Category: spain 2010

morocco and cordoba

updating from a random email I found!
Sooolooks like I’m again falling s bit behind. I’m Iredell snow
theereare two days if things to write sbout,,, so let me do point form
and ill fill in later:

Morocoo is dirty poor
Many guides trying to reel us in
That street has no exit
Lack of spice pretty, abject poverty
Fast easy trip, worth it
Feels like middle east, tijuana for tim

Yikes, it is hard to retype from notes. I’m glad I took some. Ores,
because otherwise I would be super far behind on these entries. So!
Morocco, Africa. We have been officially stamped as having been on
another continent! This makes me having been in Europe, Asia (Japan),
Australia, north America and now Africa. Woot! missing is South
America which I reaaalllly hope to fill in soon. For no real reason
other than bragging rights I guess.

Getting over to Tangier was easy – a quick ferry ride, after going
through passport controls ln the boat. That was a smart idea…

The ferry holds both cars and people, so when you get out you exit
through the car loading dock. We arrived to Tangiere, and right away
as i expected we started getting hassled by a “tour guide”. This guy
kept flashing his la,inlayed card and saying he is “official guide”.
we politely rejected his advances as he continued to follow us off the
dock and down into the covered walkway that exited to generals port.
Eventually he gave up and we had a whole 3 minutes of walking alone
the next tour guide tried to pick us up. Well, we managed to get to
the cash exchange point first and alone, but after that it was only 3
minutes.

The next guy was truly persistent. We were walking along the street
that takes you out of the port. Of course right away I explain that
no, thank you, in english and French. He continues to walk 10steps
ahead of us, and doesn’t lessee us alone. He starts to point out the
old city wall as i explain, again, that no, we are not interested.
Mind you I’m king this in a friendly but clear manner. We stop for a
fake picture with some random cannon that was located along the way.
He stops and waits for us. We continue and he starts talking to us
again. As we stop and try to wait him out, ANOTHER guy starts to
explain that there’s the old wall, and here is the medina. Seriously!
I actually started laughing out loud, how ridiculous is that?
The guy kept selling himself, first claiming that we wont be able to
do it alone in the city, then saying that we are being too paranoid to
not hire him, then his pics went from 30$ for 3 hours to $20, to $10
and then finally $5. And then finally, blissfully, he left us alone as
we ventured into the city.

Cordoba
Drive
Carre four
Lste lunch
Feirst shopping trip
Second shopping trip, paseo, kids playing hide and seek, white doves,
Quick photo walk
Dinner, local awesome place

Morning
Breakfast, mesquite, massive, beautiful, before the tourist on
slaughter, quote from book

Drive to Seville, easy… Until we get into Seville and proceed to get
lost three times in a row despite gps – turns are continuously not
where you expect them to be… Finally park new bus station, taxi over
to hotel.

Hotel in a small square
Small tapas snack nearby, sweet woman who laughs when i ask for her
help in order

Shopping, siesta for tim
Shopping …. Watch, stuff
Drinks, then paseo
Neighbourhood walk around ghe barrio
Nice place for dinner and drinks

Day two Seville
Breakfast unremarkable
Everyone stylish
We walk together to shoppingd district, find nothing for Tim , he dads
back after a drink, i continuum find outlet
Outlet
Back for my siesta – relax with wine at the lounges here for 2 hours
At mafic hour walk around but no magic happens
We go for dinner, then i catch a flamenco show , tim not interested so
he was off drinking and reading
The flamenco show…
After the show I’m hyped and google another flamenco bar, go there
with dutch couple
Late night, 2am, short rain

Morning day 3 Seville
Breakfast near smoking dads and babies
Shopping with tim, sfera outlet, lost on the way there

arcos de la fronterra

this keyboard has funny keys again. ñ纪!

im skipping over a day that i already typed up on the ipad, the second day in salobrena.

god ç, this keyboard is WEIRD. im sitting in the lobby of a hotel, a tiny 13 bedroom hotel in arcos de la fronterra. this is one of the andolucian towns of the white hills town washed spain. this hotel has a computer, so im chargin up the ebook and doing this in the mean time.
we left saolbrena after several stops along the way. the ipad? (see_? funny keyboard) orange internet card run out, and there was no way to prepay it outside of an orange shop. the one in salobrena for whatever reasons didnt work out – i stayd in the car and read – so we headed to the next largest city, motril. * motril gifted us with an orange shop, as well as a clothing store where i got a little something for maha, and a little something for me.

on the way to arcos de la fronterra we had:
1. a short stop over for food
2. a brief lesson – my first!!!!! – in manual drive. its not so hard! i mean its hard as hell, but i loved it. i wish i learned how to drive a manual before i learned how tp drove an aut0pmatic – it is really truly fun!

arcos greeted us with a frustating, insanely terrible frustrating trip of one way INSANELY narrow streets where we aboslutely could not drive a car through. after 2 sepearete attempts at following google maps intstructions, we ran into the sicutation where google recommended we drive up a set of stairs. we finally gave up and parked the car and just hiked it up the road with the bare minimum of “wants” and the key ingridients of must-haves (ipad, ebook, cameras, passports). its a bit scary that most of our needs are digital.

the hike was exhausting – it was still sunny (5-6pm) and it is HOT (30c). after a long and painful hike we arrived – afeter a a lot of complications and navigating the tiny streets – to the hotel. the hotel looked unimpressive, and dark, and small, and though it was recommended by our holytourguide Rick Steves, we both felt weird about it. the hostess took us down a set of stairs, and then another (after the hike!) and we both thought that this sucks. and then…

the angels sang

she opened the blinds

and the curtains

and the doors

to our huge

open

massive

patio facing an enormous drop into a valley opening up to 300+ km of open air. it was maginificent. it … perfect after that hike. completely unexpected. boy, were we glad we payed the extra 10eu for the “patio” versus the balcony. i wish i could show pictures now!!

after getting in, i tanned some more while reading, while tim saught out drinks. his exploration resulted in the definite idea that the patio-bar around the corner is the best deal, so we hoofed it over there. after a glass of wine i walked around and took some photos (observing a weddng that was taking place – a videographer, a photographer were shooting the couple, and the rest of the streets were filled with at least 50-60 completely overdressed people). after that – quick stop at the hotel room to change – and off to a nicely spanish-italian dinner we went. our waiter was italian, so it was a fun experience speaking more than one language at a time. :)

man, its hard to make a smiley on this keyboard!!

anyway, here i am, ebook probably all charged up, and my mind blown away by the completely new keybaord lay out Ñ= <<<< thats a smiley face, argh. i must go now to release the computer... short entry fo 700 words, ha-ha, tonight. hugs! * the cities here have dedicated free wifi zones, which really help in figuring out where is the next closest city with a real orange shop. also, good for tweeting.