever. Robert jammed our luggage into their Beemer, paid the parking fee and zipped on out of there. It took us a whole 20 minutes to get home.


Let me tell you about their place here in El Puerto. It’s basically a vacation home with 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms and it’s located literally next to the beach! How cool is that??!! We can hear beach goers at night.

We found out that summer days here are way longer than the US. The sun sets at around 9:30 pm!


Thursday, July 12

“They say Spain’s pretty but I’ve never been.” – Elton John/Bernie Taupin

I was singing the song Daniel on Robert’s Magic Sing. When I got to the above line, it suddenly hit me, it no longer applies because WE ARE IN SPAIN BABY!! And Spain is indeed pretty! Robert and I must have sung for at least a couple of hours before he had to quit and make preparations in the kitchen. He’s a member of the base church choir and they’re scheduled to practice here today. Marco, their main guitar player is celebrating a birthday and another member, Tiffany is leaving in a few days and is getting transferred out to San Diego. So they decided to have a potluck and celebrate after the practice.

Christine, another choir member, a Filipino-American married to a Cuban guy who’s serving in the US Air Force, sang a couple of Tagalog Sharon Cuneta songs. This is worth mentioning because Christine speaks English and can understand only a bit of Tagalog and yet she sang those songs really well.

After dinner Robert hooked the Karaoke back up and people started singing one after another.

Friday, July 13
Jet lag must have hit me and Donna because we slept at almost 4 this morning and didn’t wake up till about 3:30 pm. Robert picked up Mary from work. When they got home, they took a nap. We had dinner afterwards and then we finally went outside and walked on the beach for a couple of hours or so.

Saturday, July 14
Robert and Mary took us to Jerez and we checked out the Cathedral over there. One thing about this area, there are quite a bit of churches, old buildings and some that look almost like fortresses.



We went on base in Rota afterwards. Robert and I went on line, and then we had lunch and went to the Saturday 5 pm mass afterwards where Robert played in the choir.

They took us back home afterwards, changed to some casual clothing and walked around some more to see the sights of Rota.

Then we went towards Puerto Sherry where we had a nice dinner in a small Italian Restaurant called Paloma Blanca.

I noticed meals over here are a couple of hours later than the US, especially in the summer we were told.

Sunday, July 15
Today Robert and I went on base so we can go on line. I have to check on my eMail and he had to finish making reservations for the Mejia family. We went to Expeditions, the IT building on base but found it closed. I logged on to my laptop and hooked up to the base Wifi signal. Robert was almost done with what he was doing when my laptop ran out of battery. Luckily someone came and opened up the IT building. We both continued with what we were doing inside. At around 11:45 we went to church for Robert’s 12 noon mass choir service. After church we headed on home. We found Donna and Mary taking naps in the patio. Donna said she finished ironing and was playing the Fishing game in their Wii while we were gone.

We were going to take the ferry to Cadiz today but it looks like we missed the scheduled trip so we may just end up driving over there. It was a bit late when everyone woke up from their nap so Robert and Mary took us to downtown El Puerto De Santa Maria and walked around the boardwalk. This was around 8 pm with the sun still shining. At around 9:30, it seemed like there were more people walking around and the sidewalk café’s and restaurants are starting to fill up.

We bought some fish and calamari from a seafood shop and took it home to complement dinner of grilled bangus.

We’ll probably be running around the beaches in the area, going in and out of the base until Rachel’s parents come on Thursday the next day of which is when we’ll fly to the Canary Islands. Rose was able to make room reservations through their time share RCI over there.