I’ll start off with my submission to this selfie war just to make sure the Italians have a lot of work to do. Once I’ve thoroughly established that this Cádiz session is truly the greatest selfie crew of all time, I’ll continue with some more flesh and blood blog stuff.
SELFIES
To start off, here I am with Austin E. in El Piojito, the flea market on a stretch of sidewalk right next to the Bay of Cádiz. They sell everything from “Galvin Khlaim” men’s underwear to shoes for a euro to dried garbonzo beans.
This next picture is from a religious festival we witnessed while we were here–Corpus Christi. It celebrates the Gulf of Mexico, humidity, and oil wells–no, sorry, wrong Corpus Christi. It’s a giant feast, hence the name “Body of Christ”. Supposedly it’s a big holy communion thing for the whole city, but, as you may glean from this photo, it has its own oddities.
No, there is some real religious stuff that goes on. The figure in this next pic is the Virgin Mary (I think) that is paraded through the streets on a silver platform and is finally led into the cathedral. The handsome chap in the foreground is, well, yours truly ; )
This next pic encapsulates the real religion of Spain. Catholicism is big, but fútbol is sacred. Despite Spain’s less-than-optimal performance, when we all went to watch the Spain v. Chile game in Plaza Mina we all brought our game faces because we knew it would be crazy.
There’s been a lot of
shopping. Mostly by the girls, but the men went on their own little spree of sorts. We went from store to store until we found a haberdashery section and decided to take some suave pics together. Watch out, ladies.
Beaches have been another great source of diversion. This next pic is from
Playa Victoria at about 11:30 at night. We found a spiderweb play thing that we climbed upon, jumped off, and meditated under for a bit.
This next one is a great vista. I thought “These kids in Firenze have Santa Maria di Fiore, Il Duomo, but we have Torre Tavira!”. So I took a picture. You can see the cathedral behind Austin’s head and further back still the sand of Playa Victoria and
New Cádiz.
We had a tapas contest. My roommate and I decided to make rice pudding, or arroz con leche, a classic Spanish dish. We stirred and stirred and decided to document the creation of such a culinary masterpiece,
And things burned. We got to see the “Catholic” festival Noche de San Juan, where in the tradition effigies are burned in the street. It represents rebirth and is, well, really satisfying to watch statues go up in flames!
That about does it for the selfie contest. Anything from the boot? We’ll see. May the best man win.
WHY WE’RE TRAVELING AT 0.99c
Now to explain the rather nerdy second title of the blog. Without going into too much detail, 0.99c refers to speed 99% the speed of light which means, according to Einstein, that time passes “quickly” for us. I could mention minutiae like the Lorentz factor and time dilation but the takeaway is that
times flies on this trip. I planned to write this blog post on Monday and I swear that I just closed my eyes and Thursday appeared in front of me. I have so many things I’m looking forward to and every day I add more things to my list. We’ve been
kayaking, beaching, swimming, walking, singing, drinking tea, socializing with the locals–what I would call a maelstrom of things. And suddenly, seemingly in the midst of it all, Chris comes and starts discussing our last days of Abbey Road.
I’m almost in denial. I feel like I’m just getting to know everything in the city like I’m a local, and now the end looms in the not-too-distant future.
I feel like it’s Sunday–still a weekend but with Monday right there. I still want to savor the
tastes and smells and sights that together make this place such symphony of sensations. I just want to share some of my favorites tidbits that together create such an amazing experience:
Yesterday afternoon I came back home sweaty and hot from walking around in the midday sun. I sat down at the table and bit into a plum. It was cold, sweet, just like in the poem. For a moment I thought that I was Buddha. I was euphoric.
Later that day, we all went out to a castle and sat down on the battlements, stared out across the Atlantic and discussed the greats of cinema and our favorite movies.
One night we were all in Plaza Mina and we started talking to a group of kids who were playing soccer. We managed a sort of informal exchange, sharing songs and naturally some profanity. We played frisbee with them and came back the next day to find them there, saluting us with “guiri, guiri”.
We spend a lunchtime picking and choosing bites from small stands in the market–everything from crêpes to hamburgers to pizza to
tortilla española. Highly recommended.
And today we ran around the city filming segments for our upcoming travel show “Americanos en Cádiz”. Make sure to catch that one.
This trip has been such an incredible collage of moments. I feel like it’s already over and yet we still have almost a week left. Que va.
Hopefully, our spaceship will come down out of relativistic speeds so time can pass a bit slower.
To end in preparation for my final blog, I’ll leave you with a quote from the Sopranos that inspired me:
“If you’re lucky, you’ll remember the little moments, like this, that were good.”
