Spain - The Rest....

As mentioned above, it is now mid-April and I am way behind in putting up a post on the rest of the trip. I really do try to be disciplined on keeping a log of each day, but with everything going on during a trip like this it is hard to carve out the time to do it right. Fortunately Heather took great notes on each day in more of a journal, however I don't have that in front of me so I have to do it from memory.

After Granada, we had a few days left in front of us, so we mapped it out. On Wed we decided to have another relax day. The girls went to the beach, Gabor went into Marbella to do some wine shopping, and I hung at the place editing photos taken from the day before. Later that night we all went back to Marbella and picked up some more bottles of this great wine from Ronda Gabor had picked up earlier that day.

On Thursday we booked ourselves a trip to Tangier, Morocco. It started really early in the morning with a 6am meeting outside the resort. A big old bus came and grabbed a pretty good sized crowd of us. Apparently they had tried to do this trip for the last 2 days but the waters were too choppy to get over to Morocco, so that is why the group was larger.

The bus took us past Gibraltar, and over to Tarifa Spain. We boarded a large ferry from there, however the bus did not get on the boat. We were given stickers to where to indicate we were part of the tour group. The boat ride was pretty smooth, and was not too long.

After getting in Tangier, we zipped through customs and were quickly loaded onto a bus. We were then introduced to a guide who we were told "taught at the local college" (more on this later). We zip around Tangier pretty quickly, and he explains the different neighborhoods and their country influences. We went way up a hill that overlooked the town, and the bus pulled over and dropped us off at this weird parking lot area that had camels. For like $1 or something silly like that you could get on a camel, and they would make them stand, then basically sit them back down. We felt a little bad as it just seemed a bit of an odd place for camels. In my pictures of the camels I was careful not to get much of the surrounding area to create an illusion of dessert, but it was basically a small parking lot.

The other thing about this area is there were several dudes trying to sell cheap t-shirts, trinkets, etc... It was obviously a tourist dump, why else would they have camel rides?

After about 10-15 min we all jumped back on the bus and it took us into the Casbah. This is really just a fortified part of the town. The streets are narrow and are mostly only pedestrian. Before going directly into it though we stopped at a lookout to see where the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean met. On a clear day you can see Europe from the lookout, but it was a bit hazy so no luck there.

After entering the Casbah we were bombarded by men trying to sell stuff. They just shove it up in your face and walk with you ignoring your no's. Their most favorite phrases:

"Hey Mr. $10.....$10 Mr, $10."
You say "No thanks"
"Ok, Ok, $5. For you $5, good price. You buy."
You say "No thanks"
"Ok, Ok, 2 for $5. I give you 2 for $5. You like, you buy."
You say "No thanks"
"How much you give me?"

This will go on for as long as you let it. You really just have to ignore them. They were selling everything from shirts, hats, wooden camels, flasks, bracelets, postcards, whatever... Most carried all of these things on them at any given time. If you didn't like one thing, they pulled out the next thing looking for some slight expression of interest.

We quickly ran through the narrow streets to our lunch place. This was a nice break from the

....ok quick writers note break. I am writing this on the top deck of the house. An airplane just flew over my house trailing a sign that says "Will you marry me Blanca. Si or No?". Wow, good luck to whomever that is. I just took a picture of the plane, will post on Flickr under my "Things over my house" set...back to the story.

It was a nice break from the crowd to get indoors and get some food. Lunch was included in the package, but any beverages outside of water cost. We ordered some local beers, and waiting for the food. The decor inside is what you would expect I suppose. There was also a small 5 piece band playing. They had a ukulele type instrument, a fiddle, a bongo, a tamborine, and the a lute of sorts. They were kind of funny, because if you walked up to them with your camera while they were on a break, they would pickup their instruments and vamp this 2 bar thing over and over until you were done with your picture. They would all smile too, actually pretty nice of them. They did play real songs though, and it is always cool hearing different music. I posted a video of them playing here.

After lunch we headed back out into the streets and our next destination was a "safe shop to buy things at". We swam through the masses of people trying to sell stuff again. At one point this guy offered to buy my camera. He said, "How much is your camera....how much....how much? I give you 100 Dirhmans." Needless to say I kept the camera.

Into the shope we go, which started with a pretty big sales pitch for rugs. This one guy followed Heather and I around, throwing rugs on the floor unrolling them trying to sell us one. We ended up only purchasing a scarf of sorts for Heather. However the sales pressure was pretty high. The short version is that this guy went from $4000, down to $1700 plus free shipping for a rug he was trying to sell. This occured over the course of the 30 minutes walking through the store.

Onto the next store, which was a spice shop. We walked in a bit late, but got the jist of it. We didn't spend much time there. From there we went back to the bus, then back to the ferry, then back into Spain. From there back onto another bus, then back to the resort. We ended up getting back in the late afternoon.

This carries us into Friday. On Friday we drove to Seville. We were on our own time this day, so we visited the Cathedral, the bull ring (took a tour there), and the Plaza de Espana. A cool find in the Cathedral is that Christopher Columbus is burried here. It is also a really big Cathedral, with lots of picture taking opportunities. I think I shot about 500 pictures just in there. Here's a link to the wiki site on the Cathedral.

This was a nice town to visit, everything we went to was within a walk of each other. We finished in the Plaza when the sun went down, so we headed back and got some dinner, then drove back to the resort. In all Seville was about 2.5 hours away.

That brings us to our last day, Saturday. We slept in a bit, packed, checked out, then drove to the airport to drop Heather off. Gabor, Maria, and I then went into town and had some lunch, then back to the airport to catch our flights.

Well, I know I ended this post without much flare. However I think the pictures we took tell more of a story in general, and encourage everyone to check out the pictures on our Flickr site. The link is also in the right pane here. Thanks all!