At last, the Travelling Canucks are back home in Vancouver, Canada after a 4 week trip over Spring Break to the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco from March 14, 2007 to April 9, 2007. Now, it's time to reflect before it's time to return to work and school, get our visa bill in the mail, and our vacation becomes a distant memory. Thankfully, over 2000 photographs were taken by the Travelling Canucks to enjoy. We have selected some of our favorites to share with our friends and over 1000 visitors to our travel blog to date! As you have followed our journey [View Full Entry]

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Arrived at Madrid Barajas Airport, one of the bigger airports we have flown into on Tuesday afternoon. Terminals T4 & T4S , which are celebrating their first anniversary, are very impressive! Older terminals, T1, T2 and T3 are drab. Took the metro to our hotel, Hotel Room Mate Mario, a trendy Spanish hotel chain with reasonable room rates for Madrid, centrally located near Plaza de Oriente , Teatro Real and Palacio Real. The Madrid metro is cheap and efficient; however, carrying luggage up and down stairs is a definite negative! We ended the day by hitting our favorite tapas bar at [View Full Entry]

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Taking the 30 minute AVE train without any stops made the day trip from Madrid to Toledo doable after over three weeks of travelling with exhaustion setting in! Toledo, the spiritual and intellectual capital of Spain, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. By taxi, we drove past Puerta de Alcantara, the town's oldest bridge dating back to Roman times, as we headed from the train station to the walled town of Toledo, with Roman and Moorish architectural influences. We started our self-guided tour of Toledo at the Alcazar, which is unfortunately closed for renovations, since it is at the h [View Full Entry]

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For our first day-trip out of Madrid, we took the picturesque train ride from Madrid to Segovia. As the train approached Segovia, the temperature had dropped from 8C to below 0C and it was snowing in April! So it doesn´t only mainly rain on the plain in Spain, it snows! We were freezing cold and Segovia was tourist-free! Having left Madrid at 8:ooam without breakfast, we headed off to the first open coffee shop at 10:00am! After 4 lattes, 1 orange juice, and 5 croissants between us, we finally could feel our toes and hands again (short-lived)! Although Mama Canuck was [View Full Entry]

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After a 3 hour train trip from Fes, we rocked the Kasbah in Rabat! Release of a New Mukluk Music Video will hopefully be premiered in Madrid! Come back to Rabat Blog for private screening! We entered the Kasbah by the Bab Oudaia, gate of the Kasbah, and toured the walled Kasbah with a self-appointed guide (100 dirhams later, we were thankfully ceremoniously dropped off at the Andalusian Gardens). The Bab Oudaia, which is considered to be the most beautiful in the Moorish World, lived up to expectations, although the gate was closed (along with most other tourist sights across Morocco) [View Full Entry]

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We took the train from Marrakech (southern city) to Fez (northern city) and saw the cities of Casablanca, Rabat (capital city), Menkes from afar, arid regions, lush countryside, farms fenced in by cactus, glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean, more satellite dishes than we could count, and two camels! A time to relax before visiting Morocco's first Imperial City, Fez, the ancient capital and centre of religious and cultural life in Morocco. The city with a hat named after it! Not completely unexpected, the trip took much longer than anticipated. Due to the Prophet's birthday, the Mouloud, which i [View Full Entry]

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Salam waylaykoom ! Marrakech is amazing! The sounds, smells and chaos abound and can be overwhelming, but addictive all the same! Our Riad L' Orangeraie is a calm oasis where we retreat after bargaining in the souks and visiting the Islamic sights of the city. We have enjoyed wonderful cuisine, both Moroccan and French influenced at our riad and at Villa Flore, a riad owned by a couple from Paris. We are not so brave as to sample sheeps head, pigeon and other such delicacies cooked in the food stalls! Snake charmers, storytellers, acrobats, musicians and dancers fill the Dje [View Full Entry]

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After three hours of relaxation on the train from Granada to Seville, Travelling Canucks have come to the conclusion that there are more olive trees than Spaniards in Spain! Although seeing rural Spain was a welcome break, the Travelling Canucks are thrilled to be in warm (24C) and sunny Seville! First impressions of Seville is that Seville is Sensational! We love the joie de vivre and beautiful streetscapes. Hotel Petit Palace Santa Cruz has proved to be a great hotel choice. After having a delicious lunch at Modesto, eating andelusian specialities al fresco in a plaza around the corn [View Full Entry]

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Started writing this blog entry while waiting for our delayed flight to Barcelona from Lisbon Airport on TAP Airlines, while a certain bear got into the port! We finally arrived at our Barcelona hotel, Hotel Constanza, late Monday, March 19th. Since our arrival, we have been so busy touring Barcelona that we haven´t had a chance to post and we are leaving Barcelona tomorrow morning on Iberia Airlines for Granada. Here´s a quick recap - believe it or not, this is what we have been up to over the past two days: Monday night, we walked down the Ramblas to the [View Full Entry]

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After leaving our Barcelona hotel for the airport in the early morning, we arrived in Granada in time for lunch. Although we expected Granada to be warmer than Barcelona, when we stepped off the plane, an unseasonably cold wind from the Sierra Nevada put a chill on our arrival. To economize, we took the bus instead of hiring a taxi (the bus was only 3 €/person); however, after waiting for nearly an hour for the bus to leave and taking another 45 minutes to reach our hotel, we had second thoughts! Once we arrived at our lovely Andalusian-style hotel, Hotel Palacio [View Full Entry]

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