We woke up to this stunning view of Ceuta town…..
We had booked into marina Hercules for two nights so we could explore a little. By strange coincidence (and actually not for the first time, it happened before in Ibiza) we bumped into our sailing instructor Walter. His boat Costa Blanca Sailing was moored 7 spaces away from us ! We compared notes on our sail over and our next plans. Interestingly he was heading to Seville up the river, through locks and under bridges with his crew, what a fabulous adventure! We watched them set sail that morning.
We wandered out of the port to have a coffee and meet Hercules. Legend has it that he was the one who created the straits between Ceuta point and Europa point (Gibraltar).
Ceuta seems much more Spanish than we imagined, I guess a bit like Gibraltar is extremely British, Ceuta is super Spanish. Everyone here speaks Spanish and all the restaurants and shops are pretty much what you’d find in any high street on mainland Spain. It does have some interesting buildings….
…and fabulous beaches which look out to Morocco. It was too windy for us to be sailing and also too windy for a beach day which was a shame.
The thing that struck me was how un-touristy it is, given that a ferry seems to arrive every couple of hours. We didn’t see any postcards or t-shirts for sale. We didn’t see any “local goods” either. We weren’t even approached by anyone selling African novelties like we had been in Fuengirola. Perhaps we needed to wander a bit further afield from the port, or perhaps the number of local police, army police and Guardia Civil prevents this (we saw more security here than in any port we have ever visited) We’ll just have to come back and find out ….. I would recommend a visit here to anyone. I think we only just scratched the surface in our limited time here.
The Adventures of Gemini J 