Cadiz

Chella and I arrived back in Rota last night, and boy was the weather better here than in England!  We spent all day today exploring Rota and Cadiz... that is when we finally got up!  First we had lunch by the castle in Rota, where I introduced Chella to some delicious Spanish pinchitos (kebabs) and tortilla española (potato omlette).

 

We caught the first afternoon ferry, and went across the bay to sightsee in Cádiz.  We saw the cathedral, although we didn't go in, or go up the tower.  This largely baroque-style cathedral was built over a period of 116 years, and, due to this drawn-out period of construction, the cathedral underwent several major changes to its original design.

Then we walked out to the Castillo de San Sebastian, which is not just a castle, but also a military fortification.  It is situated at the end of a road leading out from the Caleta beach, and it was built in 1706. Today the castle remains unused, although not too long ago scenes from the James Bond movie Die Another Day were filmed here as well as on the nearby beach.

Worcester, England

Yesterday morning we hopped on a train out of London, headed for Worcester, a little English town a few hours northwest of London.  The reason for this is that my friend Chella has a distant relative that lives there, who we had promised to visit while we were in Britain.  We arrived in the afternoon, and right away spotted a lady who we thought must be Helen, the relative that Chella had never actually met  in person, but only corresponded with over e-mail.  She somehow recognized us right away, and she and her husband, who was also there to meet us, took us back to their house to drop off our things.  She put us in a cute little attic room which we had all to ourselves, and gave us some time to get settled before pulling out the family photos and "introducing" us to the rest of her family.  Chella's family is Greek, and Helen is the last "true" Greek of the family.  Apparently you can only be a true Greek if you speak Greek, and are of the Greek Orthodox religion.  Since Helen grew up in Corinth speaking Greek as her first language, she fits the bill perfectly.  She even still owns her family's original house in Corinth (which I know because we are going to stay there when we go to Greece in a few weeks!).

Later in the day, Helen took us for a walk around the town, and we took a quick look inside Worcester Cathedral, which was much bigger than I was expecting.  Then for dinner, we were lucky enough to get a real English roast dinner, which was delicious after a few days of subsiding on hostel-cooked food.  Then we met Helen's daughter Dee, and spent the rest of the evening talk to her.

 
Yesterday morning, we went back to the cathedral for a more detailed look around.  On the way there, we walked along the River Severn and saw some swans!

This was followed by a trip to the Worcester museum.  By the way, did you know that Worcestershire sauce originated in Worcester?  I do, as there was an entire display devoted to it in the museum!  In case you're wondering, it was first made at 68 Broad Street, Worcester by Misters Lea & Perrins at some point in the 1830s.  After the museum, we took Helen's dog Ronnie for a walk in some hills on the outskirts of the town.  It reminded me of exactly what I would expect the English countryside to look like.

 

That afternoon Helen's daughter-in-law stopped by to meet us, and then her son and her other daughter-in-law, and their three children came over for dinner.  They were all very friendly, and the kids were adorable.  Here's a picture of them:

More London

Today we had a very productive, sight-seeing day! We started out by going to visit the Tower of London, which was pretty impressive. The Tower of London is often identified with the White Tower, however the entire site actually includes several buildings and a total of 19 separate towers, all of which are situated behind large fortress walls and a moat. The Tower of London is most known for its use as a prison, and was the site of many executions during the time of Henry VIII. I highly recommend reading the book "The Other Boleyn Girl" or another similar historical fiction novel before a visit here, as it gave a lot more meaning to the place for me. While we wandered around the Tower of London, we also found a great view of the Tower Bridge. We got to see all different kinds of weaponry, from simple swords, to guns and cannons.


It turned out that almost every tourist sight in London had reduced prices for students - which were sometimes as much as half off the regular ticket price! So make sure you don't make the same mistake as I did, and bring your student ID card when visiting London (and Europe in general, really!)

After the Tower, we moved on to Madam Tussaud's wax museum, which was a fun attraction to see, if not a historically relevant one. We finished off the night by going to the theatre to see "Mamma Mia," a story set on a Greek island about a girl searching for her father. The best part about the show was that this story was told using hit songs by the popular '70s group ABBA.

London

Last night, I arrived in London after a quick flight from Jerez to London Stansted airport. Since I had a late flight, I had made plans to stay in a cheap hotel called The Bushel and Sack in Stansted (just outside London) so I didn’t have to navigate alone, through the city in the dark. The best part was, they had a free shuttle to and from the airport, but it the place overall was a bit more run down than I had been expecting.

This morning after getting a ride back to the airport, I took the train to the hostel where I met my friend Chella, who is travelling around with me for the next 3 weeks. The hostel, the Astor Kensington, was a pretty nice place, and one of the cheaper hostels in London, even though it has a kitchen and is conveniently close to most of the tourist sites.

We met up at the hostel, and made some lunch. I had brought a bunch of food from Spain to some money on eating out in London (which I knew to be insanely expensive!) Afterwards we went for a walk and took the Tube to the Tower Bridge, where we got so fed up with the rain and cold that we went back to the hostel and went to bed early.

This morning we headed to Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guard, and although there was a crowd of people and policemen everywhere controlling the crowd, the changing of the guard ceremony didn't actually happen due to the wind and rain.

After spending some time in the British Library looking at all kinds of famous books and artwork, we decided it was time for a proper British meal, so we found a nearby pub and had a roast dinner with potatoes. Unfortunately when they brought out our meals, we found out they were out of Yorkshire pudding, so it wasn't a completely typical meal.

To finish off the day, we went to see the Big Ben, the houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey, which I would say was the highlight of all the sightseeing. Thanks to my trusty research skills, we knew that there was an organ recital going on that evening inside Westminster Abbey, so we got in for free and got to listen to some music at the same time!

After a long day spent in the rain and cold, we thought it was time for some indoor fun, so we spent the evening having coffee in a little cafe, then going to a movie called the Bank Job (which coincidentally, takes place in London, in some of the very places we had seen that day!) And then came the best part of the night... we took a double-decker bus back to our hostel and rode up top!

Larache

Today we had another free day, and since we felt we had seen most of Asilah the day before, we decided to go to another town, called Larache. At first we thought we would take the bus, so we headed up to the "bus station." This seemed to be a pretty shady area of town in general, and after being pestered by numerous people asking where we were going, we decided it wasn't much more expensive to take a taxi. This turned out to be one of the more interesting experiences I had in Morocco.


First of all, the driver convinced us that we could fit all 6 of us into his 4-passenger taxi. So there were four of us crammed into the back and two people in the front seat. That part wouldn't have been so bad, if we hadn't had a maniac for a driver! He didn't really seem to be speeding, but anytime there was a vehicle in front of us, he would drive so closely behind it, that if it even slowed down at all he would have to slam on his brakes. Needless to say, that alone made the 6 of us fairly nervous. Then at one point, there was a tractor puttering along down the side of the road, but we couldn't see it as we were mere inches behind the truck in front of us. So when the truck moved over to the left to avoid the tractor, our driver had to swerve quite quickly. And yet this little incident didn't stop him from following so closely at all!

We arrived in Larache and again did a bit of sightseeing, but as it was also quite small, it didn't even take one whole day. Overall, it seemed to be quite a bit poorer than Asilah had been. One especially interesting part was in the port. While we were there, we saw a couple of big grey motorboats with 4 motors each. When we got in trouble for taking some pictures with these boats in them, a policeman started whistling at us to stop. The Spaniards later explained to us that these were the boats used to transport drugs out of Morocco. Apparently drug exports are one of the country's biggest sources of income.

When we decided it was time to head back to Asilah, we first had to find the place where all the taxis gathered, and decide on a reasonable price for our trip back. There were more than 20 taxis and drivers at this place, and there was some confusion at first about where we wanted to go. Again, there were six of us crammed like sardines into one taxi, and this time the driver demanded we pay him in advance. But once we were in the taxi, a few of the drivers started arguing loudly in Arabic (we assumed over who got to drive for us). Soon it escalated and two drivers and the guy who seemed to be the "manager" of all the drivers came very close to getting into a fist fight. Luckily the other drivers kept them away from each other, but all we could do was sit there, since we had already paid for our ride! Eventually our driver got in and took off, but he seemed to be fuming the entire trip!


Once we got back to Asilah, we decided to rent a motorcycle with a cart behind it to take us to some caves on the beach that we had heard about. Once again, all six of us crammed into a very small space, and prepared ourselves for a bumpy ride! This time we got stopped by a policeman, but our driver was able to talk himself out of getting a fine. After about 10 minutes of driving, we got off the road and went through a field. There was a path but from the amount of bumping around we felt in the cart you wouldn't have known it!


The most fun (and scariest!) part was when we had to drive along the side of the cliff to get down to the beach. It was even bumpier and the driver kept getting stuck! All in all, it was a pretty exhilarating ride, and we laughed the entire way there. It was lucky that the journey was so much fun though, because once we got to the beach we realized the tide had come in to much for us to go to the caves after all... a small fact that our driver had either neglected to realize or mention! Oh well... we did get to see a beautiful sunset on the beach!


That was basically the end of my Moroccan adventures, as the next day we took the ferry back to Tarifa! I really enjoyed myself, but I was sure glad to get back to Spain!

Asilah

Our second day in Morocco we woke up early to head to Asilah, a smaller town also along the coast, but further south of Tangier. Since it is so small, we didn't actually have a group tour, and were just free to wander around town. At first we walked around as a big group, and found the area where most of the shops were. We all ended up buying cheap shoes there - they have tons of shops in Morocco where they sell rip offs of brand name shoes like Pumas, Adidas, Nike, etc. And one of the Spanish guys with us talked the shopkeeper into giving us a group discount, so they were only 13 Euros per pair!

Afterwards we walked over to the market, where they were selling tons of fruit, spices, and even live chickens! Another Moroccan specialty is their olives. You find stands of them everywhere in the markets, and they have all different kinds of olives, some in different spices as well. We kept wandering and by the end of the day we had seen most of Asilah. All in all it was a pretty unexciting but interesting day.


That night we had dinner in our hotel in what seemed to be a more typical Moroccan setting. Since Moroccans, and Muslims in general are forbidden to drink alcohol, it can be pretty hard to come by there. You can't buy it at most restaurants and bars, only in some supermarkets and bigger shops. That wasn't a problem for us however, since some of the people in the group had though ahead and brought their own drinks, so we stayed downstairs for awhile hanging out with the group.

Tangier

Tangier was our first destination in Morocco, and once we found our tour group in the port, we were off! We got on a bus for a little while, and toured around the city, and then we left all of our luggage on the bus while we got off and walked around.

First we had lunch at a cozy little restaurant where they played Moroccan music for us. I had been worried about Moroccan food (since I'm a bit of a picky eater!) but it ended up being pretty tasty. We were served a kind of tomato soup, couscous with chicken, meat kebabs, and a honey pastry for dessert, along with some very sweet mint tea.


After lunch, we went to a carpet shop, where the owner proceeded to show us many different rugs. I was pretty impressed, and if there was any way I could have afforded one, I would have been very tempted. Every rug was nicer and more unique than that last, and they were all entirely handmade. My favourite part was the bright, beautiful colours woven into every one. I don't think the pictures do them justice...


Afterwards we made our way to a typical Moroccan herbarium, where we had a presentation about the different spices, medicinal plants, and cosmetic products they had to offer us. There was everything from saffron and curry for cooking with, to natural remedies for snoring and insomnia, to "magic" lipstick that lasts 24 hours.

The last stop on our list before heading to our hotel room, was a field... where there were two camels that we got to take turns riding! This was my favourite part of the day, as I had been hoping to get the chance to ride a camel while in Morocco. Though I had pictured it happening in a desert or somewhere a little more exciting, it was still fun! They also had an adorable baby camel there, which we fed grass to while we were waiting.


We got back to our hotel, which wasn't anything too special, although we did have a nice view from our terrace. Later that night, we went out for dinner with some nice Spaniards that were in our tour group: Mari Carmen, Kiki, Gustavo, and Celestino. We ended up spending our whole trip with them and had tons of fun... plus we got to speak Spanish all weekend!

Going to Morocco

Since this past weekend was a puente (long weekend) in honour of the Dia de Andalucia, I went with a fellow language assistant named Eilidh to Morocco! We left last Wednesday to spend the night in Tarifa, a cute little town famous for its great wind and kite surfing beaches. We stayed at a really great, cheap hostel called "The Melting Pot" and got up early on Thursday morning to get to the port and catch the ferry to Tangiers, Morocco.

Our trip was booked through Viajes Iberia, a travel agent in Spain, so all we had to do when we got there was exchange our reservation information for ferry tickets. The agency had told us to be there by 10:00, which was good because although there weren't many people around at first, it was pretty busy by 10:30. Although the ferry was supposed to leave at 11:00am, there were so many people that had to go through customs and security before getting on the ferry, we didn't actually leave until just after noon.


Then we had to spend almost the entire ferry ride (about an hour) waiting in line to get our passports stamped to enter Morocco (apparently they do this on the boat to save time in the port). This meant that we didn't have time to change our Euros into Moroccan Dirham. We couldn't do this before the trip either, because you can only get Dirhams inside the country.

When we finally arrived in Tangiers, we were a little bit lost, as the port was somewhat chaotic. The signs everywhere were only in Arabic or French, so it was very helpful that we both speak French, but there seemed to be nothing around that was be meant for people with tour groups. Eventually we did find our group by listening to what was going on around us (in Spanish) and we all managed to make our way out of the port, through the lax Moroccan customs, and into Morocco!

My first bullfight

Yes, it's true. Today I finally went to my first Spanish bullfight. It took place in Jerez, about a half an hour away from Rota, and I enjoyed it much more than I had imagined. This is one of the first bullfights of the season, and although there were quite a few people there, the bullring was far from packed.

The biggest thing that I noticed about bullfighting that I hadn't known before going was the ceremony involved in it. The presentation of the fight is more important than the fight itself. There were 6 bulls killed in total, and although I had expected to be horrified by the bulls' deaths, it wasn't that bad. Each torrero (bullfighter) took their turn with a bull and they would try to get close enough to stab it in a vulnerable spot. The way they got close to the bulls, but darted out of the way was almost like a well-rehearsed dance.


During the fights, the banderilleros (flag-bearing helpers) often stepped in with their pink flags, which they would use to distract the bull whenever necessary. Each fight began with the woman bullfighter on horseback, armed with a lance. She must stab a mound of muscle on the bull's neck, leading to the animal's first loss of blood. In the next stage, the banderilleros attempt to plant two razor sharp barbed sticks on the bull's flanks, ideally as close as possible to the wound where blood was first drawn.

At the end, the bullfighter re-enters the ring alone with a small red cape and a sword. It is a common misconception that the color red is supposed to anger the bull, despite the fact bulls are colourblind (the real reason that a red colored cape is used is that any blood stains on it will be less noticeable). He uses his cape to attract the bull in a series of passes, both demonstrating his control over it and risking his life by getting especially close to it. When this happens, the crowd shouts "Ole!". Finally, the match comes to an end when the bullfighter makes a last stab at the bull. Then all the bandilleros come out and try to get the bull cornered, so that it gives up and lays down, and then they kill it with a single stab through its head.

When the bull is dead, the bullfighter may be awarded trophies, according to their skill in working with the bull, which can be one or two ears from the bull, the tail and the hoof. The crowd will often show its opinion of the fight by waving white handkerchiefs, and this waving continues after the trophies have been awarded in an attempt to get the bullfighter to throw their trophies into the crowd.

The most interesting part about this particular bull fight, was that the bullfighters were women , and some were even on horseback! I was very impressed by the way they carried themselves too... the show was all about showing confidence in the fact that they were the bull's master. Although this did backfire for one girl. She wasn't having very much luck to begin with (as in she couldn't a good shot at the bull) and at one point, she turned her back on the bull (which they do frequently) and the bull, who wasn't quite tired out yet, charged her. Then, to make matters worse, she fell down onto the ground and the bull trampled her a bit before she got up. But, in true bullfighter fashion, she stood up, and continued on with the show. Luckily she didn't seem to be hurt.

The other tradition that I found interesting (albeit a little disgusting) was that of cutting off parts of the bull and throwing them into the crowd. A couple of times Rachael and I had to back up to get out of the way of a flying ear, and one little boy sitting right in front of us managed to catch one (which apparently was a pretty big deal!) My only question is, what do you do with a bull's ear once you get it home?

Never-ending paperwork

As most non-tourists living in Spain quickly discover, the red tape that plagues this country can be very frustrating. Since I've already been here for more than 5 months, you would think I had everything all worked out. However, as Erin, another language assistant here in Rota, found out a few days ago, it's all very confusing!

The reason we were worried about our documentation in the first place is that everyone else that we know in the program (both Americans and Canadians) received a temporary Spanish identity card with their photos and fingerprints on them), as well as their NIE numbers (official identity number for foreigners)... and we have no such thing!

Since Erin is heading back to the States for a week at the end of February, she is especially worried about her paperwork, because it will affect whether or not she is allowed back into Spain when she returns. It's not as big of an issue for me, since most of my future travel plans don't involve leaving the European Union, but if I want to go to Morocco sometime, I want to be sure I'm able to come back to Spain.

So last week, Erin went to the police station to confirm that our paperwork was all valid and complete. Unfortunately, she talked to a different woman than we had been dealing with all along, and as this is Spain, that meant she got completely different information. The woman gave her all these instructions, and said that she had to request special permission to leave Spain. Little did she know, the woman heard her accent when she spoke Spanish, and assumed Erin was from somewhere in South America. A few days later when Erin returned to the police station, she spoke with the right woman, who told her she didn't have to do anything and that the documents we have are in fact valid. This just goes to show how a little misunderstanding can cause a lot of hassle.

Apparently the system is undergoing some changes with identity cards - they are modernizing them and installing microchips in them. So to avoid a little work, we were given papers instead of identity cards, but both work for our situation. The second woman told Erin that if we would have just asked for the cards at the beginning, we could have worked something out, but that they are really not necessary as long as we bring all of our paperwork with us when we travel!