What the Cadiz?

Having successfully toured Sevilla, we spend the next day in Cadiz. We stayed with my sister Kim's friend Marti (who totally rocks and we'll talk about more in the next post). Her and her husband live in Rota, which is just across the bay from Cadiz, so we hopped on a ferry in the morning.

Saying goodbye to Rota, the ferry took about 30 minutes.

Reagan looking hecka excited as we pull into the port.

Catedral Nueva. We really liked how bright and happy this one was. Most look so dark and

gloomy, but this one reminded us more of a temple.

You can't really tell from the pick, but this one is of a permanent market where locals sell food. Around the outside there are a few dozen fruit stands and all the meat is on the inside. Super cool.

There's nothing that Reagan loves more than a market, especially if it means fresh strawberries.

At the highest point in the city there's a tower called Torre Tevira where you can get a 360 degree of the city. It was by far our favorite part. The do a little presentation inside the tower where they use this funky technology to reflect an image of the city onto a screen on a table. Everyone stands around it as they explain different parts of the city. It was weird because it looks like a still picture, but then you see birds flying around and people walking on the streets. The view from on top of the tower, as you can see, was awesome.

I bought those shades for a few euros on the street.

Reagan made me put this one up. I was trying to block a picture she was taking, but just ended up looking like a ______. You can fill in the blank.

Reagan attempting to do a jumping picture. Though her athletic ability looks less than impressive in this picture, I assure you that she can jump higher than 3 inches.

We had to include a round of helados.

And we liked them so much we had another round. (check out that hair - impressive, if I may say so myself)

Though we say this after every city we visit, Cadiz has been our favorite so far.

On to Sevilla!

O Hi! Welcome to Sevilla. We took a bus to Sevilla that was 8 1/2 hours and went through the night, so we arrived in the city at 6:15 a.m. (in case your wondering why we look so tired in some of the pictures, that's why)

This is the Cathedral. It's the largest gothic cathedral in the world.

So this is us watching the sun rise above the Cathedral.

This castle looking thing is called the Alcazar. It's filled will small palaces and gardens and was built by the Moors.

These are beautiful flamenco dresses. We wanted to dance all night in the flamenco outfits. We just wanna fit in.

There were building this huge construction cover over the middle of the city, we weren't sure what it was.

A fresh fruit market that goes on daily. These markets are in most of the cities and they are in the same area that they had the markets hundreds of years ago.

The remains of the old city wall. One side is the old town and the other side is big highways and ugliness.

"O hi, we are just sitting on the city wall enjoying ourselves. You're welcome to join us."

Sam thought this bridge was cool because it used those cords and leverage to hold it up.

Okay this part rocks. See that old dude working out? Yea, me too. All along the river there were these little park areas with exercise machinery just build into the dirt. You didn't have to pay to use them. It was basically like an playground for adults. Weird, but cool.

See that garden up in the sky, cool huh. Don't know what it is for, but it is cool.

Torre de Oro.

This is the plaza de Espana. It was huge!

Look how sweet the floor of the plaza is, I loved it.

All along the outside of the plaza were these art thingies that told stories of different cities' histories.

We ended the day with some helado before we caught the bus to our next adventure/city.

Sam is 90 and loving it!!

For Sam's birthday we bought tickets to Valencia because there was a huge celebration going on there. But then the night before we would have left we canceled our bus tickets and decided to spend his birthday in Murcia. We realized we didn't want to spend 8 hours of his birthday on a bus. We started celebrating Sam's birthday Friday at midnight with some Tapas at the local bar and some classy games of BS. We taught BS to our friends and we have probably played about 30 rounds of it since. That game gets us all laughing so hard 'cause we all really stink at lying. Must be the Mormon in us.

The following morning we headed straight to the grocery store (Carrefour, which I think is a french chain store . . . Jane Ann?) and bought the necessities for a picnic. The grocery store was packed to the brim. March 19th in Spain is Father's day and lots of stores close on that day, and since this grocery store was still open, the store was spilling over with spaniards. Crazy spaniards.

Then we headed out on our biking exploration along the river.

And guess who we happened to see . . . just my favorite animal the CAMEL!! He was preparing for his big performance in the nearby circus. Such a good dude.

Yes those are high-rise pants. No I am not pregnant even though it looks like it. And yes I am eating fresh strawberries. They are so cheap and so delicious here. Go strawberries.

Here is the list of things Sam decided he wanted to do for his birthday. So this day was set aside to accomplishing that list. And boy, were we successful.

(Sam is shimming here.)

This is us trying something new. It is called a lazo. (but the people here pronounce it latho, because of their weird theta.) It was actually kinda gross.

Then back to our friends for some more BS and a loonnngggg game of monopoly.

The next day we had ALL our friends over (2) and celebrated Sam birthday the right way with candles, hugs, and Ana stealing all of Sam's attention.

Happy birthday Hot Stuff you rock my world.