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Marrakesh

Saturday, March 23, 2002 18:48

Weather: Hot & steamy, slight haze

Location: The atrium of the Hotel Gazelle, Marrakesh

My alarm clock woke me at a horribly early hour of the morning and I finished my packing and moved out. At 6am it was barely light out, and the streets were more or less empty. A lonely petit taxi waited outside the hotel and I was at the bus station in just a couple of minutes.

A healthy lineup demonstrated the popularity of the 6:30 bus. I got in line behind a quartet of young English travellers, and worked through the process of checking in my pack and taking my seat. The bus was full, with a 20-year old Moroccan as my neighbour.

By unanimous consent, the blinds were pulled and everyone dozed off. When I woke, the bus was winding its way up to a low mountain pass. The fields on either side of the road were a startling emerald green. We stopped at two moderately sized villages with very un-Moroccan architecture: detached houses with little gardens, steeply pitched roofs, and tree-lined avenues. At the second (apparently called “Fellah”–I started humming “Fellah from Fortune”), I took advantage of the brief stop to buy a small bottle of water and a couple of pieces of fresh corn bread.

The bus continued on. We wound our way down the other side of the pass, past small farmhouses and shepherds with small flocks of sheep or herds of goats. We made several more unremarkable stops. Gradually, the land grew drier, the fields less green. Finally, the high snow-capped peaks of the Atlas mountains came into view, but by then we had descended into Marrakesh’s wide valley.

As we arrived in Marrakesh it was clear that the desert was near. Bemused-looking dromedaries stood around dopily, and palm trees grew everywhere. The unirrigated land tended towards dry cactii, brushweeds, or simply bare dirt.

When we arrived in town, the English group invited me to join them in hunting for a hotel. We piled into two taxis and headed down to the medina. Unlike those of Fès and Chefchaouen, this one was clearly (unfortunately) accessible by car.

We ran into a problem there: hordes of tourists had filled most of the hotels. When we asked the taxi drivers to take us to a second, nearby hotel, they started off following their own agenda, driving us to an expensive 3-star back in the Nouvelle Ville. We rebelled when we saw its prices, and headed back to the medina again. There, we paid off the taxi drivers (who had clearly gouged us) and walked into the medina to find a hotel.

We quickly found one, labelled Hotel Gazelle in the guide book and on the signs outside, but Hotel Les Visiteurs Koutoubia inside and on their business cards. N’importe: they had rooms, so we checked in. Each floor has two shared bathrooms and a single (cold) shower, but it was cheap and central.

Next stop: checking out the central square. One of our party, Alison, had had serious motion sickness all day and was too drained to move. But Bob, Cloe, Rob and I wanted a drink after the long bus ride. We walked into the Djemaa el-Fna, the huge open central area of the medina. Cafés lined the eastern side, and we picked one with a roof terrace from where we could see some of the action. Sipping mint teas and soft drinks, we looked out over the medina of Marrakesh.

In the afternoon sun, the square was crammed with people. A central area was marked out for food stalls, each one ringed by a u-shape of benches and tables for its customers. Around, a horde of humanity resolved itself into dozens of individual crowds, attracted to particular street vendors or performers. While many of the crowd were foreigners, it was clear that most were Moroccans out for a good time.

Surrounding the square, the north and west sides were sooks and other shops. The sound end funneled past an impromptu parking lot to a small manicured park, and to the main streets of Marrakesh. And to the southeast and eastern sides, the cafés on the edge gave way to pedestrian streets, with hotels, restaurants, banks and shops lining their sides.

After the refreshments had had a chance to soothe our nerves, we set off into the thick of the crowds. Here, salesmen, beggars and street performers all had their pitches, and all were quite persistent if they sensed the slightest interest. We stopped to watch a small group of musicians playing a dance for two veiled figures with finger cymbals. Though they were obviously talented, it seemed that at least one of these “women” was a man behind the veils.

Further on, snake charmers blew piercing ambulance warbles through their clarinets at dazed-looking cobras who appeared completely docile. A group of acrobats took turns tumbling, then formed a human pyramid. Story tellers were ringed by crowds of appreciative onlookers.

It seemed a bit hard to believe that all of this was not put on for the benefit of tourists, as indeed it was–but the tourists were Moroccans, as they always had been. We were wandering through the original Disneyland.

2002 03 23 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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Mo’ Fès

Friday, March 22 20:04

Weather: Not a cloud in the sky. A scorcher.

Location: Cyber Café, Boul. Mohammed V, Fès.

I had a wonderful day getting to know Fès. I got up early again and wandered out for a coffee and a danish (yes, really) at a Patisserie on Avenue de France. Then back to the hotel where I met the guide.

Turned out that despite yesterday’s misgivings, he did have the Ministry of Tourism accreditation as an official guide. It also turned out that he wasn’t going to be guiding me after all: he turned me over to a colleague (also accredited), a young, smartly-dressed man with a fluent command of French (but no English), who turned out to be just great. We took a cab up to one of the 9 gates into the old medina (Fès el-Bali). A few steps inside, and we were in a cool narrow street of merchants, a Sook.

The medina is split into many, many little neighbourhoods. Some of these specialize in a single craft, such as tannery, metalwork, bulk sales of spices, woodwork, or textiles. These neighbourhoods are run by a master craftsman, who decides who gets to be an apprentice, and when they are ready to own their own shop; basically, the same as the guild system that used to dominate Europe.

The Sook neighbourhoods, by contrast, are the medieval Moroccan equivalent of supermarkets, with side-by-side booths selling vegetables, chickens, bread, etc.

The whole guild system is apparently under a lot of pressure, as upstart outsiders have moved in, set up shop in non-guild-controlled parts of the medina, and started making lower quality goods at lower prices. (Walmart has not yet made it here, however. Just as well…)

Each neighbourhood, the guide explained, has a set of essential services: a public bathhouse, or hammam; a mosque, with a school attached; a public fountain, now mostly non-functional as 90% of the houses have their own running water; a public oven for baking bread. Often, a neighbourhood will also have a caravanserail, basically a hotel for visiting caravans of merchants from other towns. These are square or rectangular, multi-story buildings, each centred around an open atrium. Rooms above open onto carved wooden balconies overlooking the atrium.

We wandered through the medina for most of the morning. The guide took a break and let me explore the Medensa el-Attarine, a caravanserail that has been restored and reopened as a Merinid museum under a UNESCO grant. (The whole of the old city has been designated a UN World Heritage Site, and money is flowing in to restore and maintain the outer walls and selected buildings inside.) We also stopped at several craft shops, whose owners showed off their goods and explained the manufacturing process. They were all trying to sell things, of course, but were gracious when I declined to buy; a far cry from the hardball sales pitches of Thailand!

Many of the stores were shut, as it is a Friday, the Muslim day of prayers, but I was actually pleased about that. It cut down on the swarms of people who might otherwise be expected to move through the narrow streets. Goods are still moved by donkey and hand cart, as cars could not possibly fit into the thin passageways. We passed several donkeys, and stepped over the evidence of many more.

We looked into the Kairaouine Mosque, although as a non-Muslim I can’t enter it. Through the finely carved doorways, I could see prayer halls, elaborately carved and decorated archways, and fine tapestries and carpets. The Medersa Bou Inania, a mosque which is normally open for visitors, is currently under renovation.

At the end of the tour, we took a long taxi drive back towards the Ville Nouvelle, and stopped for a quick photo of the grand entrance to the Royal Palace (closed to visitors). My guide also pointed out the Borj Nord, the castle overlooking the medina from the north, which I resolved to return to in the afternoon.

After the tour ended, I had a few minutes before the lunchtime opening of many of the restaurants. I quickly found another 10 Dr./hr Internet café. One hour later, it was time for lunch. I walked back up the Boulevard Mohammed V to Restaurant Fish Friture, where I ordered (and highly enjoyed) a pigeon pie: they’re called Pastilla, they’re made from pigeon meat, eggs, almonds, cinnamon and sugar, encased in pastry, they’re a specialty of Fès, and they’re delicious. (I have a photo.)

After lunch, I went back to the bus station. I had originally planned to take the train to Marrakesh, but the tannery store owner and the guide talked me into taking the bus trip over the High Atlas mountains, instead of the train which goes out to the coast and down, avoiding the mountains altogether. So it’s a 6:30 am, nine-hour bus trip for me tomorrow. Can’t wait! (Bzuh.)

Following the bus station, I picked up a British newspaper and stopped at a café to drink mint tea, read the paper, and wait for the worst of the midday heat to pass. At about 3:30, I caught a taxi up to the Borj Nord. There, I toured the Arms Museum in the castle, wandered over to the cliff edge outside, and goggled at the fantastic view of the city. I took pictures, and gradually made my way back down to the medina as the sun began a slow descent over the hills. There was a large group waiting by the Bab Guissa (gate) for taxis, so when the bus came by I hopped onboard, paid Dr. 2.50, and rode back to the Ville Nouvelle for dinner.

After dinner, I wandered out onto the streets again. After sundown, the city comes alive: the heat has cooled to a pleasant temperature, people swarm the sidewalks nibbling ice cream cones, and most of the stores are doing their most sales of the day. Morocco is very young: 70% of the population is under the age of 35, according to my guide. I think they’re all here, enjoying the evening.

2002 03 22 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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Fès

Thursday, March 21, 2002 21:17

Weather: Hot and sunny again!

Location: Grand Hotel Fès, Fès, Morocco

I stayed up last night and finished One Hit Wonder, which was a mistake: now I’m out of reading material, and Morocco has far fewer foreign language outlets than, say, Spain. (Not counting French. There are French newspapers everywhere… I guess I could use the practice…)

This morning I got up and packed everything. I went back into the medina for another lovely omelette breakfast with mit tea, then strolled down to the post office to drop off yesterday’s post cards. When I told the lady behind the counter I was off to Fès, she suggested I take a grands taxi from there to see Moul ay Yaacoub, about 20 km away. I wasn’t completely clear on what was there, but gather that it’s ruins of some kind.

That duty done, I went back into the medina to visit the Kasbah’s gardens and museum. Dr. 10 got me in the door. Behind the fortress walls, the garden was a little haven from the bustle of the square outside, whose noise was completely muffled. However, the garden itself was under maintenance, with a half-dozen men digging up some of the pathways and carting around various plants. I took refuge in the castle’s main building, which housed the museum. This comprised of one room for local clothing (photos of young brides and grooms suggested that traditional marriages are between teenagers), one room for weapons (mainly turn-of-the-century long bore flintlock rifles with carved stocks) and various smaller examples of pottery and woodwork.

It didn’t take long to finish in the museum, so I still had some time before my 1pm bus. I went back to the Internet café for another round of emails and Blogging, and then finally traipsed up to my hotel to pick up my bags and my passport, and to pay for my stay.

Last stop was lunch: I’d promised the young proprietor of the Al Kasbah restaurant that I would return for lunch today. He spoke excellent English and had been a great host yesterday for lunch, so I went back and enjoyed a lamb couscous before getting on the road. As I left, he gave me several of his business cards to pass on to any friends who might be coming to Chefchaouen!

With my heavy pack, I walked out of the medina and flagged a petit taxi to the bus station. I got there in plenty of time and sat in the shade until the bus arrived. I’d been worried that it might prove crowded–according to the Lonely Planet it can be difficult getting a spot on the Chefchaouen-Fès route–but there was actually plenty of room and I was able to spread out.

I dozed initially, but woke as we started coming to the middle of the Rif mountain range. The Rif mountains seemed to be mostly green, with small forests and farm plots everywhere. Given the heat of the sun, I can only guess that it must have rained very recently, as the vegetation was still thriving.

We made a couple of short stops on the way, but were in Fès by 5pm. As we left the Rif mountains and passed into the Middle Atlas area, the land got flatter and drier. Many of the farms had aqueducts set up to irrigate their fields, though none were in active use and some were in obvious disrepair.

Fès itself seemed to take up an awful amount of horizon, spread out across a wide, fairly flat valley. The bus pulled through the outskirts of town and turned in to stop at the CTM depot in the Nouvelle Ville. As I picked up my luggage, I was in turn picked up by a local tour guide, who walked me to the hotel and arranged to meet me tomorrow for a tour of the city. His price matched the one listed as standard in the Lonely Planet, so I’m guessing he’s legit, though I’ll ask to see his identification in the morning.

The Grand Hotel Fès was recommended to me by Molly. It’s a large colonial-style 3-star hotel, with high ceilings, large western-style bathrooms, and old but solid furniture. It seemed very expensive after Chefchaouen, but Dr. 350 per night is still only C$50, so I suppose it’s not too bad. It was very nice to have the space to do my laundry, which I did before dinner.

Dinner was an Andalucian pizza (topped with tuna, olives, hardboiled egg and green peppers) at a place around the corner. Very tasty.

Now for an early night. Lots of walking tomorrow!

2002 03 21 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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Chefchaouen

Wednesday, March 20, 2002 15:56

Weather: Hot and sunny

Location: Halfway up a Moroccan mountain above the town of Chefchaouen

I’m sitting in the shade of a tree, because the sun is extraordinarily hot. Just over a short rise the path goes down to a ruined mosque above the city of Chefchaouen. The call for evening prayers has started at the various functional mosques in the valley below, and from here it sounds like a distant wing of dive bombers, minus the bombs of course.

After a lazy wakeup and slow start to the day, the shock of yesterday’s arrival in Morocco has somewhat worn off. I took a stroll into Chefchaouen’s medina, and had an omelet at a café in the main square. Then I wandered off to an Internet café and settled in for the duration of the morning.

Stereotypes fell easily. The administrator for the computers was a young lady with excellent french, who clearly knew what she was doing, helping many of the customers with little problems. The woman next to me, dressed traditionally, seemed to be writing a love letter to “un homme sympa”. (I didn’t pry — just caught a glance.) Once I’d worked out how to switch the keyboard layout from the french AZERTY to the english QWERTY I was set, and spent a happy 2 1/2 hours bringing the journal up to date, catching up on email, and checking train schedules. Afterwards, I brought myself up to date on my favorite cartoons (Doonesbury, Dilbert, Sherman’s Lagoon) and inpassing.org, I paid up and left. The total was remarkably cheap: only Dr. 25, about C$4. (It was more than that for half an hour in Seville!)

Afterwards, I turned the corner and walked downhill towards the bus station. This was composed of a smallish building with a CTM (bus company) official in an office, a food counter, and a couple of dirty bathrooms; plus a small pavilion waiting area, and a parking lot, with three old-looking buses. I bought a ticket to Fes for Dr. 52 and a small bottle of water. Recalling that the CTM bus I’d seen yesterday had been a large, modern model, I hoped for a better bus than the three on display.

Having completed my ticket purchase, I trekked back up the steep hill towards the medina. I got a bit lost looking for the restaurant I’d chosen from the guide, so I picked another just of the main square, which sold me an excellent chicken kebab and a coke, with cookies and mint tea for desert. I started out on my own with a copy of the Economist, but when a young Englishman came in I invited him to join me and we compared notes on our trips so far.

Following lunch, I wanted to go around the Kasbah’s gardens and museum, but they were closed for the afternoon. So I walked up through the medina and out the far side of the town, winding my way uphill past several small farms and a cemetery, until I found a shady spot to sit, read my book, and write a postcard or two.

A little girl named Nadia joined me as I walked, asking me to take her photo. So I did, and gave her Dr. 5 for the privilege, though I turned down her brother’s rather less coherent request to serve as a guide further along the path. Apparently, she’s been studying her french more than him!

2002 03 20 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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Book review

I finished Ode to a Banker, Lindsay Davis’ newest Didius Falco (roman detective) novel. It was a step up from her other recent efforts, with a solid narrative, good characters, and entertaining detail of the roman banking and publishing systems. A quick, light read. 3 out of 5.

2002 03 20 tom Books Comments (0) Permalink

Rockin’ Morocco

Tuesday, March 19, 2002 18:50

Weather: Hot, and wall-to-wall blue skies

Location: Room 12, Hotel Marrakesh, Chefchaouen, Morocco

What a day! It’s very hard to believe that I had lunch in Seville yesterday. I’m in a whole other world here…

I got up at 7:30 this morning, had a quick shower, and packed my bags for the big trip. I was out of the hotel around 8:25, and walked up to the bus stop just as the first Cadiz-Algeciras bus of the day was pulling up. I hurriedly bought a ticket in the office as the other passengers boarded, then dumped my pack in the hold and climbed on board. I’m glad I hadn’t stopped for breakfast! A note for next time, though: Tarifa seems geared for early risers, and there were several cafés I could have stopped at.

Before long, the bus was pulling into the station at Algeciras. After asking for directions to the tourist office (my Spanish vocab having improved somewhat by now) I set off towards the docks. I made a short detour to a supermarket that the tourist office had highlighted on a map for me, and picked up a small bottle of water and a packet of biscuits. Opposite the supermarket, a modern-looking café served me café con leche and a passable croissant, using up the rest of my Euro change.

Down at the docks there seemed to be dozens of disreputable looking places selling tickets to the ferries. I’m not sure what their angle is–surely they can’t charge more when the ferry company offices directly opposite are selling the same thing? Anyway, I went to the main Trasmeditteranean Ferries office and got a one-way to Ceuta for just over €20.

I took a seat on the upper deck and before long we were off. The trip took just under an hour, and provided a great view of what I assume was Gibraltar on the left-hand side. The strait was fairly calm and the voyage smooth.

Ceuta is a Spanish free port on the coast of Morocco. It’s actually part of Spain, so you don’t go through customs at the port, but rather, when leaving the town. This turned out not to be an advantage.

I located the tourist office near the port, got straightforward directions to the bus stop, and caught the #7 to the “frontera”. It wound through narrow Ceuta streets and made several side stops en route, but eventually I got off and made the short walk to the border crossing.

This border is not like any I’ve been through before, though I guess that’s understandable as I’ve never gone overland from a 1st world country to a 3rd world country before. Friendly, but well-armed Spanish border guards waved me through their side of the border, into a long corridor of mesh fence, enclosed on top as well as the sides. The equivalent fence going in the other direction on the other side of the road was packed full of people trying to enter Ceuta, at least a couple of hundred, and it didn’t look like it was moving very fast.

The corridor then opened into the moderate chaos of no-man’s land. After passing under a large arched gate, I was waved by a Moroccan agent into a foreign nationals area. There, it was not at all clear what one did next. A man waving bits of paper on the left called out to me, but he did not look at all like an official so I assumed he was trying to sell me something and moved on. After pausing to reorder my bags, I went over to a guard and politely asked where I needed to go to pass through customs. He waved over the other man, gave me the declaration form he’d been trying to offer me, and pointed me to a customs counter.

There were agents inside, but they were working their way through a stack of passports belonging to a Czech Rafting team that was crossing the border in two cars. I got ready for a long wait, and was soon joined by a Frenchman, an Italian, and a trio of rasta-haired twenty-somethings (whose nationality I didn’t work out). Soon after, a large tour group of Germans showed up, and just as the agents were finishing with the Czechs the Germans somehow jumped the queue and the rest of us were left to fume quietly. In the grand scheme, it wasn’t a major wait–I was through in a little over an hour, by about 12:30–so I took it in stride and moved on.

Next step was to get on board a “grands taxi” to Tetouan, the first city, which I wanted to pass through on the way to Chefchaouen. There was no problem locating the grands taxis–there were probably 150 of them lined up–but it seemed suspiciously like I was the only person wanting to go to Tetouan. The economics of the grands taxis are that they seat six plus the driver, and without other passengers the group of drivers who’d cornered me wanted me to pay the full amount of the trip, about Dr. 120. This is about C$16, so it wasn’t exorbitant, but it was certainly more than the going rate for one person! I stuck in my heels, but after about 45 minutes of waiting we simultaneously ran out of patience and I was driven off, negotiating a token Dr. 5 discount as we went.

We passed along a gorgeous coastline, with sandy beaches and the occasional hotel on the left, and green fields and pastures on the right. The mountains rose up in the distance, bare brown with a thin white icing on the highest peaks. I chatted with the driver in French about his family in Tetouan, the mountains, and his brothers in Belgium and France. As we pulled into downtown Tetouan about half an hour later, he tried to convince me to continue with him to Chefchaouen for “only” Dr. 215 more. I politely declined, ignored the fact that he hadn’t offered me my Dr. 5 change on Dr. 120, and set off to find the bus station.

I was swiftly intercepted by another grands taxi man, who offered a trip to Chefchaouen split with other people. Since the cost of this would be much more reasonable, I followed him up to the grands taxi lines where, in fact, there were no other people and I was to take on faith that they would be picked up en route, to bring down my cost, of Dr. 200!

Not being born yesterday, I decided that two of these extravagant solo trips in a single day would be stupid, and went back to the bus station. Sure enough, a bus was leaving within the hour for Chefchaouen (I’d been assured by the grands taxi man the next bus wasn’t until 7pm) and the ticket cost… Dr. 15. Much better! I paid up and had a seat to wait for the bus.

The bus station is used by several bus companies, more than 10, each of which having their own ticket agents, prices, and schedules. These are in no way made easy to decipher, so freelance agents pick up foreigners like me at the door, take them to an appropriate (one hopes) ticket window, and hope to take a cut and a tip as their compensation. I was the only obvious foreigner in the place, so I made it about 2 feet in the door before one of these guys got me. But in fact, he was quite helpful and I’m not at all sure I would have found the bus without him. His other client was a young lady dressed western-style, traveling to Meknès on the same bus. The bus was a bit late pulling in, and I was pessimistically thinking I’d been ripped off again, but shortly afterwards our agent came and navigated us down to it.

The lower level of the bus station was dark and chaotic. Ten or more buses were parked in the different bays, with no form of identification of their destination or company. Travelers mixed with salesmen and -boys of all sorts, and there was a constant clamour of the bus engines and the stink of exhaust.

The bus was dark and crowded. Most of the seats were already taken with passengers who had arrived from a prior stop. A steady stream of the salesmen passed up the aisle, selling biscuits, pies, watches, running shoes, rings, necklaces, pistachios, and chocolate. I put up with the heat for about 10 minutes before giving up and getting off the bus to wait in the relative cool outside.

After about a half hour stop, we set off. The seat I ended up in had little legroom, as someone’s packages were jammed under the seat in front, and I had a last-minute neighbour, so it was quite cramped. With my daypack on my knees (my clothes pack being (hopefully) safe below) I scanned the countryside as we drove towards the mountains.

We passed several would-be passengers en route, but they were clearly out of luck: the bus was full. I opened my biscuits and gave a few to the guy next to me, who spoke a little french. After a while I flipped to the Moroccan Arabic section of the guidebook and tried a few phrases out on him. He seemed amused and pleased, and helpfully corrected my frequent pronunciation problems. His name was Rashid, and he was on his way to Chefchaouen for work.

Finally, after about an hour and a half, we were in Chefchaouen. I had identified a hotel that sounded good in the Lonely Planet guide, so after a quick orientation (and zipping my day bag back onto the clothes pack which had, indeed, survived the trip) I set off for it. I had a couple of offers of help to find a hotel (or some drugs!) on the way, but I was in the home stretch and took no heed. I splurged: Dr. 120 for a large room with an adjoining private shower and my own hole-in-the-ground toilet.

I then took one and a half hours to write up this diary entry, which covered only 8 1/2 hours of travel… Clearly a very full day! After stopping for a quick dinner in the Medina, I crashed.

2002 03 19 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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On the Beach

Monday, March 18, 2002 18:32

Location: Playa de los Lances (beach), Tarifa, Spain

Weather: Warm and sunny, finally! Windy…

Today was a total triumph. I finally feel as though I’m beginning to understand and appreciate Spain. There’s a certain rhythm: a quick breakfast around 8:30, busy morning, lunch from 12:30 to 2:00, slow afternoon of work until 5:00, 2-3 hours of serious people watching from a café, leisurely dinner, then party from 11 to 2am. (Well, Fridays and Saturdays, anyway.) I could get used to that schedule!

I had a number of things to do this morning, but knew nothing would open before 8 at the earliest, so that’s when I checked out of the hostel. The weather had warmed up somewhat, but was still very humid. With all my belongings, I trekked through the narrow alleys for the umpteenth time, down to the cathedral and the post office. I was one of the first through the doors when the post office opened at 8:30. Then, back up to the Barrio for breakfast next door to the hostel (I suppose I could have left my bags there to save the weight), followed by walking downtown again (only 5-10 minutes each way, b.t.w., not an excessive distance) to find the laundromat and drop off my dirty clothes as well as the heavier pack.

Now lightly laden, I set off on my secondary tasks. I went back to a foreign language bookstore I’d passed earlier that morning, and was pleased to find in the English section a new novel by Lisa Jewell, exactly the kind of lightweight book to read while traveling. (See the book reviews section for reviews of other books by her.)

Then, the first check of the day: I had hoped to go see the Alcázar, but it turned out that it was closed on Mondays. (This is normal for museums in Spain.) However, the Lonely Planet assured me that there were interesting tours to be had at the bullfighting arena, so I walked down there.

I’d always had a pretty naive romantic view of bullfighting, and the tour was presented to support such a view, with museum exhibits highlighting paintings of famous bullfighters of the past and trophies. However, I was disturbed to learn (and yes, maybe I have been hiding under a rock all these years) that the bulls hardly ever survive their encounters with the Torreadores. Apparently, only the president of the bullfighters association–who has a reserved box next to the royal box in the arena–may decide to grant leniency to a bull which has fought particularly well. This happens less than 1% of the time… and bad luck to any bulls that may fight without the president in attendance. Fox hunting in England is one thing–at least there’s a good chance the fox will escape, and foxes do pose a legitimate threat to hen houses–but bullfighting seems like an obviously outdated blood sport that should at least be reformed to a non-lethal state. Guess I’m joining the animal rights activists on this one.

After leaving the arena I had about half an hour to kill before I should pick up my laundry. I stopped in at another Internet café and dumped yet more through Blogger to my web page. On the way, I also managed to pick up a copy of the Herald Tribune, assuring myself yet more precious reading time.

My laundry was neatly folded and bagged when I got to the laundromat, so I paid, shouldered my combined pack again, and started up towards the train station. I passed a store selling the current issue of the Economist. Truly it was a wondrous threefold literary day for me.

The train down to Cadiz was one of Spanish Rail’s Talgo 200 trains, in the luxury class with the AVE (alta velocidade–TGV) trains through not as fast. I had booked a seat in 1st class, and the reservation alone cost €16.50. I found out why: there was a constant airline-styled service, a light lunch, wine, coffee and soft drinks. So I passed a very pleasant 100 minutes down to Cadiz.

There, I finally found sunshine and almost gave up my plan to press on to Tarifa. But knowing that I wanted to be at Algeciras as early as possible tomorrow to get a good start into Morocco, I dragged myself over to the bus station and bought a ticket. What a pleasant surprise: the bus was only €6.56!

As we drove along I watched the landscape change. The flat coastline around Cadiz became hilly, the low scrub land picked up trees, horses and cows, and the wind rose. At one point, we passed a very strange sight: an open mine pit on the left (inland) side of the road was apparently being used as a graveyard for small fishing boats. Further on, the hills grew steeper and rockier as we approached Tarifa, the southernmost town in Europe. The tops of the hills were covered in windmills, spinning furiously.

Tarifa at last, and I had finally found the Mediterranean. Warm, sunny, and above all, laid back. The town is quite ancient, but I wasn’t here to sight see but to rest and prepare for Morocco, only 14km away, clearly visible on the other side of the strait. I checked into a lovely Pensão (Hostal Africa) for a mere €13, and headed down to the beach.

2002 03 18 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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Sunday in Sevillia

19:45

Apparently getting up at 6:30 am on a Sunday in Seville puts you in a pretty exclusive club. When I set out at 7:30 to try and do some laundry, get some breakfast, and see some sights, everything was closed. I did see a few cars, but very few pedestrians, and almost no open stores. And closed stores in Seville are very closed: steel shutters and heavy locks everywhere. After wandering for a while I somehow managed to find the Museo de Bellas Artes and arrived moments after it opened at 9 am. It’s a beautiful building with several open courtyards and a phenomenal chapel, and its collection was also excellent, though I confess to be getting a bit tired of 17th c. Iberian paintings of the Annunciation.

Once I´d finished at the Museo, I wandered back to the train station. I had had a few different ideas about where to go next from Seville, the main options being Cordoba (an important city and destination itself, as well as on the recommended train route to Algeciras),  an ugly industrial city but the jumping-off point for ferries to Morocco) and Tarifa (near Algeciras at Europe’s southernmost point, a nice seaside town but without a railway station). At the Seville train station, I deliberated for a few minutes and decided to try for Tarifa. To allow myself time to complete my laundry before departure (the laundromat being naturally closed on Sundays, and the hostel hostile to the idea of using their sinks as laundry basins,) I booked a spot on the 1:19 train to Cadiz, from where I am assured there is a frequent bus service to Tarifa. I´m not going to book my accommodation there yet because I´m not sure where I´m arriving, but hopefully I´ll be able to call ahead from Cadiz.

After the train station, I went back to the hostel and made a lunch from the leftovers of the last couple of days´ picnics. (There were a lot of leftovers–I was stuffed!) I set out again at 3pm to return to the Internet café and go see the Alcázar, a royal palace originally built in AD 913 as a Muslim palace. When I got there at 4:30, I was disappointed to find that the Lonely Planet had got the wrong hours listed and in fact the Alcázar was closed for the afternoon. I´m hoping to stop in tomorrow before leaving Seville.

Since there wasn’t much else to do, I joined the throng of tourists heading into the cathedral. The interior of this, one of the largest churches in Europe, did not disappoint. It had dozens of richly decorated chapels and statues and devotional artwork everywhere, but the place was packed with clamoring hordes, most following guides with raised umbrellas, and taking flash photos (ignoring the posted rules to the contrary). I joined the queue heading up an interior ramp in the Giralda, formerly the minaret of the 12th c. mosque that was used as the starting point for the construction of the cathedral. After climbing up about 150´, we were rewarded with excellent views in all directions. Still, the crowd behind continued to press forwards, so after taking a couple of photos I made room for them and headed back down to street level.

After yet another experience of getting lost in the Barrio de Santa Cruz I made it back to the hostel for a nap before dinner. Time to go get it now…

2002 03 17 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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Seville

Sunday, March 17, 2002. 07:00.

Location: Hostal Bienvenido, room 19, Seville.

Weather: Cold, scattered cloud.

I´m sitting in a solidly-constructed but unheated room on the rooftop of the Hostal Bienvenido, a low-budget guest house in the Barrio de Santa Cruz district of Seville. I realized as I was going to bed last night that I hadn´t done a journal entry all day, so I have to go back to Evora to catch up. That was Friday afternoon.

I poked around a couple more narrow streets and tried (unsuccessfully) to find my way into the Capela dos Ossos of the Igreja de São Francisco. Eventually I gave up and headed back to the train station.

My route to Seville was suggested by the inter-rail.org web site´s computer. I´m not sure if it would have occurred to a human agent. It involved a short train ride back to Casa Branca, then a train heading north towards Porto, which I left at Santarem, there to intercept the Lisbon-Madrid night train. This convoluted trip meant that I avoided having to get from on Lisbon train station to another, which was a good thing. It proceeded very smoothly, so around 10:45 I was being shown to my bunk in the train.

The room was pitch black. The other three beds had been occupied by travellers at previous stops, all attempting to get some sleep, none especially enthused about me blundering in (and even less enthused about the loud woman on her cellphone outside in the corridor). I quickly stowed my bags, stripped down to underwear, and switched off the tiny overhead light in the bunk.

I expected to have some trouble sleeping, but four nights in Lisbon with the streetcars outside my window had inured me to the sounds of the rails. I shortly dozed off for one of my best night of sleep so far.

We were awakened about half an hour before arrival by the guard pounding on the door. He moved off down the corridor and we blearily collected our things. One of the other residents of my compartment was an American from New Hampshire, Lee. As he and I turned out to both be headed for Seville, we set out together across Madrid to the correct station.

The subway proved to be easy to navigate, extensive, and reasonably priced. We had to go 15 stops, but were soon at Madrid Atocha. Here we lined up for reservations on the high speed AVE trains to Seville. We weren´t able to get onto the 10am train, and had to settle for the smoking section on the 11am train. This gave us some time to grab some breakfast, pick up picnic supplies for lunch, and sit in Atocha´s lovely indoor park.

Lee turned out to be a retired Wall Street investment banker in his early 40´s, who´s spending a year living in Frankfurt and travelling all over Europe, before deciding what to do with the rest of his life. He´s thinking of becoming a botanist.

We found our way onto the train. They had a metal detector set up for baggage, but none for the passengers, which seemed a bit pointless. Our train was actually comprised of two of the AVE trains joined head-to-head, so it was very long, and our car (naturally) was right at the far end.

Onboard, service was well above normal: in-seat audio, and ¨Mission Impossible 2¨ (in Spanish) on the monitors. We whisked away to Seville with a brief stop in Cordoba.

Seville greeted us with glorious sunshine. [Don´t get excited, it´s cloudy again now.] We picked up tourist maps and headed into town. After a few minutes, we were in the Barrio de Santa Cruz, a neighbourhood of old stately homes with complex little atria set right next to each other on either side of narrow alleyways. When we went up to our rooms in the Hostal Bienvenudo, a british T.V. crew were completing a travel spot on the hostal, with a camera sweep over the rooftops from the patio outside our doors, the blonde announcer chirping something about charming views and repeat visitors, and omitting to mention the lack of central heating. Lee and I arranged to meet for dinner at 8, and he headed out to see the town while I had a badly-needed hot shower.

Afterwards, I made my way outside and quickly found and internet café [where I´m writing this]. Actually, it was right around the corner from the hostal. I put in half an hour catching up on email and trying to catch up of the journal, but my time ran out so I moved on to exploring more of the city.

In comparison to Lisbon and Evora, Seville seems full of tourists. They filled up the sidewalk cafés, eating dinner at un-Spanish early hours (i.e. before 9pm), and were in such numbers around the cathedral that I moved straight through at top speed and didn´t even try to get a photograph. I wandered down to the river, looked out over the city, and wandered back again, stopping for a small pastry en route. Orange trees grew in the many parks and planters, and moorish influences could be seen in much of the architectural details.

Lee and I managed to get lost several times on the way to a restaurant, but eventually tracked down the Pizzeria San Marco, an impressively beautiful establishment with ochre-coloured walls, tiled floors and blue- and white-painted woodwork on the railings and staircases. The food was unfortunately not as good.

Lee, who is off to Grenada today, was not able to get a train reservation later than 7am, so with the prospect of a cold night ahead and an early morning, we headed back to the hostal and wished each other bon voyage. In fact, the warm blankets made the cold night quite bearable, though I´m still considering cancelling my second night and moving on. For now, though, it´s time for breakfast. I think I´ll start with an orange.

2002 03 17 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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Evora explor-ah

2:30 pm.

After a cold wet morning poking around the main sights of Evora, I´m lingering over lunch. This is partially because I´ve been somewhat taken advantage of by the owner of the nice restaurant where I chose to stop: he asked me what I wanted to drink, chose to interpret ¨fruit juice¨as ¨red wine¨, brought me a bottle, and put the whole thing on my bill. It´s not even that cheap a bottle! So I feel obliged to do some damage to it before leaving. Plus, I have the nasty suspicion that there´s not much left for me to see in Evora and I have three hours to kill.

When I left the guesthouse this morning I wandered into the main square, Praça do Giraldo, and found a sympathetic coffee shop for breakfast (see the previous post). Afterwards I went up the narrow Rua 5 de Outobro (actually, all the streets in Evora are narrow,) to the high point in the town, which is occupied by the Temple of Diana, the Museu de Evora, and the Sé (cathedral).

The temple is just a few columns on top of a raised base, so after a photo I went into the museum. The building housing Evora´s collection used to be the palace of the archbishop, and the whole thing is located on top of an extensive set of Roman ruins. The centre courtyard, and as many of the ground level rooms as structure stability would allow, have been opened up for acheological excavation and there is an interesting set of tombstones, statuary and other stonework on display. However, the real stars of the museum´s collection are upstairs on the second floor: a stunning and extensive set of Flemish and Portugese paintings, mostly on wood rather than canvas, including various artists´ versions of the life of the Virgin Mary, and a few key scenes in the life of Christ, mostly dating from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. These were fascinating, unprotected by glass so the brushwork and details could be easily examined. Figures were presented in the dress of the artists´ time, resulting in some obvious anachronisms. A church in the background of a picture of Christ bore stone crosses, for example. I noticed that the mens´ footwear was principally thin boots slipped into heavy wood-soled sandals, a detail I hadn´t heard of before. Anyway, it was an impressive collection for such a small town, and it took me quite a while to finish going through it.

In the second-to-last room, a helpful staffer offered supplemental information. His English was excellent, but easily explained since he turned out to have spent several years living in Toronto!

After the museum, I went through the Sé, next door. The main church was only typically impressive fore a European church of its size, and the cloister next door was worthy of a photograph for its lemon trees but otherwise unremarkable. The cathedral also had a museum of its own in its attic, and this boasted many more fine examples of religious art from the 17th to 19th centuries.

When I left the cathedral it was almost noon, and I headed towards the Taberna Typica Quarto-Feira for lunch. Actually, it was raining at the time so I was in a hurry and got lost in the medieval side streets, but a helpful local set me straight (with French as our common language).

After a brief delay (the restaurant only opens for lunch at 12:30, apparently typical for Portugal,) I enjoyed a wonderful meal of pork chops flavoured with sea salt and garlic, grilled, and served with creamed spinach, rice and french fries, and the aforementioned vinho tinto. Which I´ve probably had about enough of, come to think of it… Time to head out.

2002 03 15 tom 2002 Mediterranean Tour
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