El Puerto de Santa Maria

We arrived in El Puerto de Santa Maria and started looking for our hotel only to discover that the road to the front of the hotel was closed as they were resurfacing it. Eventually decided to park up and walk to the hotel. Checked in to the Hotel Monasterio de San Miguel and the receptionist apologised about the chaos at the front of the hotel and said that we could park the car in their underground car park for free. He put us in a room at the back away from the road works and overlooking the swimming pool.


After settling into our room we went on a walk around the town going down to the ferry to check on times for the next days trip to Cadiz. We went around the Basilica Menor de Nuestra Senora de Los Milagros, big name, our first view of it, it looked like a ruin, but when we went inside, at a cost of €1 each, it was a shock to us how splendid it was.


Later we went out for a meal to restaurant La Cuchara where we had Tuna stew which was very nice and a bottle of Cune wine.
Next day we went to Cadiz.
When we got off the ferry from Cadiz we walked to La Merced cake shop for a coffee and cake which was very nice. Went back to the hotel and got ready for our evening entertainment, which was a walk to Bodegas Obregon where we sampled their very fine sherries and then went searching for a restaurant for a meal and we ended up at the Jaipur Indian Restaurant where we enjoyed a very fine curry.
After leaving the hotel we had breakfast at Bar Manolo's which was very popular with the locals and we had our usual coffee and toast, olive oil and tomato before making our way to visit the bullring on our way to Castle San Marcos where we had to book with a tour guide, 11:30 was the allotted time for the guide in English. It was well worth it as the guide gave us lots of interesting information about the castle and we also sampled some sherry that the owners of the castle made, which was really nice.







Afterwards, we went back to Bodegas Obregon to buy a one-litre bottle of dry and one of sweet sherry to take back home.

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