Cádiz, Spain

A day trip by train or cruise ship

ABOVE: A view of the Cathedral from the Campo del Sur's pedestrian promenade. INSET BELOW: The city's location on the Costa de la Luz, a rooftop view of the historic center, and an antique street sign.

by Durant Imboden

For travelers, Cádiz is a city with a split personality:

• As the largest town on Spain's Costa de la Luz or "Coast of Light," Cádiz attracts crowds of Spanish, French, and German holidaymakers who come for the beaches, hotels, and apartments on the isthmus between the old town and the Spanish mainland.

• As the oldest continuously-inhabited city on the Iberian Peninsula, Cádiz has an historic center that's jammed with medieval streets, churches, military fortifications, merchants' towers, and even a Roman theatre that was discovered in 1980 after a fire. (See Wikipedia's article about Cádiz.) The city center also has beaches and waterfront promenades, so you can put on your flip-flops and head for the sea when you've had your fill of history and culture.

Cádiz is a city where you could happily spend a week--or longer, if you're like the young Australian musician I met on Oceania's Regatta who'd bought a house in Cádiz.

Still, by confining yourself to the city center, you can sample the highlights of Cádiz in a less than a day--as I did on my most recent visit, when I was in Seville with a handful of colleagues. We made a spur-of-the-moment decision to hop on the regional train to Cádiz with our Eurail passes (which would have been InterRail passes if we'd been residents of Europe). The trip took about 90 minutes in each direction.

In this article, I'll describe the highlights of a day trip to Cádiz and tell how to reach the city by rail, by car, or from a cruise ship. I'll also tell you where to obtain free tourist literature and where to find more information on the Web. As a bonus, you can browse through a gallery of captioned photos, which will give you a preview of what to expect during your visit.

Next page: Sightseeing, beaches

Top photo copyright © Nikada.
Map scan copyright © HenrikDB.
2nd inset photo copyright © Tness74.
3rd inset photo opyright © Peter Bates.
 

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