This past weekend has been great! Saturday morning we took the bus out to go do a zipline course. We put on harnesses and worked our way through the treetop obstacles. There were a couple groups of adorable Spanish kids that were there as well. That afternoon we had some free time during siesta to spend however we liked or we had the option to go on a tour. I decided to go on the tour of subterranean Cádiz which included visiting a museum that exposed Phoenician and Roman ruins, along with seeing some of the old catacombs under the city
The museum was interesting because the ruins were located below street level and they were only discovered recently when the building above them was being redone. Cádiz had been inhabited by many different peoples, each new group often decided to build directly on top of the old inhabitants’ buildings, the city has literal layers of history under it. Many of Cadiz’s catacombs can’t be walked through but the one we saw was originally used by a group of sisters to bury the dead. It was then refurbished and used as a hideout by the locals during the Spanish Civil War. Afterwards, in the evening we met up for gelato in Plaza Mina.
Sunday was our last day in Cádiz and Chris let us have the day mostly free. I took the bus up to one of the less crowed beaches with some other girls and we spent the day there. Almost everyone in Cádiz goes to the beach on sundays but really everday there is beach weather (sunny and hot) so we had a great time! Our last night in Cádiz was “a noche en casa” to spend some time with the host families.
Monday morning we took a 3 hour bus ride to Córdoba. By the time we got there it was already almost 100 degrees out so we ate lunch, walked though La Mezquita (the famous mosque/cathedral with the red and white arches) and went back to the hotel to chill out until it cooled down. We had some time to explore Córdoba and were given money to go out for dinner. We sat down at a great tapas place in la plaza de colon that served appetizers like dim sum. They came around with trays of tapas and you could pick and choose whatever. It was only 0.90 € per tapas so our meal ended up costing about 4 to 5 € each (even after the money for water was added)! Then we had more gelato and sat by a fountain. I feel like there was so much more to see there but tomorrow we move on to Seville.
-Rachel P.