Both: Hey everyone!
Jen: It's Jen and Greg with an update on our travels.
Greg: This update we'll cover the rest of our cruise up to our arrival in Barcelona and talk a little bit about the cruise in general.
Jen: And we'll share a little bit about our brush with rockstar fame.
Greg: Cádiz was the replacement stop after being unable to dock in the Azores - and we're going to apologize in advance because we are destined to mispronounce “Cádiz” many, many times. It's actually one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in Europe. It's believed to have been founded around 1100 BC.
Jen: So, a funny little story about how we started our exploration of Cádiz. During dinner the night before, we shared a bottle of sparkling wine with the tables around us. There were two British couples at one of the tables and they were very grateful and so they stayed to chat with us a little bit after dinner. While we were exiting the boat the next day in Cádiz, one of the couples in line was from that table and they recognized us. The man introduced himself as John Young and he said he'd like to offer us some music as a thank you for sharing our wine.
Greg: Yeah, I feel like we should mention at this point we didn't actually pay for the bottle. It was a gift from the ship as a part of our package.
Jen: Yeah. So John introduces himself and says to connect with him on Facebook or look up his band page, Lifesigns. He then asks Greg what kind of music he liked.
Greg: Yeah, so I tell him I listen to plenty of styles of music from Beethoven to Motown, classic rock, alternative rock from the '90s. He asks if we like '80s music and I say, "Of course. I love '80s music." He asks if we've heard of a band called Asia and I'm like, "Yes." He asks if we've heard of a band called the Scorpions and I say, "Of course." So he says, "I've been in those bands", and my jaw dropped. He was quick to point out though that he was a touring member and not on the albums. But he was the keyboardist and backing vocals while those bands toured. Can you believe it?
Jen: Yeah, it was pretty cool. And for those of you who maybe don't remember who those bands were, look up "Heat of the Moment" by Asia. And if you look up "Rock You Like a Hurricane" by the Scorpions, you probably will remember that one just from the title, really.
Greg: Yeah, both groups were very big back then. I won't claim to know all of their songs and other than the band names and a few random lyrics, I couldn't remember much in the moment. Not that I told him that. I just knew it was an accomplishment and I gave him the credit he deserved. The funny part is, as we're walking around Cádiz, we kept bumping into each other and we walked to the cathedral at the same time. So while we were in line together at the cathedral, he mentions that he's been touring with, and working with, Bonnie Tyler since the '90s.
Jen: And I said, "Wait…like THE Bonnie Tyler?!" And he laughed and said, "Well, I mean, I hope there's only one of her." We of course, both know who Bonnie Tyler is, because sometimes we have the '80s stations playing and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" plays...a lot. As does "Holding Out for a Hero” and if you've seen Footloose as many times as I have, you'll know that one too. Anyway, John was super nice and his partner Deb was as well. And now you've heard a little bit about our brush with rock fame. We just thought it was a funny story and figured somebody else might get a kick out of it too.
Greg: I still laugh to myself over the interaction. He has a Wiki page if you look him up. He has had an impressive music career starting from when he was just a kid.
Jen: Yeah. Back to Cádiz. We walked out of the ship and followed this tour group around a little corner to a nice little plaza called the Plaza de España. It was a cool little square with kids playing and people chatting on benches and reading. And we just kind of stood there for a minute, taking it all in because this was our first “real” stop in Europe.
Greg: Yeah, it was definitely a moment of, "we're finally doing this!" And I thought that that little plaza was a great place to have that moment. So we listened to the tour guide for a minute, and then we walked off on our own down a couple of paths and ended up on this road nearest the water that had this garden area that just went right along with it. It was a very pleasant walk.
Jen: Yeah, it really was. The garden that he's talking about had lots of greenery and flowers and was shaded by these huge trees that, I think, were banyan trees. Even the benches were pretty because they were covered in Spanish tiles. I mean, really, there were actually so many of these places that had these handpainted tiles, walls, entryways, really all over. And I probably stopped to look at every one of them.
Greg: Yeah, the best part of that piece may have been when we were walking and this teenager had clogged up the walkway, making everyone wait or go around while she posed for SO many selfies. And her grandmother, I think it may have been, said to her, "if you're posing for the pictures, then they're not candids, honey."
Jen: Yeah, but I'm not actually sure that those people were together. Uh, I think that lady probably just told her that because she was as frustrated as everybody else, which kind of makes it even funnier.
Greg: From there, we made our way to Mercado Central. That's Cádiz's main market, and they have stalls selling a lot of things. Fresh produce, raw meats, cooked meats, various types of seafood in the center section. And when I was walking through all of it, it really just made me want to buy some of these ingredients and get to cooking.
Jen: Yeah, it was definitely an impressive place. And we saw lots of things that we probably would have bought had we been able to bring it back on the ship and then take over the galley to cook it. And there was also a large food court section on the side. And the first thing that caught our attention was a place selling chicharrones. My brother-in-law, Jorge, and Greg's mom both love these. So we stopped to try a bag. And boy, were they good!
Greg: Look, I'm not even a fan of chicharrones, but those were so delicious, like easily the best I've ever had.
Jen: And let me pause for a minute just to give a quick shout out to my friend Rosalia, who gave us recommendations on places to visit in Cádiz. She told us about the market and also said that we really needed to visit the cathedral. And we're so glad she did because we went to both of them. So after the market, we headed over to the cathedral. The Catedral de la Santa Cruz was built between 1722 and 1838. But Greg's a lot better at describing the architecture and stuff, so I'll let him tell you about it.
Greg: Yeah, words really don't suffice - you kind of have to see it to really appreciate it. But I'll do my best. So the exterior has this fabulous front facade with so much detail and there's bell towers on each side. And I think it's the Baroque style, which is very ornate. It's heavily decorative with a focus on those details. The interior, though, reveals just how large the place is. There's, like, 16 chapels to biblical figures and local patron saints, and every one of them has the most impressive statues and paintings and intricate carving in the walls as well as what's adorned in the chapels. I think the most impressive piece to me though may have been the choir, I think is the name for it. It's all wood and you would literally have to spend hours looking at it to fully appreciate all the details of the craftsmanship. It was muy impresioso.
Jen: Oh my goodness...
Greg: Don't hate.
Jen: Yes, the cathedral was very impressive, unlike Greg's Spanish. Gibraltar was our last port. We weren't really super excited about this when we saw it on the cruise itinerary, so we were just going to kind of wing it once we got on land anyway. And since Greg was feeling pretty sick, we just decided to stay on the ship. Plus, we had walked so much around Cádiz, like eight miles I think, that we didn't mind spending the next day resting on the ship.
Greg: I think it was a wise choice actually, because there was really a heavy fog. Like, you couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of you at one point. And so it was a little bit of a bummer because we thought we'd be able to see the Rock of Gibraltar from the ship. But with all that fog, we couldn't even see the whole ship.
Jen: Yeah, the fog was crazy! At one point, I went up on the deck and the ship was completely surrounded by this fog. Like, as he said, "I-couldn't-see-anything" kind of fog. Nobody was on the deck, it was just me. So it was like SUPER creepy. I was beginning to wonder if I was in this book that I've seen, where a girl wakes up on a transatlantic cruise one morning, and she's the only person left on the boat, and she has to steer it back to safety.
Greg: We did walk the deck a couple of times through the day because I wanted fresh air and to see if the fog had lifted. It wasn't until we were leaving the dock that it finally broke up enough that you could see the Rock of Gibraltar. Next stop was Barcelona. But we'll talk about that one in the next update.
Jen: I think maybe we should talk a little bit more about some of the other random things during our time at sea.
Greg: One cool thing was that they had a Catholic priest on board that performed full service on Palm Sunday and full Easter Mass on Easter Sunday morning. They had the Eucharist and everything. Easter Mass on the boat easily had 200 or more people attend.
Jen: One thing I was a little excited about when I saw the ship map was that there was a library on board…and it happened to be on the same deck as our cabin. How convenient! It was a room that had several chairs where people could stay and read and then drop off their books when they were done and then other passengers could borrow them.
Greg: Some folks have been curious about how our laundry experience would go.
Jen: Yeah. I mean, I think we seem to have gotten into a pretty good rhythm doing the laundry. Every couple of days we would go up to the pool, grab some towels for drying, and then wash whatever made sense for our limited drying space. I'm sure our cabin attendant, Katut, was probably tired of seeing our socks and underwear hanging from the clothesline, but we got it done.
Greg: Yeah, I'm pretty happy with how our laundry efforts worked out, especially that the hang drying went a little quicker than we expected. But I think we should talk about the entertainment.
Jen: First of all, let me just give kudos to all the performers on the ship. It can't really be easy to do what they do, especially with the sea conditions that we had. But there were a couple of shows that I really enjoyed. One of them was called Shades of Bublé, which was a trio of guys doing covers of Michael Bublé songs, as well as other standards from singers like Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin. They were quite the showmen and they were kind of adorable too! Another act was an instrumentalist from Ireland named Adam Barry.
Greg: Yeah, Adam was pretty good! He plays several instruments, but he's mostly a guitarist. He did a second show, though, of just Irish folk songs, which I thought was a very enjoyable evening. However, I think his best skill is that he's able to really read a crowd and work with it, unlike pretty much everyone else.
Jen: That's not completely fair. (laughs) But I will admit that the other shows got to be a little repetitive. They were mostly musical acts, so there were a couple of nights that we honestly skipped.
Greg: Anyway, I think the best experience we had was with the dinner service. Not necessarily the food itself (both laugh) but our servers were Joaquim, aka Antonio.
Jen: Okay, hold on. I think you probably need to explain why you just gave the man an alias.
Greg: Yeah, it's because the first time he worked on a boat, he was with a guy who had a name tag called Joaquim and he took the guy's name tag and said, "Nobody knows my name anyway, so I'll just go with Joaquim."
Jen: (laughs)
Greg: But his real name is Antonio. And he was our main waiter and he was fabulous. Antonio also had an assistant waiter, whose name was Nanang, and the manager of our little area of the dining room was Lee. Just to give you an example of their service, we were gifted a bottle of white wine one evening by the concierge. We planned to take that bottle to dinner, but I forgot it in the room when we left. So as we sat at the table, I mentioned to Joaquim that, you know, I'd forgotten this bottle I really wanted. And so they literally sent someone to retrieve the bottle of wine for us. Then when Lee got his hands on it, he said, "I can't serve you this because it's not properly chilled." So they would replace it with one bottle that had been prepared for this evening's dinner service at no cost to us.
Jen: Yeah, and regardless of what we may have said before about the food, we still wanted to try it all anyway. And they definitely humored us. A lot of nights, Joaquim wouldn't take "no" for an answer when we told him we only want one entrée tonight or we only want one dessert. He'd bring out multiple anyway and just smile and say, "Tell me what you think," or my favorite..."Which one's better?" And there are plenty of other stories we could share about our dining experience, but let's just say Greg's personality led him to being a bit of a celebrity with the staff.
Greg: Yeah, what can I say? I have charisma.
Jen: (laughs) ...So I think the thing that I found most surprising was just how much I was going to miss it all once we actually got off the ship. Our wait staff, the conversations we had with others at dinner. We just had so much fun with them. The last night, I got kind of sad thinking about leaving them all behind. But overall, I think the cruise was a great experience. Other than a few dicey weather days, it was relaxing. And I think a very cool way to start our travels.
Greg: Yeah, definitely. And that was the whole point of choosing the cruise instead of flying. And I think for me, cruising across an ocean is a better choice. And I think others would probably agree with me, like the one random guy we met who said that was the only reason he was on the boat, just to cross the ocean. So unless you don't have the time, I would recommend choosing a transatlantic cruise and skip flying. But that's about it for this update. The next one we'll talk about Barcelona. So...thanks for checking in.
Jen: And we'll see you at the next stop!
