Fes - The sights sounds and smells

Greetings and salutations from the world travellers. Morocco has definitely been a handful for us with very very helpful people at every turn. The day was not without its excitements, including us hiring a faux guide for a few dirhams and finding out that Lonely Planet was completely right about the whole experience. It wasn't bad, it was just exactly like they described it.

Mind you, Fes is an incredible step back in time when you look out over the medina, except now you see a satellite dish on top of every single roof. It is straight from another world.

We were simply intending on visiting the huge medina on our own, but after about 10 offers of help, we settled on the guy who was the nicest to us and didn't give us a convoluted story about a member of his family working at the CN Tower (one actually said that his sister worked in the rotating restaurant which I kinda find hard to believe). So anyway, we agree on a rate which works out to about $8 canadian for a few hours and he starts taking us around. I'm sure none of the official guides would have brought us into someone's house but the places he took us were just out of this world. Among them a bakery, brass works, wood carver's, tilemaker's, etc... Of course the end of the tour involved some convenient stops at various carpet, leather, misc shops which we were "not obligated to buy anything." Well, we didn't so poor Mohammed didn't earn any commission from us today. The tour took the better part of the afternoon so anyway, some photos attached.









The Tannery (smells like shit here, really)






















Tomorrow, we head off for Meknes and Volubilis

SpainGibMaroc

Yesterday was indeed an exciting day. It started off with an early morning rise to catch a train to La Linea, which is the border town between Spain and Gibraltar. I always thought that the rock was a continuous ridge that went all the way down to the end of Gib, but no, its not. It really is just a rock on a peninsula.

The trip up was scenic, and thats when we realized that it was Polish day or something like that in GBZ. We heard Polish the whole day and walked around with a couple from Warsaw. We hung around the top, teased the apes and mlarvelled at the fact that you can walk around the whole top of the rock with sheer 400m cliffs at your feet. As we explored, we came across the Mediterranean steps on the south side and started going down. Well, we kept going down until we realized that going back up would be imossible. I contemplated killing Jerry for putting m through this, but later thought it was a great calorie-burning experience. 426m of vertical descent on a loose rocky path is definitely a memory to share with the grandkids one day.

I was kinda hoping for some stamps in my passport from the side trip to GBZ but we were just waved through with no delay. What followed really pissed me off though. The bus from the border to the port at Algeciras is supposed to run every 30 min, but this time it was over an hour late and we wound up missing the fast ferry to Tangier because of that. Instead, we had to take an ageing Moroccan registered truck ferry at 9pm, arriving in Tangier well after midnight. And let me tell you that arriving in Tangier at midnight in the dark is not a pleasant experience. It kinda reminds me of shopping at Future Shop, where a mob of salespeople descends on you and tries to sell you everything. It didnt help that we were the only non Moroccans on the ferry, among maybe 10 or so walk on passengers. There were more umm.... helpful people waiting at the gates than passengers. The entire walk to the hotel we were followed and hounded for offers of cab rides and cheaper hotels and the like. Future Moroccan travelers beware... get there in daylight on a fast ferry.

























The live runway you have to cross to get into Gibraltar

The Alhambra

As far as a recap between the last entry and this one, here goes, but first off I am writing this in a 1000 year old building in the medina of Fès in Morocco amidst all sorts of vendors and hawkers. Kinda weird actually. New photos here. The card reader situation was rectified in Gibraltar.

The fun to be found in Granada fizzled somewhat as the woman running the pensione didnt know where anything was going on. We walked around and downed some pints at an Irish bar.

The Alhambra was amazing and we spent the whole day wandering the grounds and taking photos. We are almost through 3GB of memory cards. Despite the rain, it was still memorable. Getting up at 6am to line up was the bad part and despite that, there was a good length of people already there.

Bollocks from Spain

First off, I want to say that I left my little USB reader back in London at Chuck´s place. That or I lost it somewhere. What this means is no photos for a while. Which worked out well for this place right now because the computers don´t have USB ports.

The last night in London was quite the walk with the D-man showing up after his conference. Good times, thats all I´m going to say. Well, at around 2am, Derek fell asleep on the couch, we dragged him off. We decided that there was no point in waking up at 4am again to grab a cab, so we stayed up watching Monkey Dust on BBC3. We should have that back home.

Anyway, the Ryanair flight from London to Seville rivalled that of last year´s Air Transat flights to and from London. Dinky seats and no service. Never before have I seen advertising on the overhead compartment doors of a flight than here. Made me feel like I was on the subway. What I liked best about the Ryanair flight was the free-for-all to get on the plane and grab a seat. General admission flying at its best. No complaints though, I´m beyond that. I also couldn´t help noticing the cab driver flirting with 100 mph on the drive from London to Stansted at 5am.

Seville is nice. No troubles getting around and we found a relatively cheap place overlooking the main tourist drag right across the street from the main cathedral. The one lonely planet described the original builders as nutballs for building such a big friggen church. Well, big is an understatement. I can´t say that we went partying it up in Seville last night, but on zero hours of sleep in the last 30 hours (sleep is impossible on a Ryanair flight) we just crashed and burned after walking around town for the whole afternoon and evening.

This morning in Seville consisted of a walk through the Alcazar, which is probably a taste of what´s to come in Morocco. Spectacular tilework and muslim influenced architecture. Influenced? I mean muslim architecture. Not to be missed was the Plaza d´España, where Jerry got his fortune told a prayer recited to him by a gypsy . After she demanded 10€, he started running. After that, bus to Granada, which for some reason seemed roomier than the Ryanair flight, AND we had reserved seats.

Coming in to Granada we start seeing the spectacular hilly landscapes of Southern Spain. Snowcaps and all. The town looks like it can have some fun, and we will try to find this fun later tonight. In the meantime, this cozy little 25€/night pensione right under the Alhambra will just have to do.

Its too bad there are no photos to share.... pity...

The Weekend in London

Aside from getting hosed out of a flight on the new Air Canada Boeing 777 with the seatback screens, the flight was about an hour late leaving the airport. No big deal, a little annoying and we only arrived about 20 minutes beyond the scheduled landing at Heathrow.





Our very first experience with people in London (aside from the customs agent) was a Polish girl that got on the Piccadilly tube line, sat in front of us and talked on the phone the whole time to her boyfriend in Polish, reassuring him that she loved him. Of course she kept reminding him that he was useless and should get a job. We tried not to break out laughing whenever she swore at him.

The walk across town was nice especially since the weather was great and the crowds weren't there. Starting at the London Eye, we made our way east along the south bank of the Thames, up over the millenium bridge toward St. Paul's, through the financial district by the gherkin and down the tower bridge.

We're flying to Spain first thing in the morning, and I do mean first thing (7:10 am from Stansted) so I'm cutting this short right now to revise later.

Some Polish building in Balham close to where Chuck lives.



Anyway, here are some photos and the 2007 Current photo link has some photos in it now.















Cool citroen



Drinkin' in the park



Oh, and we had some reaaly good muffins that Chuck´s roommate made.