The Rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain?

Yeah absolutely not! The rain in Spain stayed right where we were for all 6 days we were there!

By the time we got to Spain I was pretty well out of money. The exchange rate in Europe is just painful! As a result I couldn't afford to travel in Spain. Also my schedule with SAS trips worked out that I just didn't have time to go to other cities in Spain.

I spent all 6 days in Cadiz Spain.

Cadiz is essentially a holiday town, and holiday was over when we went there. Just about everything was closing or closed when we got there because the busy season was over.

I really wanted to go to a Flamenco show and a bullfight while in Spain, but unfortunately the season for bullfighting was over and we were not there for the Flamenco nights. Well we were there for 1 Flamenco night, but it was more expensive and out of the way than I could have afforded.

The one thing I did in Spain that I will always remember is whale watching in the strait of Gibraltar.

If you're friends with my on Facebook you've most likely seen the photos from that day, but honestly, my photos do not capture how amazing that experience was! There was more than one occasion that my jaw dropped to the floor. It was so amazing to see one thousand dolphins jumping at one time and being in the middle of the pod.

Utterly Amazing.

I signed up for that SAS trip ahead of time. I knew I would regret not going through the strait of Gibraltar. I signed up for the trip BECAUSE I was going to get the chance to go through the strait of Gibraltar. In all honesty as soon as we were in the pod I completely forgot about where I was.

It's a moment I will never forget

I went on another SAS trip during Spain because I was bored. Yep I was bored in Spain. I know I can't believe it either, BUT I had no money and I didn't have the best schedule for getting out of Cadiz. I went to a sherry production and andalucian horse show. The sherry production was LAMMMMEEE. I'm not a big wine drinker, but I can appreciate it and I think that's really all I did. I was more excited for the horse show because I had heard that they train these horses to do amazing things.

I wish I hadn't gone.

In the beginning of the show it was really impressive to see what these horses and riders could do, but at one point one of the horses wouldn't do the act it was being asked to do. So the rider put him in this contraption that the horse had to do this very meticulous and unnatural trotting. The horse did this behavior for almost 30 minutes without stopping. It was a hot and humid day in Spain and you could see the horse getting tired and sweating profusely!

Now, I have no education into this style of training for horses, but I have taken horseback riding classes and it is my own personal opinion that the horse and the rider need to have trust and respect between each other, and in that moment I saw trust breaking down between the rider and the horse. You could see in the horses eyes that it was going too far. I did attend this show with some lifelong learners who had trained and road horses for many years, and they too felt that the rider went too far with the "punishment" for the horse.

I guess the only excuse I can give for the rider is culture. I could see some of the humans dominance of animals that occurs during bullfighting. It seemed like the rider believed that this horse is just an animal and because he didn't do what I said, it is my job to break him down and dominate him.
Culture.
I don't think that would happen in the US to the extent that it did that day in Spain. Yes in rodeo shows we see cowboys dominating animals, but they also respect the animals to an extent. I didn't see respect oozing from the riders in Spain, and these riders were supposed to be the best of the best in Spain. One was a recent Olympic medalist in dressage!

Well,  Ill move on from my rant and rave about that.

The rest of my time in Spain was fairly mundane. I spent a lot of time just walking around Cadiz looking for reliable wi-fi. A few nights I went out drinking with some friends and getting lost in the streets of Cadiz was an interesting experience at 2am. I was convinced we were walking the wrong direction to get back to the ship, but it turned out we were headed the right direction just on the wrong road.

Dear Europe, NAME YOUR ROADS AND PUT UP A FREAKING SIGN THAT SAYS THE NAME OF THAT ROAD!!! If there isn't a sign for a road why  name it and put it on a map with that name?! You just confuse the shit out of your tourist.

All in all my time in Spain was okay. Nothing like I had hoped it would be. A few people that I knew who had planned things out ahead of time had an amazing experience in Spain. They got caught up in protest in Barcelona! How awesome would that have been?!

Anyway, I was not sad to say goodbye to Spain. I was excited to say hello to the Canary Islands! I had just learned that they existed 10 days before, and I was ready for a true vacation destination!