Road trip to Cadiz!

February 2023

Taking a road trip in Spain is always a pleasure because the highways are in great shape and there’s plenty of picturesque scenery. Billboards were effectively outlawed in 1988 so there are no shady lawyers encouraging you to sue your fellow motorists every couple of miles.

Cadiz sits on the Atlantic side of Gibraltar; actually it sticks out like a spoon into the sea, with the historic section, the Casco Viejo, at the tip of the bowl. I know I’m always going on about all the history in this part of the world but this time I really mean it. This place is ancient. It is the oldest continually inhabited city in Western Europe and that’s just what they can prove. All the usual heroes and villains made their marks here, starting with the Phoenicians and climbing on top from there. Like all over Spain, any attempt to dig a hole will uncover yet another priceless artifact. Construction projects sometimes take decades.

We picked up our rental car at the Malaga airport (Record Go rentals €150 for 6 days. Cheap!) and headed west along the coast highway, past Torremolinos, Fuengirola, Benalmadena, Alhaurin de la Torre. The Mediterranean is on the left and vast new communities for expats blanket the hillsides on the right. After passing Gibraltar we headed south toward Tarifa, a small city with yet more big history to brag about. It is also the closest point to Morocco, lying across the Strait of Gibraltar, just 20 miles to Tangier on the ferry. It’s a fun day trip from Malaga (see my post Tangier!) but all was quiet on this windy day, a few Moroccans and locals hanging out at the port cafe. We stopped for a beer to sit in the sunshine, looking across to Africa. This area is a big surfer destination because of the exuberant Atlantic waves.

Then we made our way into Cadiz (the Spaniards say CAH-deeth) and found parking not far from our little hotel, the Tandem Ancha. In the old town, the streets are narrow and cobbled, but there are plenty of gorgeous small plazas around every bend. There is the beautiful Catedral de Cadiz with a fantastic restored crypt. The ruins of the Roman Amphitheater and the Castillo de Santa Catalina are popular sites as well. This was an important fortress city throughout history and much of the old walls and battlements are still standing along the dramatic coastline. It looks a lot like San Juan, Puerto Rico, logically, since much of the Spanish colonizing of the Americas started right around here. Columbus began his journey from nearby Palos de la Frontera, so of course they brought all their fancy military plans with them to the Caribbean, to Puerto Rico and Havana.

The city was pretty quiet, being low season, so there was a very relaxed, local vibe in the places that were open. We had two delicious dinners at El Aljibe. I had grilled lemon fish one night and pork tenderloin the next. Plus, each visit to a museum or fort required a coffee or wine stop afterwards and you’d be surprised how quickly that eats up the day. It’s a perfect city center to get lost in so we just wandered, following the narrow streets and coastal parks from one side of the old town to the other.

After Cadiz we drove across La Pepa bridge and up into Jerez de la Frontera, more fucking history, as well as the home of Spain’s famous sherry distilleries. Quiet here too but a really lovely small downtown historic district. On Sunday all the locals came out to have the traditional Spanish family lunch, beginning around 3 pm, all the generations together in designer clothes, the children dressed up like little fashion models. We stayed at a huge old fashioned Spanish motel, the Hotel Jerez, tons of rooms, big parking lot, and a fantastic breakfast buffet each morning. It was the perfect road trip accommodation.

After two days in Jerez, back home, down through some new hilly territory and again on the A-7, the sea now on our right. Dropped the car at the Malaga airport, where the Northern Europeans were spilling out by the plane-full, and took the train to the city center, found all was sunshine and tapas, just as we left it.