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Published: July 13th 2008
I met Dad in Barcelona to begin our adventure in Spain and Morocco. We were both really tired so after resting we visited the Sagrada Familia and then had some dinner at a small local restaurant. We had to leave pretty early the next day for Madrid so it was a short stay but we saw quite a bit of Barcelona just by walking around that night. We saw La Rambla and all the street vendors there. They even sell animals right there on the street including chickens!
The next morning we took the high speed train to Madrid, it was really nice and didn't take very long at all. Our first day in Madrid we walked around quite a bit and saw the palace and other sites. We even found the street and perhaps the building Dad lived in for a month when he lived in Spain when he was young. Dad didn't remember too much in Madrid, but there were a lot of changes I'm sure in the last 25 years! That night we ate dinner near Toledo, it was the most random dinner I've ever had. I had spaghetti, eggs, french fries, chicken, and tomatoes, all on
one plate. The next day Dad and I tried to go on a bike tour, but the building the directions gave lead to a building that no longer exists. Since that didn't work out we looked up another place on the internet and rented bikes from them for a few hours. We rode to a park that was a good way away, had some lunch, and soon after that Dad's bike broke! He fixed it enough to be able to cruise downhill but we had to walk a majority of the way back. Of course we were just about the furthest away we needed to be. Once we got the bikes back we decided to go to the bodyworks exhibit. We had both wanted to see it for awhile and we found out it was there in Madrid so we had to go. It was really cool, it has the bodies of people who donate themselves to science so people can learn more about the human body. It did have the healthy lung compared the smokers lung and that was sick! More Europeans need to see that because I feel like everyone smokes over there. That night Dad and I
had sangria and paella at a really cute little resaurant near Plaza Mayor, one of the main squares. It was delicous and they sure gave us a lot of food! The next morning was our last day in Madrid, we left that afternoon to Morocco.
We got to Casablanca that afternoon and took a taxi from the airport to our hotel. That was a different experience! The taxis are pretty old so first I was afraid it would break down on the way to town but once we got into town I started worrying more about either getting hit by another car or running someone over! Traffic lanes are optional in Morocco, everyone just kind of drives where they can to get to their destination as fast as possible. We even got hit! It was only a little nudge so it was probably nothing to the driver but I was pretty freaked out! People also didn't like to use crosswalks, but they didn't wait for there to be no traffic, they just kind of walked out into the street, we would be driving in heavy traffic and all of a sudden I would see a woman standing in the
middle of the street working her way across. Well, we finally reached the hotel safely and I was in pretty big culture shock from the car ride and just how different Morocco is in general. Dad convinced me to go out and go for a walk though so we found a market and walked around there for awhile. I felt safe, I just felt like we stuck out very obviously as tourists. Casablanca isn't a very touristy town either so we got quite a bit of looks. Morocco is Muslim so a lot of people wore their religious clothing. Most of the women wore veils but not all. We went back to our hotel and had some dinner, the next day we left for Marrakesh.
We took the train to Marrakesh, we rode first class and it only cost about twelve dollars per person! A man from our riad picked us up and took us to the closest the road could go to our place. Then we walked through the market for about forever it seemed until we got to our riad. Riads are older houses that have been remodeled for tourists, kind of like a bed and breakfast
and ours was really cool! It was really open with a courtyard and it was decorated in all Moroccan theme of course. Later we walked around the market a little, it was absolutely huge! We found the main square and had some dinner. The next day we took a trip to the Ourika Valley. We arranged it through our riad and they have us a tour guide named Mohammad who was really good about telling us about the valley and the berber people. We even stopped at a Berber home! It was really cool to see how they live and we even had some Moroccan mint tea which is really good. It's a process to make it though! Later we continued on our journey and made another stop where women make different kinds of beauty products, that was pretty interesting. We finally got into the part of the valley where we hiked up to a waterfall. That was pretty and kind of hard at some points! That trip took most of the day and we were pretty worn out by the time we got back. The next day Dad and I wanted to go on a camelride and we heard
of a place that offered them so we tried to take a taxi from the main square but the guy didn't take us to the right spot! It was a big ordeal trying to get back to the main square then and when we finally did we were pretty tired and hot. Later we tried a different approach and got a bus pass that took us to the right area with the camels. They dropped us off and we rode our camels for a little while. That was fun and it's probably a good thing it wasn't a really long camel ride because it was pretty hot and I had heard from other people how sore they were after a long camel ride. We were pretty tired of being in the sun all day so we found a restaurant with air conditioning, we couldn't really tell there was air conditioning though, probably because we're used to freezing with American restaurants keeping the temperature so low. The next day was a shopping day. The markets in Marrakesh have a ton of cool things, lots of carpets, shoes, wooden things, and anything really. I got some gifts for friends and a couple
things for myself and Dad got a teapot. We thought we got some decent bargains, but later we went to the airport to fly out of Morocco and begin our long journey back home, and we found out the same products were being sold in the airport for about the same as what we paid in the market! I think the vendors start at such a high price if you get them to half that you feel like you got a good deal but they are still really get the best deal. Especially considering stuff in airports is overpriced anyway. Well, our flight left Morocco late that night and we arrived in Lyon around 1am.
We found our hotel late that night and tried to sleep in as late as possible. We got up and going to the train station that next morning. Dad had tickets to Nice for later in the day, but we would have gotten in around 8pm, and I wanted to show Dad around Cannes. So we took an earlier train and arrived in Cannes in the afternoon. I got to show Dad my college and we took the tour around Cannes before we had
dinner in the suquet which was delicious. Later we got our luggage from the college and headed to the airport. Our flight left at 7:30 in the morning and we decided it would just be easier to spend the night there, and it really wasn't too bad. There was a waiting room with a TV so I got to see the Euro 2008 soccer match between Spain and Italy and that was really exciting.
Our flight left that next morning and everything went fine. It was a long flight of course but now I'm pretty much used to traveling for long periods of time like that. It was kind of weird to be home, especially since I can now talk to anyone and everyone can understand me too. I've been back for a few weeks now and am happy to be back even though it's not quite as exciting as traveling. I really like seeing everyone again that I've missed and just staying in one spot for awhile! This was a wonderful experience and I've learned a lot over the past half year!
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