Cadiz, Spain

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So I went to the beach in the morning after getting a solid night’s sleep for the first time in a long while. I finally didn’t wake up hungover which was a great thing hahaha. The beach was really nice; although it was a little dirty I was just happy to see how blue the water was and how white the sand was. I stayed there for a little over an hour and then walked around the city for a while exploring some things I hadn’t seen. It’s a very clean city, everything is white washed and it’s also very dry as you’d expect. I don’t get the feeling that it rains here all that often. I made my way to the train station and bought my ticket out of here on Thursday morning to Sevilla. After that I went to find some food, got a little lost but found myself some good sandwiches and a tinto de verano which if I haven’t explained it by now is basically just red wine and a lemon soda. It was good as always. Once I ate I meandered around the streets of the city some more and found my way back to the hostel. I learned that Cadiz is the oldest city in Europe which I certainly did not know. That was part of my wanderings and also I figured that it has to be a pretty busy port considering there aren’t very many other larger cities on the coast down in the south of Europe. I uploaded some photos and then took a long nap, I mean I am in Spain during the siesta hour, when in Rome right? After I woke up from my nap I went to get some money and did a little more exploring. I also went to the grocery store and picked up some chorizo and cheese to make sandwiches with. I also enjoyed my tinto de verano so much that I bought some red wine and soda to make them here at the hostel. I went up to the terrace of the hostel and one of the guys who works there was beginning to prepare paella for dinner. I jumped at the chance to watch him prepare it. It’s really simple actually. He tore the heads off the shrimp and boiled them in water to make a stock in which to cook the rice later on. Once he did that he chopped some peppers (I would have added onion and garlic myself as well as some carrot but that’s what cooking is all about is individuality) and after that he prepared the paella dish. He had it on a big burner and then added oil as well as the peppers, he cooked them down and then added all the rice, not sure how much exactly but it was quite a bit. He cooked the rice and the peppers in oil for about five or ten minutes over a medium heat and then he began to add the liquid to the mixture as well as paella seasoning which contained salt, pepper, and saffron among other things. Once he had filled the pan with liquid to the right measurements he added whole shrimps to the mixture and stirred it around a little bit. He cooked it for about twenty minutes and then turned it off and let it stand for about another ten minutes and then we were ready to eat! It was garnished with lemon and it was delicious! Like I said I would have put much more seafood in there but hey that’s me and this wasn’t too bad for a hostel paella and plus I got to learn how to make it! After the paella I came downstairs to find a guy from the hostel in Granada checking into this one. He is a good guy a German guy named Johannes and we bullshitted a little and then went upstairs to have some drinks on the terrace. We decided that we would go on a bar crawl with some people from the hostel led by this Polish guy named Sebastian. It was pretty fun, we got fairly drunk but we were probably the oldest people there, all the girls we were talking to were 17 and the guys too! I felt like an old ass man haha. After the thing was over we started to walk back to the hostel and clearly we got lost because we were hammered. It was 4am or thereabouts and it took us about a half hour to find our hostel again. How hilarious. We got back and I slammed some orange juice and made myself a sandwich. It was a production because the kitchen was closed so I had to get the guy working downstairs to open it up. I slept a pretty long time today until around 2pm and then got up and Johannes and I went to the beach. I got some sun and chilled out by the ocean. We had some ice cream and walked back to the hostel after about three hours down at the beach, I also ran into my English buddy Alex from Granada as well so that was cool. I’m at the hostel now so I assume we’ll be having dinner here sometime soon. I leave for Sevilla in the morning so I will update everyone when I arrive there! Take care.

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