Jerez; Saturday, 12 March, 2011

I just about managed to make it to the bus stop shelter before the first hefty downpour of the morning fell, and then took the opportunity of a slight pause in the torrent to run the short distance from the station bus stop to the train station itself.

I hopped on the first train back out to Cadiz, and as we headed towards the coast the sun started to breakthrough, so that by the time I reached the city it was sunny and warm again.

I headed over to the Cathedral to have a look around, and then up one of the Cathedral’s towers to take in the view of the city from there. Next door is the Yacimiento Arqueológico, which has Roman and Phoenician remains of the city underneath the Bishops palace.

Having taken those in I walked the short distance over to the Cathedral museum to have a look around.

After a quick stop for a late lunch I wandered back through town to the Cadiz museum to have a look around that, before making my way back through the Carnival crowds to have a look around the Old Cathedral, located next to the current one, but dating back, in parts, to the 13th century.

When I had booked to come to Jerez, part of the reason for choosing there over Cadiz, had been that I couldn’t find any hotel rooms at a reasonable price in the city. I thought it might just have been that there weren’t any. It turns out it was because I was choosing to visit over the Carnival weekend, and strangely, virtually every room in the city had been booked nearly a year in advance.

Unfortunately, the bulk of the celebrations on the Saturday didn’t kick off until 8pm and I had a ticket for the 9:10 train, so I was only able to see a small amount of the celebrations before I had to head back to the station and pick up the train to Jerez and then the bus back to the hotel