to the opposite shore in about a half hour where we found the lovely La Playa de la Caleta (No, Debbie is not wearing a kippah).
We enjoyed the relaxing and beautiful setting.
We arrived in Cádiz in the early afternoon, parked the van in front of the Puerto Ciudad and headed into the city. We found three different tourist information offices (provincial, city, county), each within a three-block area and learned the locations of the local chocolate shops. We crossed the little “old town” area passing by a number of apartments with nice courtyards
to the opposite shore in about a half hour where we found the lovely La Playa de la Caleta (No, Debbie is not wearing a kippah).
We enjoyed the relaxing and beautiful setting.
One source, Mark can’t find at the moment, reported that Maimonides left Spain via Cádiz. In 1489, approximately 8,000 Jews left Spain via Cádiz. That’s a lot of people to move through what was then a rather small town. Mark, with them in mind, collected more pebbles as he waded in the easy surf.
Back into town we stopped at the Casa del Chocolate
where we enjoyed a delicious, cold glass of chocolate.
The owner/proprietor is a Kiev-born woman who moved to Israel where she met the Argentinean she married. They moved to Cádiz. He is an architect. She decided to open a chocolate shop filling a market niche. We had a lovely conversation during which she told us about new shops in Seville and in Rosh Pinna.
On our way back to the van, we made sure to walk along Calle Christóbol Cólon aka Christopher Columbus Street. Columbus sailed from Cádiz on his second and fourth voyages of discovery. The building with the columns is Casa de las Cadenas from the 1600s and has no relationship to Columbus.
We had learned about a special sweet produced in a town in the hills nearby with an unusual name: Medina Sidonia (the name of Debbie’s paternal grandmother). So we set our sites for the hills. We found a pretty, rural town with very tasty pastries made only there, mostly of almond and ginger. From Medina Sidonia we could see Cádiz in the distance below us as the sun set.
