En el Mercado (In the Market)

As I do much of my shopping in the market near my house in Korea, I wanted to find out what a Spanish market was like. While we were in Puerto de Santa Maria, near Cadiz, I finally got the chance. The owner of the bed and breakfast where we were staying gave us many suggestions of where to go, but my ears really perked up when he told us there was a market nearby. On our last day, we went to check it out. We had already made the mistake of going to the market in Cadiz too late in the day and missing the action, so we made sure to stop by first thing in the morning before it could close up on us. 

Now, my first thought was how sanitary it all seemed.... compared to 중앙시장 near my  house where they need to create little motorized brushes to keep the flies off the meat and fish, here everything was indoors, sterile and (apparently) insect free.

My friend with me, on the other hand, had never seen a seafood market like this and was a little revolted by the fact that everything was out on display like this. 

We accidentally ordered these things the previous evening for dinner (silly us, we confused huevos with huevas. Huevos are eggs. Huevas are also like eggs, but not the kind from a bird, but from fish. The English word for them would be roe). They actually don't taste terrible, but we couldn't figure out what on earth we were eating and that made our meal rather unpleasant.

I really liked the presentation on this one!

Puerto de Santa Maria

The tiny vacation town of Puerto de Santa Maria wasn't something on our radar until we sort of accidentally wound up staying at a bed and breakfast here. Right outside of Cadiz, you can reach the city by ferry for something like 2.50 euros each way. The town is just beautiful. We wound up staying an extra day here because we didn't want to leave.

Of course, being next to the ocean means that seafood is popular here. And fresh. Here you can see it being unloaded off the fishing boat only 5 minutes from where we were staying. 

One of three cities where sherry is produced, you can take tours of the "bodega" or winery where they make sherry. 

And we even stumbled upon a real live castle, like right out of a movie or something in the center of town. Unfortunately it wasn't open when we went, but it was certainly a sight to see nonetheless. 

If you have some extra time in Cadiz, be sure to make your way over here, you may find you never want to leave!

Cádiz

After a week of traveling in Spain, we finally made it to the Mediterranean. The city of  Cádiz has a history like no other. The oldest city on the Iberian peninsula, and possibly in all of western Europe it was founded by the Phoenicians as a port city, then was later taken by the Romans, then the Visigoths, next the Moores and of course the Spanish who control it today. The city itself can not grow any larger because it is built on a tiny peninsula. The landscape today hasn't changed much in the past 400 years or so.

While outside of the city has some beautiful beaches to offer, in the city proper, the beach feels a bit like Haeundae beach in the summer, except for the fact that, while there are many umbrellas, there are just as many people sitting away from the umbrellas basking in the sun instead of hiding from it like the do in Busan. 

Cadiz does its best to keep its history alive for visitors with many museums around the town. One of the city's most famous sights are the Phonetician sarcophagi in the architectural museum. 

But, while the Phoenician  sarcophagi bring the tourists in, the rest of the museum, chuck full of remains from Roman times, Phoenician times and all the rest of this city's 3,000 year history can be found here as well.