1936 On the Continent

honour without a son.
    But that is by the way. From parts of Tarifa you can have a good view of the Moroccan coast and the Atlas Mountains. It is near Tarifa, at the Torre de la Peña, that the Gibraltar Tunnel will be started—if it is ever built. The tunnel would be 14 miles long, and therefore 2 miles longer than the Simplon, so far the longest in the world.
    If you happen to travel from Tarifa to Cadiz by road you will discover where the stopper of your champagne bottle came from. It is here that the cork treegrows, and you will see strings of donkeys laden with cork tree bark making for the small boats that take the cork up the Guadalquivir to Seville.
    Around here you can also take a peep at Trafalgar Bay, but, of course, you know all about the great events that happened there, and I am trying to make this essay as little like a history lesson as possible.
    Along the road to Cadiz you will also see “pillars of salt”—which are just that—about which I could write a few pages, but if we stop at every place that is merely intensely interesting, we shall never finish our journey.
Cadiz
    Something to take your breath away. The easiest to see and the hardest to forget. Take a look at it from Puerto Real or Puerto de Santa Maria across the bay, then you will understand why Cadiz has been described as a “Dish of Silver.”
    It is all white and you will probably find yourself wondering whether it is not a lovely mirage. Although Cadiz is probably the oldest important town on the Atlantic coast—it was a Phoenician settlement before Rome was heard of in the world—and although it is surrounded by a wall, it is not an antique city. It is well built and well paved, with tall white houses characterised by their
miradors
(belvederes) and roof terraces, and is to-day quite a modern city. But its whiteness and its situation at the end of a long neck of sand in the sea, gives it a glamorous, romantic beauty that will hold you spellbound.
    It has no sights in the ordinary sense, apart from a few churches and a few good paintings, including one by Murillo. But Cadiz is one of the principal ports of Spain and you will see a great deal of life in the city.
    As a tourist centre Cadiz is very important and you will find uniformed interpreters of the
Patronato Nacional del Turismo
all over the place. By the way, these interpreters now have to pass a stiff examination before they are engaged, and you need not be surprised if, during your travels in Spain, you happen to meet the waiter who served you a few months ago at a West End restaurant wearing the uniform of the
P. N. T.
    Cadiz is a good place to stay at for a few weeks at practically any season of the year. Your old friend the
P. N. T.
will see to it that you get good hotel accommodation. There are luxury hotels that are the equal of anything you will find in London, yet their charges for board-residence per day range from 100 to 25 pesetas. But the Continental and the Gran Hotel Victoria will put you up and feed you for as little as 15 pesetas per day. There are restaurants on the quay as well as in the town. The latter include the San Francisco and the Los Cisnes, while the most interesting cafés are the Cerveceria Inglesa on the Plaza de la Constitución and the Parisien on the Plaza de Loreto.
    For you amusement there are a number of theatres, including a few where the language of the performace will not matter. I refer to the places where the nudist ladies exhibit themselves. But the most enjoyable thing to do at Cadiz is to hire a boat and float about in the sea. Many visitors sail across the bay to Puerto de Santa Maria and Puerto Real several times during their stay, and for no other purpose than to admire the view of Cadiz.
    In addition to boat trips there is glorious bathing (after May 1st). If you happen to be at Cadiz on Shrove Tuesday you may participate in one of the most amusing carnivals in the whole of Spain. During the carnival, and also at other times, you may encounter troupes of Andalusian gipsies and you may see them perform some very strange dances. But I warn you that they are mostly obscene dances.
    As to the history of Cadiz, here again you probably know it all from the history books, including about the way Drake “singed the King of Spain’s beard,” so I need not waste space on that subject.
    But if you think that Cadiz sounds too good to be true, I must regretfully inform you that while in this silver city you cannot go far wrong if