Notes from my honeymoon

Jennie and I spent our two week honeymoon in a secluded cabin in the countryside near Cadiz, in Andalucia, Southern Spain. We flew into Jerez and picked up our awesome little hire car – a Mini Cooper. The weather was wonderfully hot when we arrived – and remained between 28 – 38 degrees for the whole duration.

We drove to our cabina and met our hosts Rob and Flavia who built the cabina on their land. Our little wooden cabin had everything we needed for a self catering get away, with a swimming pool next door too. The owners live off the grid, and so pump water from a well, generate electricity from solar panels and a generator. Neither are from Spain; Rob was a landscape gardener in London and Flavia is from South America, both decided to move to Andalucia for the weather and the culture. They were perfect guides for our stay, and often invited us for meals and drinks with their local friends which was a great insight into the local ways. Our hosts rescued animals in distress and when we arrived they had five dogs, two cats and three chickens. Along with home grown vegetables from their amazing patch, we felt like we had the best things in life around us.

The nearest town of any size is Conil, where we made our visit for the huge beach, the amazing markets and the stunning old town. We returned many times for great food and atmosphere in the evening and empty beaches for swimming and surfing in the day.
We soon got into the holiday spirit – having late lie-ins and local food for breakfast on our decking under the shade of the fig trees. We would dip in the pool most days and doze in the heat of the day, before venturing out to a different town when it cooled down in the afternoon. We had plenty of time to read, talk and reflect on getting married, and what we would do next when we got back to the UK.

We often went driving to explore the area – which is made up of mostly farm land on rolling hills down to the sea. It was very dry when we were there but has varied seasons so is still very green and lush with a huge variety of wildlife around. We explored lots of nearby towns and enjoyed them all in different ways; Cadiz had great architecture and restaurants, Barbate had great character and scenery and the Moroccan style hill top town Vejer was stunning. We travelled down the coast to Tarifa to go on a whale and dolphin watching boat trip, where we were lucky to see bottle nose dolphins riding the bow wave of a huge liner. Each place we visited we picked up more of the language and with our pocket phrase book we enjoyed trying to figure it all out. The highlight of the holiday was a stay over in a hotel in Vejer for a big night out at the best restaurant in town and an amazing live Flamenco show.

The food in Andalucia is incredible; it has the best (and cheapest) fish and seafood in the world, some of the most free range pigs and cows, local fruit and veg of every variety and hundreds of delicious wines and beers. We sampled everything we could and were pleasantly surprised to find plenty of vegetable options for Jennie with a strong Moroccan influence in the area. I thought Italian cuisine was the best, most varied in the world but the Spanish definitely give them some competition. There are little ice cream stalls or parlors on most street corners and the helados flavours were as good as an gelato I’ve had.

We came back totally refreshed and inspired to learn to cook and speak Andaluz, and to try and remember some of the laid back way of life we lived for two weeks – mañana!

See our gallery from the holiday here: Flickr gallery

See some of our wedding photos here: Flickr gallery