On the coast again

 Apparently I managed some sleep in the worst park we've experienced so far (it turned out we were between the motorway and an on-ramp!) but it didn't seem that way.

We took the train in to Cadiz itself. I hadn't realised it was a cruise boat port, though should have, and there was one huge ship and two smaller ones in port. Large numbers of tourists throughout the city of course.

There was a Cathedral, of course, but another 7€ to enter. NAFC is setting in.

A church, not a cathedral, but I liked the colours.

This is one of a pair of monstrous magnolias. It takes some hugging.

A reminder we are on the south - Atlantic - coast. 

Wandering aimlessly through the streets is ok by us, and we have the odd beer/wine/tea/coffee as we go.

Cadiz was sacked in 1596 during the Anglo-Dutch war against Spain. It was rather embarrassing for the Spanish as Cadiz was the port from which the treasure fleets sailed for the Americas. The economic aftermath of the city's capture lead to the bankruptcy of the state.

The military aftermath was continuous upgrading of the defences, and Cadiz never fell again.

The new defences were modern and substantial.

Cadiz was founded on two islands but the channel between clogged up over time and this is all that remains.

Part of the earlier defences.

We saw an exhibition on a disastrous explosion in Cadiz in 1947. Stored anti-shipping mines destabalised and blew up with the power of a few hundred tonnes of TNT. 150 odd killed, thousands injured, and whole districts flattened. There had been warnings that it was an accident waiting to happen, but the exhibition mentioned no blame, instead playing up the post-explosion rescue efforts instead.

A curiosity on the way out were salt pans where salt has been dried out of seawater for millenia.