We arrived at Tarifa and spent about three hours wandering around downtown before heading to Tangier. We quickly realized that the trip would not go as planned, seeing as everything that we planned to visit was closed. For once I'm not exaggerating. There were three things we wanted to do in Tarifa: two castles and a museum. The first castle was technically open that day but closed for siesta the entire time we were there (Spaniards avoid working at all costs), the museum didn't exist anymore, and the other castle wasn't open at all. Luckily, we improvised and managed to have an excellent time. (This turned out to be a good warm-up for Morocco.)
This is a statue of Guzman el Bueno outside his castle. He must have been a pretty cool dude to get the title "el Bueno" because there are a bunch of people in Spanish history with names like "La Loca" (the crazy) and "El Bajo" (the short). Unfortunately, since we couldn't actually go inside all I know about him is that he's blue... da ba dee da ba dai. Late 90s song reference, anyone?
Undeterred, we then visited the ayuntamiento (Tarifa's main government building), mainly because it was close to the castle and there were signs showing where it was. As you'd expect from a Spanish government building, it was cool-looking but not terribly exciting. We quickly moved on.
This lovely work of architecture is Tarifa's public library. Oh, come on! Add this to the list of "libraries in Spain that are infinitely cooler than Old Quarry". There's even a small movie theater inside of it!
I think these are supposed to be candy representations of Spongebob Squarepants (aka Bob Esponja) but all they do is give me nightmares. Yeesh.
It just wouldn't be Spain without a humongous, ornate church surrounded by bars.
The ancient Puerta de Jerez, sandwiched between normal buildings on a busy street.
I'm hanging out in the middle of the Puerta de Jerez. Behind me: the most inappropriate depiction of Jesus I've ever seen. My body is obscuring all of the business, don't worry.
An aerial shot of the awesome plaza we stumbled upon. To take this picture, we climbed on top of a dilapidated old building that I'm fairly sure we weren't supposed to be climbing on. REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE.
The aforementioned building.
On our way back to Sevilla, the weather was even nicer. Unfortunately, it was a Sunday so everything was still closed. We took the opportunity to take lots of pictures of the outside of the Castle of Santa Catalina.
Ok, that's about it for Tarifa. Next up: Gibraltar and Granada.