Beautiful Chefchaouen

On Wednesday, we had a full day to explore Chefchaouen and the surrounding countryside. Chefchaouen is a small mountain city in the Rif mountains. As I mentioned before, a lot of the town is painted in various shades of blue, especially in the medina (old city). The whole town is on a hillside so there are lots of stairs and windy, steep roads. The hotel there was adorable - no heat but lots of fireplaces and decorated entirely (of course) in blue.

We set out in the morning with the intention of going for a hike to a nearby national park, hopefully stopping in the mountain village of Kalaa, which looked to be in the middle of the park.

Pretty much as soon as we walked out of the hotel, we were lost, and spent some time wandering the medina trying to reach the road that would lead us to the park. Luckily, wandering the medina is not a miserable activity since it's beautiful and fun.

[click pictures to view larger version] 

Wandering did mean a lot of stairs though!

Chefchaouen has a lot of waterfalls that run through town - here is one of them:

After admiring the waterfalls and continuing to climb up and up through the medina, we finally reached the top.

We set off down the road towards the national park. At one point, we actually had to walk through a driving school which was apparently being conducted on one section of road. We found the sign for the national park and followed the dirt road/path into the park.

At first, things were not especially promising. In Morocco, apparently "national park" and "landfill" are synonymous terms, and as we hiked through the landfill and sketchy Moroccan men tried to sell us hash, I mostly was looking around for a rock large and pointy enough to kill Scott with the first blow. (This hike was his idea).

However, once we got through the sketchy part, we were eventually left alone and we were rewarded with some amazing views:

The path varied from an actual dirt road to a more narrow path, and we frequently passed sheep grazing and men plowing the soil with teams of donkeys. We weren't sure if we were ever going to reach Kalaa but there was a kid about 100 yards ahead of us who was going SOMEWHERE, so we sketchily followed him through the mountains.

It began to get quite warm and the sun was feeling quite hot on our faces. [I did wind up getting a little sunburned but it had faded by the next morning.] Every time we went around a bend, I hoped we would see a town but instead it would just be more uphill path.

We finally caught sight of a village and headed for it. I drank from a mountain stream, which helped refresh me a lot. We were really hoping there would be someplace for us to eat in town.

We were happy to find this building:

If may be tough to see in the picture but it says "Cafe" on the bottom left hand side, above the door. We headed for it, visions of delicious tangines and couscous filling our imaginations. (Or maybe just my imagination.) We arrived at the same time as a group of French hikers, and were escorted to sit in plastic chairs next to a stream. They brought out tea and water, and we suggested that we would like to eat.

We discussed this with the proprietor through a variety of translators - we talked to the French woman, who would translate it into French for her husband, who then repeated it in Arabic to the cafe owner. After this slightly ludicrous exchange, the cafe owner disappeared for a moment, and then returned and beckoned us to come inside.

He brought us to a room and we sat on sheep skins, and he brought us some lunch. This lunch consisted of: a giant bowl of olives, a giant bowl of sliced tomatoes, and a giant bowl of olive oil. And bread.

I don't know that this picture does justice to the scale of this whole thing - when the bowl of olive oil was set down, I momentarily thought that it was a bowl of soup or broth, there was so much of it. We went to work on this, although I wasn't a huge help on the olive consumption front and absolutely NO help with eating the tomatoes. Luckily I put in a good effort on the bread and olive oil.

While we were eating, the cafe owner's son talked to us for a few minutes and showed us his English exercise book from school. He claimed to be 27 years old, which mostly makes me think that his teacher needs to review numbers with them more because he looked like he was about 13 or 14.

The lunch and giant bottles of water refreshed us enough to face the hike back to Chefchaouen. By this time, it was around 2:30 PM, and the shadows were already starting to lengthen from the mountain.

We mostly followed the same road back, although we eventually deviated and wandered on a slightly different, smaller path which shortened the distance somewhat and allowed us to bypass the landfill. We eventually arrived back in Chefchaouen, and I rested my feet for a bit before we went and got a big, filling dinner - though we both groaned when the server set down the inevitable bowl of olives.

Yesterday morning, we left Chefchaouen and had a very long day traveling to Marrakesh, where we are at the moment. I will post about Marrakesh tonight or first thing tomorrow, since we will soon go and spend a few nights in the desert!! (and I don't think the Berber tents have wi-fi.)

Florence to Chefchaouen - With Pictures!!

As promised in my last entry, here's a nice long entry with pictures from the past few days - I can't believe Christmas was only 3 days ago!!

Christmas morning would not have been complete without getting in a fight about being late to church. Trevor: "Well, how did you THINK you were going to wake me?? By LOOKING AT ME??" It was fun to walk to church through the empty streets of Florence - this was our view approaching the Duomo:

Mass was beautiful and involved a lot of chanting. Our Mass was said by the archbishop of Florence - with the assistance of about 20 other priests. I told Mom afterwards that I finally understand why there's so much great artwork on the domes/ceilings of churches - so that you can zone out and look at the pictures while pretending to be looking piously heavenward.

After church, we went out for Christmas dinner - we were excited to FIND the restaurant, and it was OPEN! A big win! They didn't have an English menu, so we pointed arbitrarily at things on the menu which contained one or two words we recognized. We also got some very sweet (and delicious) champagne:

Not knowing exactly what we were ordering meant that when the food arrived, we weren't 100% sure who was supposed to get what. My meal was DELICIOUS but I spent a good portion of it worrying that I had stolen Trevor's Christmas dinner. We consulted the menu again on the way out and determined that we THINK we all had the correct dishes. Regardless, Trevor seemed to enjoy his food:

Here is our reservation card:

After a great dinner, it was time to go down to Rome to catch my flight. I had a bit of an adventure on my way down to Rome. I had put my big backpack in the luggage rack at one end of the car, and I was sitting and reading intermittently. I noticed a woman go by muttering to herself. A few minutes later, she walked back the other direction, still muttering to herself but this time wearing a backpack that had a coat draped completely over it. I caught a glimpse of a buckle hanging down and suddenly thought, "THAT LOOKS LIKE MINE!"

I hurried to the end of the car and sure enough, my backpack was missing from the luggage rack. I went back down to the other end and through another car and found the woman, surrounded by a few backpacks and shopping bags. I pointed to my backpack and said in a loud voice, "That's my backpack!!" She said something to me in Italian and pulled the backpack towards herself. We shouted at each other for a few minutes before a conductor appeared. He talked with her and turned to me and said, "She says it's her backpack." Luckily I was able to prove it was mine by pulling out my (English) travel guide. I grabbed the bag and went back to my seat, where the women around me wanted to know what had happened, especially after the crazy lady came through the car and shouted at me as she went past. A woman sitting near me offered me a cookie as consolation for my troubles. When I went through my bag, the only thing I could find missing was the scarf I had tied on the outside. I am VERY SAD about that scarf - I loved it - but glad that she hadn't had a chance to take anything else.

Somehow, I totally misjudged my airport timing, and was still waiting in the ticket line when they were supposed to close the check-in for my flight to Madrid. LUCKILY, the woman shouted out to see if there was anyone else for Madrid, so I got to cut most of the line to get checked in. Then I went to the wrong gate, so it was amazing that I actually managed to make the flight.

A flight from Rome to Madrid contains A LOT of Italians and Spaniards, so it was actually more like a social event than a flight. Once the seatbelt sign was turned off, the aisle was totally filled with people talking and shouting - gesturing wildly the whole time, of course! It was incredibly loud and there was applause at both takeoff and landing - a general enthusiasm for the whole idea of traveling.

I met up with Scotty in Madrid. No, we don't have Paradise Lost memorized but Scotty has an international data plan on his phone so he was able to Google my clue. My bad luck with restaurants streak carried over from Italy - we attempted to go to TWO restaurants that were closed before randomly stumbling into this one:

It was good but we really had NO idea what we were ordering. I wound up getting some sort of steak and eggs dish, which was pretty delicious.

Yesterday, we spent pretty much the whole day in the Madrid airport. Nothing really significant happened, except that for a while Scotty insisted that I push him around in a luggage cart because he was tired of standing, and it made me think of the time that Trevor forced me into the 4th of July parade with his wheelchair. Needless to say, I am bitter about both of these incidents.

We arrived too late to journey to Chefchaouen, so instead we found a place to stay in Tangiers and then searched out for dinner.

Our meal was quite good! We had all sorts of fish and other deliciousness but this meal has become a bit of a sore point because we got totally ripped off by the restaurateur - he charged us for two of each dish because there were two of us, when we thought we were only ordering one of each. Still, it wasn't THAT expensive but Scotty was cranky about it "on principle" and still hasn't let it go.

We got up this morning and caught the bus to Chefchaouen. It was about a three hour bus ride up into the Rif mountains, and as the turns became increasingly hairpin, I began to wonder if we were close enough to abandon the bus and just walk. But we arrived there safely, if slightly queasy. We wandering through the medina until we found our hotel (slightly assisted). Scott made new friends with his guitar playing skills:

We went out to explore Chefchaouen. A distinctive feature of this town is its pale shade of blue that nearly everything in the medina is painted. They haven't reached consensus on an EXACT shade but anything that could be described as "light blue" is acceptable.

Here is a view from our lunch spot looking up into the mountains:

I got a kefta tangine for lunch, which is a dish I have attempted to make at home and am pleased to report I have gotten mostly right. I shared a tiny little bit of it with a stray cat, who then decided we were her people and curled up and went to sleep on one of the other chairs at our table. I took a picture of her but am restraining myself from posting it because of some recent complaints that the blog has become slightly cat-heavy. She was REALLY CUTE though so I hope everyone knows that they're really missing out.

Here's my food, the white in the middle is egg:

It got dark before we had much time to take pictures of this beautiful town, but there is wi-fi at this hotel so I will be posting again soon!

Florence to Tangier Adventure

Whew! What a whirlwind the past few days have been!! I am in the hotel lobby on an unfamiliar keyboard so I will try to relay some of our adventures but will need to wait until later to post a longer entry with photos. Here are bullet points:

• Mom, Trevor and I had a really fun Christmas, complete with a beautiful Mass and delicious dinner. I caught a train Saturday evening to Rome and took an EasyJet flight out of Rome to come meet Scott in Madrid. I nearly missed my flight, meaning that I am 3 for 3 on crazed, panicky experiences in the Rome airport.
• Because Scott and I like to make life exciting, we decided not to meet up at our hostel but instead, I waited until he was midflight over the Atlantic and then sent him a clue about a location in Madrid where we were to meet. It was also a race - there were rules about when we could set out for the meeting spot and a required use of public transportation. Even though I wrote the clue, I should have known better than to think I had any hope of beating Scott - he later described how he mapped his route and researched options for public transport with a zeal and attention to detail similar to movie characters planning a heist. He won by about ten minutes. If you are wondering, here is the clue that I sent: "Having some time on my hands while traveling means I've been doing quite a bit of reading. I've been trying to work my way through Paradise Lost but haven't been able to get much further than line 37 in the first book. John Milton, would it have killed you to include some pictures? I need some sort of visual representation of what's happening..."
• Yesterday, we caught a flight from Madrid to Tangier. Flight delays meant that we spent most of the day in the Madrid airport, killing time by shopping at the Duty Free store, but we eventually made it. The original plan was for us to continue to Chefchaoen yesterday, but getting in late meant that we stayed in Tangier last night and will embark on the 3 hour bus ride to Chefchoaen later this morning.

Okay. This foreign keyboard is slowly causing me to lose my mind so I will wrap this up and write more when I can.

The above sentence typed without searching for the correct keys:
This foreign keyboqrd is slozly cqusing ,e to lose ,y ,ind to I zill zrqp this up qnd zrite ,ore zhen I cqn: The auick borzn fox ju,ped over the lqwy blqck dog:

Made it to Madrid

Just a quick note to say that I've arrived in Madrid and met up with Scott. Hilarious adventures have already ensued but I will write more soon - probably. We head for Morocco tomorrow and I'm not sure what the internet situation will be there, so I will update and post when I can! :)

Christmas Eve in Bologna

Before I left on this trip, Mom brought home a coffee table book that had suggestions about going different places in Europe at different times of the year. I don't remember much of what we read, but one of the cities that it suggested as a good winter destination in Italy was Bologna. We did a little research and discovered that it would be an easy day trip from Florence - about 40 minutes via high speed train.

We stuck with this plan and purchased tickets yesterday to head up to Bologna today. We caught a mid-morning train which got us into Bologna shortly after 11:00 AM. Before we left the train station, we purchased our return tickets and wandered around looking for the tourist information office. I never did find the tourist information office but the guy at the left luggage area gave me a photocopy of a map, so we made do with that for the day.

It seemed like we spent a long time wandering the train station before heading out... this of course led to Trevor and I being bored, which resulted in me taking pictures of Trevor standing around awkwardly:

We soon set off for the center of town, window shopping along the way. At one point, the window shopping led to Trevor purchasing a present for Kirsten. (Kiki: I hope you like this present. It's a little ridiculous but I have to admit, I only encouraged him.)

We reached the Piazza Maggiore in the center of town and had fun looking around at the various buildings and squares adjoining the piazza.

I really liked this statue of an angel:

There was a quartet playing an interesting combination of jazz/bluegrass/Italian folk music, and we listened to them for a little while. This little girl seemed to be mostly transfixed by their music, as well.

Many of the streets were decorated for Christmas. This picture doesn't capture it particularly well, but a lot of the shops had lights up, and there were lights and evergreen boughs spanning the street.

Bologna was a really fun city to walk around, for a couple reasons. The old city, in the center of town, had a lot of pedestrian streets with fun stores for window shopping. Also, the city is famous for its porticos, which we really appreciated. The rain held off for most of the day, but the porticos meant that there were wide, dry sidewalks - a welcome change after spending the week walking "duckling style" (in a single file line) along Florence's crowded and narrow sidewalks.

I had a brilliant plan that we were going to eat lunch at a restaurant called Osteria Broccaindosso, which was recommended by my guidebook as a good, authentic restaurant a little off the tourist path. Totally committed to this, I marched us down along Strada Maggiore until we were sort of in some random residential district. I wasn't worried, though, because the reviews I had read online cautioned that it was somewhat hard to find. It wasn't until we had wandered up and down the street a few times that I started to question my restaurant picking skills. I pulled the guidebook out of my bag to make sure we were on the correct street.

Now, before I go any further with this anecdote, I want to mention something that's wonderful about traveling alone: you never have to admit when you're wrong. It's beautiful. You don't even have to admit it to yourself! You can be walking along, watching your plans for the day slowly unravel, and rather than thinking, "Hmmm, I should have found this on a map/asked for directions/left a half hour earlier/done some research on this/bought my ticket ahead of time/set an alarm clock," you instead can think, "You know... I didn't really want to do this anyway!" You might have to glance shiftily around to see if any locals have noticed that you are incredibly lost and are rotating your map around and around in your hands, but for the most part, you can stuff the map back in your bag, turn on your heel, and head for home, pretending that the whole excursion never really took place. Best case scenario, you discover something else to do while you are slinking home from your failure, and you can pretend that was your plan the whole time.

So, I was dismayed to find myself at such a crossroads... with Mom and Trevor looking at me expectantly, hoping for some lunch. You see, even though the entry for this restaurant was only four lines long in my guidebook, I managed to miss the line saying that it was only open for dinner. I momentarily contemplated trying to convince everyone to walk up and down the street for another... seven hours... but instead had to own up to my mistake and admit that we'd need to find somewhere else to eat lunch.

We walked back up Strada Maggiore and wandered through a Christmas market. One of the stalls was quite long and sold every possible Nativity figurine you could ever need:

(I like all the angels hanging from the top shelf.)

We found a little wine bar/restaurant, which I have tried to remember the name of/find online but have managed to fail at both, which is sad because it was really good! Shelley, you would be incredibly jealous if you knew how much browned butter with sage I have been eating. Trevor and Mom gave good reviews to their dishes as well, so WHEW lunch disaster averted. We lingered a while at lunch and then headed out into town to find some dessert.

We went to a bakery stall which drew us in with its colorful display of marzipan fruit. The watermelon was not the most realistic looking but it did look the most cheerful to me!

We purchased some pistachio... things... and took them along for the long(ish) walk back to the train station. We arrived about half an hour before our train was scheduled to depart so we sat on a bench to enjoy our dessert.

Trevor failed to understand that when I say "just act natural", I actually mean "just act natural and photogenic." Here's Mom and Trev enjoying their pistachio pastry things.

We all agreed that we were not fans of the high speed train for two reasons:

1. No Garrett's popcorn sold at the train station
2. Fast train meant no time for a train nap

I sorted out my ticket to Rome for tomorrow evening - I'll be going down late so that I can catch my flight to Madrid in the morning - and we came back to the hotel. Tomorrow we will go to Christmas Mass at the Duomo (!!) and have Christmas dinner at a restaurant. We are excited for this restaurant because so far, most of the restaurants we have attempted to go to have been (a) closed, (b) non-existent or (c) both closed and non-existent (somehow). But we have reservations at tomorrow's eat-shop so woo-hoo!!

Mom and Trevor will depart early on Sunday morning, and I'll head to Madrid to meet up with the wonderful Scott Eisenhardt, with whom I'm joining forces for an adventure in Morocco and Spain. I'll try to post some Christmas pictures tomorrow before I leave!

A Day of Michelangelo (Sculpture and Palazzo)

Today we got off to a much earlier start than yesterday. Determined not to miss breakfast, Mom woke me up at 7:30 AM... only to discover that breakfast doesn't even start til 8:00. THANKS MOM. (Bwahaha she is here and won't read this.)

Anyway, we managed to pry Trevor out of his bed at around 10:00 AM and set out for the day. While waiting for Trevor to get up, I went to the grocery and got some lunch. We walked a few blocks to the art museum where Michelangelo's David is kept.

During the summer, the line to get in stretches around the corner, so there's a lot of graffiti on the walls from people who are bored while standing in line. I liked this unicorn, which I stopped to take a picture of even though we didn't have to wait to get in:

We saw not only the David but also Michelangelo's "slave" sculptures. Pretty incredible.

From there, we walked down towards the Arno and did some window shopping along the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge in Florence which is lined with jewelry stores.

Trevor shops for Kiki's Christmas present:

I really liked some of the more unique pieces, such as the jeweled rings which looked like animals. This owl seems quite displeased:

A whole case of jeweled butterflies - reminded me of a museum case of specimens. Grinter, if by some random chance you are reading this, I thought of you while I was looking at this, because it's two things you love: bugs and expensive stuff. :)

A delicate cameo necklace in an antique jewelry store:

After crossing the bridge, we walked east along the river. The river was flowing quite quickly, probably due to the melting snow from the storm that slowed all the flights down.

We climbed up, up, up to get to the Palazzo Michelangelo - a scenic view over Florence.

Trevor gazed out over Florence and practiced his modeling poses:

It was a little rainy most of the day but the clouds provided a dramatic backdrop for our view.

We found a bench in a nearby park area and ate the lunch I had packed - clementines, brie, crackers, and chocolate. We returned to the overlook to take a few more pictures and then decided to head back down towards town.

I am not the only one in the family who compulsively pets stray cats:

We got back to the hotel as evening fell and took our now customary late-afternoon naps, then set out for dinner. We ate at a lovely restaurant a few blocks from the hotel. I tried to take some pictures but my pictures of the food didn't look that appealing and Trevor looked creepy in all the pictures he was in so you'll just have to IMAGINE our dinner.

I had a first course of spinach and ricotta tortellini with a mushroom and truffle sauce. MMM TRUFFLES. Trevor and Mom both had pasta e fagioli soup. My main course was rabbit (sorry, Jeremy!) with artichokes. Trevor had clams with linguine and Mom had veal and veggies. Trev and I finished off our dinner by splitting some creme brulee. Good eats!

Mom spent several minutes at the end of dinner practicing asking for the check in Italian. She has looked up the phrase in the guidebook several times and was all geared up and ready to go...

She got the waiter's attention, took a deep breath, and said, "The bill, please?" in beautifully articulated English. Oh Mom. Luckily we have plenty more meals and she has vowed to use her phrase soon.

We had a nice evening walk home. Mom inspected the gigantic doors of this church:

The rain had long since stopped but the wet streets still reflected the lights leading us home. :)

Firenze - Day One

After the travails of yesterday, I was excited to get going in Florence today. CERTAIN PEOPLE were jet-lagged and slept quite late but it meant that I had a solitary and relaxing breakfast of croissants, biscotti with Nutella, yogurt, cappuccino and orange juice - don't pretend you aren't jealous. After I kept turning on an increasing number of lights in the room, Mom and Trevor woke up and we set out for the day.

First stop was to find food. We went down to the central market - a large indoor market with all sorts of food vendors. There were lots of butchers selling all sorts of meat, from chicken breast and steaks to tripe, brains, and an entire pig's head. On one side were prepared food stalls, so we got some lunch and mulled wine there.

After eating, we walked outside to the outdoor market nearby. These vendors sold lots of leather goods, jewelry, coats, scarves, etc. Mom and Trevor debated whether to buy a red or yellow leather jacket:

After a bit of shopping, we walked down towards the Arno River on our way to the Uffizi gallery. We stopped at a point along the river where there were love locks - more here than in Budapest. Most of these were not as nicely engraved, though.

We walked past the Galileo museum but didn't go in. Outside, there's some sort of elaborate crystal sundial which wasn't working because it was cloudy. We all still found our star signs/birthdays on the calendar on the ground. Here is Trevor with his astrological sign:

This was the other part of the sundial - at the top of this column was a blue crystal and the sun was supposed to shine through it and cast a light on the ground. Or something. Mostly I just liked the little lizard.

We struggled to find the correct door to enter the Uffizi, and walked around the outside of the entire museum.

Italy takes art seriously. Even the graffiti (from the Italian word "graffiato") is impressive:

Mom broke into a sprint and left us in her dust as we neared the real artwork:

We spent a couple hours touring the Uffizi - got to see some Michelangelo, Raphael, Durer, and overrated Leonardo da Vinci paintings. After the Uffizi, we walked back to the hotel and had a little down time before dinner.

We went to a recommended pizza place a few blocks from the hotel. It was small and quickly filled with locals - lots of shouting and laughing in Italian. We got some delicious pizzas which were quite large but so good! It was loud and crowded but a lot of fun. The table next to us apparently had some sort of wager about where we were from; we chatted with them briefly on our way out.

After dinner, we came home to plan for tomorrow.

Trevor chatted with Kirsten:

While I wrote this blog entry!

Kathy and Trevor Update

As many of you know, Mom (Kathy) and Trevor were scheduled to arrive today in Florence. I managed to stay south of this freak snowstorm that has been shutting down Europe's airports but Trev and Mom were not so lucky. I haven't heard from them in the past 24 hours but looking at flight tracking makes me think that Mom is currently stuck in Paris and I have no idea where Trevor is - it looks like his flight from DC to Paris was cancelled.

I'll post updates here when people arrive or I hear from them. The weather in Florence is cloudy but not snowing so hopefully as soon as Paris gets back on its feet, they will arrive! I am going to go procure some wine so that we have some on hand - sounds like they might need it after this ordeal.

UPDATE [10:15 PM]: After a long wait in Florence's spacious, comfortable and modern airport, Mom's flight arrived from Paris around 7 PM tonight. We waited and waited for Trevor's flight only to finally find out that it has been diverted to Pisa. So, Mom and I returned to the hotel and are counting on Trevor to use his street smarts to find his way here.

UPDATE [12:49 AM]: Trevor is here!

Random Snapshots from Bulgaria

I am currently making my way towards Florence - who knew Eastern Europe is so large!? Lots of trains.

Before I left, I did a whirlwind tour of Bulgaria, managing to stop in three cities - Veliko Tarnovo, Plovdiv, and Sofia. It's been a really fun time - Bulgaria is tough because of their crazy Cyrillic alphabet, but if someone is looking for a fun trip to take, Romania and Bulgaria are beautiful and interesting.

Veliko Tarnovo was the medieval capital of Bulgaria and has the ruins of a huge fortress, which we visited in a blizzard:

[click to enlarge]

The place is really gigantic - crazy to imagine what it must have been like when it was fully built up.

They have a church there with amazing paintings inside. You have to pay extra to take pictures inside, so instead here is a detail of one of the doors:

Moving on to Plovdiv... there is a large Roman amphitheater in the middle of town - a road runs underneath it.

Kitty at the theater wonders if maybe his tickets were for another night:

Beautiful painted plate:

Painting inside the archway of a mosque:

I was touring Plovdiv with Australians. Lesson: Aussies do not like cold. They got cranky and marched off to find a coffee shop:

I don't think my hiding will be very successful if the internet can find me:

Kitties everywhere!!

The houses in the old section of Plovdiv are gorgeously painted:

Confidential to Mahaba: I met your Bulgarian cousin. He's a nice dude. He said to pass on this message: "meow mew mrow mrow mew purrrrr."