DAY 11 - May 24th, 2011 - Cadiz, Spain (Part 1)
At 6:30, the alarm starts going off. WOW. It is WAY too early for my liking! Around the time we were getting up, a Bright Star announcement was made in our stateroom. Im pretty sure this is a medical related thing, but cant quite remember. I tell myself to ask Marianne at dinner.
The phone rings at 6:45 and it is room service! Within a minute they are outside our door. Now, we requested a delivery time of 7:00-7:30 so they were definitely early. Im sure a lot of people requested the same time so they had to spread out the deliveries.
We make our way down to Rockin Bar D (the meeting place) for our White Villages of Andalusia excursion at 7:45. Cadiz was the only port I didnt know what to do, so I figured doing a Disney excursion would be best. For Madeira and Gibraltar, I researched and found good taxi tour companies to use. For Barcelona, I knew we would just walk around and do the hop on/hop off bus. Cadiz? Didnt find any good tour options on our own, but saw good reviews for this Disney excursion so we went with it! I asked my parents NUMEROUS time if this excursion would be okay for them while we were planning. The description said there was a lot of walking with hills, stairs, steep inclines, etc. They assured me they would be okay and would just sit down and rest if they had to. What can I say...I worry about them and their health!
Anyway, we checked in and at 8:00 we were being led to our bus. There were multiple busses for this excursion, so we had to make sure we stayed together and got on the appropriate bus. We were led by Ernesto (who worked in merchandise on the ship) to the deck 1 aft gangway. We got on the bus and were on our way shortly thereafter.
Now, at this point I realized why I was having a hard time finding things to do in Cadiz. This excursion (and a few others) led everyone AWAY from Cadiz. We drove a good 45 minutes to an hour to our first white village destination on our tour: Medina Sedonia. Our guide, Reinholt referred to them as white willages which made me chuckle a few times. And he said it A LOT. I know, I know...not nice. But, he was a wonderful guide and spoke MANY languages.
Anyway, once we arrived at Medina Sedonia, we were dropped off at one location, and then (with our guide) we would travel through the village and get picked up in another location. As we were exiting the bus, we noticed two children left behind, sleeping. After we were gathered outside the bus, the driver got off and talked to our tour guide. The tour guide asked who the parents were and told them that their children couldnt stay sleeping on the bus. Are you serious?! Why would they leave their children unattended, in a foreign country, on a bus?! Wow. Some people. These are the same kids that were pushing and cutting in front of an older couple on the way to the bus from the ship just to be the first in line; and the parents were right there with them. Really?! They woke them up and got them off the bus, and then we were on our way to explore the village! PICTURES!
(See the wind generators in the distance? They have MANY of these throughout the countryside to generate energy!)