A Beginners Guide to Cadiz

We’ve just got back from a week in Cadiz. We loved it. It is a city at the end of a piece of land, surrounded by water, all bleached and peeling, looking out onto the Atlantic. It is old in the way that some people are old: not particularly interested in hiding it. The buildings are faded and the streets narrow. Laundry hangs from balconies, shutters sag, bars are dark and busy. It is a functional, working port city not unlike Palermo. There is something wonderfully uncurated about it. A chaotic, cheap, unrenovated space with some quite beautiful beaches attached to it. Cádiz is a great place to do very little. This is not an insult. Most holidays are improved by having fewer things to do. You walk around and eventually end up in a bar for a little tapas and a tinto de verano or clara con limon, leave, get lost, and do the same before it’s siesta time. I personally found the late mornings, sleep, and late dinners pattern to be infuriating but there is something wonderful to be said…