Medina of Fez al-Bali

For the first time this entire vacation we didn't set an alarm. We're back in the Middle East, kind of, and that means we have to get back on our Arab schedule of staying up late and waking up late. We let Rachel be our alarm and she didn't wake up until 9:30.

We went upstairs to have breakfast and ran into Ben. We think Ben is hilarious--not necessarily Ben himself, because we don't know him that well, but the whole situation surrounding Ben. Ben was on our plane from Spain to Casablanca. When we were waiting for our plane and the gate kept changing, Ben was napping. Andrew noticed this and so, after checking the departures board, came back over to me and announced really loudly,

"THE FLIGHT TO CASABLANCA HAS BEEN MOVED TO GATE 49!"

I was like, "Why are you talking so loud? I'm right here."

But apparently he did it in order to wake up Ben without Ben knowing that he was trying to wake him up. So Ben found out about the gate change, as did half the airport.

Later we saw Ben at the Casablanca train station. We knew he got on our train, but that seemed pretty normal...until we later saw him at our hotel. Weird.

Since he has our same camera case, though, we decided we could be friends, and after breakfast we set off together to the Medina.

At this point we still hadn't formerly introduced ourselves, so we had no idea that Ben was Ben, but sharing a taxi seemed like a fine idea to us. It didn't seem like such a great idea to our driver.

Apparently there is some law here that allows only three passengers in a taxi. We were four, because apparently Rachel counts as a person. Our driver was not happy about having a fourth passenger, even though we tried to qualm his worries by telling him that Rachel is just a baby and, therefore, doesn't actually count as a passenger.

That's how it works on every other mode of transportation: bus, metro, train, plane, boat. We didn't see why a taxi should be any different, but our driver would not be placated. Finally, he had us put Rachel in the middle seat with Andrew's backpack on top of her. I could tell our driver was worried the whole time about being stopped by the police--and they actually might stop him here. There are police everywhere and they actually seem to do stuff, like stop kind people from walking us to our hotel.

We made it to the Medina without being stopped by the police, although the taxi driver was really nervous about us getting out of the taxi. He was sure the police would notice we had an extra passenger. It wasn't like we were crammed into the car like clowns. There were three seats in the back, it shouldn't have been a problem, but to pacify his fears I got out carrying Rachel and the backpack in one big bundle and walked into a crowd standing on the sidewalk while I waited for the men to pay for the taxi.

And then we entered the Medina. It was crazy.

It was milling with people, many wearing djellabas and other traditional clothing. The djellaba looks kind of like a jedi cloak. It's kind of funny to see people walking around looking like jedi knights. We half expect them to pull out lightsabers, but so far no one has.

Morocco seems to be rather conservative. We are not allowed into any mosques here in Fez, because they don't allow non-Muslims inside. Some people would let us up on their roofs to look down on the mosques...but it was really unfortunate that we couldn't go in because the interiors looked really interesting, while the outside was just so-so. Apparently that's the way things are here.

The only place we were allowed into was the Medersa Sahrij, an Islamic school dating from the 1320s.

We followed a young boy there who then followed us all around the Medina trying to make us go other places. He kept popping up all over the place matter how we tried to lose him. I suppose he just knew the streets better than we did, because we'd leave him behind us and he'd be waiting for us a few streets up. It's like he knew where we were going.

He wasn't the only one trying to "guide" us through the Medina. There were several others, all vying for a dirham or two (or, more likely, 20 or 30, although we never paid them that much). One particularly angry young man kept complaining about Americans and politics. He said he hated Bush, hated Obama, hated all Americans...except for Rachel because she didn't know about the "politics of war." It was nice of him to want to "lead" us around, but we really didn't want his rantings to accompany us. We kept trying to lose him, too, but he also kept popping up to give us one more point of his "anti-American" statements.

"Do you love Arabs from your heart, or only from your lips?"

"All people from America...and Cairo...are suspicious of Arabs."

"Americans love war."

And so it went. He was such an odd character.

We saw a lot of interesting things in the Medina. They sell chickens and turkeys to butcher, right there in the street. People carry them around upside-down, by their feet as calmly and normally as if they'd purchased a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread. The chickens would be squawking and flapping their wings and their captors would pay them no mind.

They have Berber pharmacies selling very interesting things. Somewhere in my memory I recall going to a Chinese medicine shop and seeing similar things. It all looks relatively scary to me, kind of like a witch-doctor.

One of the more interesting things to see in the Medina is the tannery. As you can see from Rachel's face it's really quite stinky, but definitely interesting.

They wash and cure the pelts in a concoction of limestone and pigeon droppings, rinse them in water, and then dye them using various spices. Saffron for yellow, henna for orange...and that's all we can remember from the lecture our "guide" gave us. They dye them almost every color imaginable.

Men swirl the hides around in these huge earthen pots of dye. It must be a very cold job to have! Although it is pretty warm here I wouldn't want to be walking around in shorts, dripping wet.

It was very interesting to watch. Rachel didn't want to come away from the balcony.

When they're all dyed, they hang them up to dry. You can see hides of various colors hanging all over the buildings for several blocks.

They gave us some mint at the tannery, to smell if we didn't want to smell the nasty tannery smell. A lot of people that went up with us were shoving the mint leaves right in their nose. I didn't think that it smelled all that bad, but it was refreshing to have something nice to smell every once in a while.

We have no question about where things here are made, though. The carpets are woven here--you can see people weaving them. The djellabas are made here--you can see people embroidering them. All the leather goods are made here--you can see people tanning them. And on it goes. Everything is very traditional and authentic.

After spending the morning and early afternoon wandering around the Medina we were pretty tired, so we left to find a taxi and went back to our hotel to have a nap. Rachel insisted she wasn't tired, but she fell asleep within two minutes of being put in her crib so if that's no testimony to how exhausted we were, I don't know what is.

We have to go out to find a suitcase now. Ours? broke. More on that later, but here's some more pictures of the things we saw from various balconies today.

Our first take on Morocco

Two gate changes and a two hour delay later, we found ourselves on a plane bound for Casablanca, Morocco. I was really sad to be leaving the "Western" world, as I find Europe suits my need to be pampered a little better than the "Arab" world. I'm spoiled I know, but I like things clean. I like drinking water right out of the tap. I like eating vegetables without having to bleach them to death first. I like my hot water to be hot. I like a lot of things that I just don't get in the Middle East.

However, I do like the sense of adventure I feel in the Middle East that I just don't get in Europe.

We landed in Casablanca and I could tell, right away, that we were back. There are no indoor smoking laws here--oh, how I wish there were--and we were overpowered by the smell of cigarette smoke almost immediately. I had to use the washroom and nothing was automatic--in Spain everything was: the toilet, the sinks, the hand dryers...even the garbage cans opened with a wave of your hand. Here I had to do everything manually. We've started using hand sanitizer again.

There weren't very many people on our plane, perhaps a dozen or so besides us, and since we seemed to be the only people who stopped to use the restroom, everyone was gone by the time we got to customs.

I know I said there was nothing "automatic" in Casablanca, but that isn't entirely true because there were these doors that you had to walk through to get to customs and they were automatic. Apparently they close between each person that uses them, but I didn't know that until they slammed in my face. I was walking right behind Andrew and the door opened for him. He walked through pushing Rachel in the stroller and I started to follow him through but the doors closed immediately after he was through.

It was amazing! There was seriously only 6 inches or so between us. The doors closed so fast that I didn't even have time to stop walking and walked right into them setting off some stupid alarm. Then, in order to get through the door I had to back up a few feet and approach them again so that the motion sensor would remember I was there and open the door for me.

I wonder if they didn't install those doors just so that they could laugh at people because although there were security officers everywhere no one offered to help me. They just stood around ominously snickering at me. Wonderful. As soon as the doors opened I ran through and caught up with Andrew. He was quite a ways in front of me.

Getting through customs should have been a piece of cake. You don't have to buy a visa to visit Morocco, so we just had to fill out some forms they gave us on the plane and get our passports stamped.

Besides a Moroccan family, we were alone in customs. True to the Arab world there were 10 or so guards standing around drinking tea and watching us while 1 guard went through our passports. The fuller they get the more time it takes us to get through customs. Rachel has 3 visas for Egypt, we have 4 or 5, and it's all very confusing.

Eventually we were able to show the guard which visa for Egypt was still valid, and he stamped our passports and let us through.

We started walking towards the escalators leading to the train station but were stopped by yet another guard who wanted to look at our passports. Hello, bureaucracy! We surrendered our passports and this guard pored over them for a few minutes until he found that we did, indeed, get them stamped. It would have been a little less ridiculous had he not watched us get our passports stamped seconds before.

After that we were pretty much hassle free. We rode the train from the airport to the train station and after about an hour later left for Fez. It was a long ride with our little monkey, Rachel. She was climbing all over Andrew, hanging from the luggage rack, and just being crazy in general. Just when we thought she was settling down and might take a nap, two little kids walked into our compartment with their mother. No nap for Rachel! She played the whole way to Fez.

It was interesting to talk with the people in our car. Their Arabic was a little rusty--they speak a strange mix of French/Arabic/Berber. The man we were talking with spoke Arabic with a French accent and admitted that his Arabic was horrible. It was a little sad, really, to think that Arabic here is almost like a second language. Or third, depending on whether or not you grow up speaking a Berber dialect.

They apparently use Arabic in K-12 and then their universities are in French. Everyone here speaks French, it seems. It's kind of nice because I can actually understand what's going on a little better than when everything is in Arabic. Still, though, it is not a French I am very familiar with. Everyone just sounds funny when they talk.

We were glad to have some locals in our compartment with us because otherwise we'd never had known when to get off the train. The train seemed to stop in the middle of nowhere. We got off and couldn't even see the platform; we were dropped off in a pile of dirt and had to carry our suitcase because the ground was so rocky that it wouldn't roll.

The man on the train with us insisted on walking us all the way to our hotel, which was very nice of him. He said it was on the way to where he was going. On the way we got stopped by some undercover police who accused our "friend" of being an unlicensed tour guide and demanded paperwork. He showed Andrew his ID and questioned Andrew about his relationship with the poor man, and asked if we were paying him for his services and where he was taking us.

After he was satisfied that nothing shifty was going on, he let us on our way. Truthfully, the cop seemed a little more shady than the man from the train, who cheerfully dropped us off at our hotel and bid us a wonderful stay in Morocco.

We decided that we really liked Moroccans, but found Morocco itself to be rather dirty and underdeveloped. Dirtier, even, than Cairo (although I never can quite decide which is dirtier so it might be a toss up).

We aren't sure if all of Morocco is this...third world...or if it is just Fez. Perhaps we are visiting the equivalent to a backwards city in the Appalachian mountains. I don't know, but it doesn't seem very urban here. Not yet. Perhaps in the daytime it will. Everything looks better in the daytime.

Madrid

This morning's train ride was fairly pleasant. There was a cute old gentleman sitting across the aisle from us who absolutely adored Rachel. It took her about 2 hours to get used to the idea that he wanted to play with her. Once she figured that out, the rest of the trip was golden.

Our car only had 7 people in it: Rachel, us, the old man, another couple, and one other man. We basically had a private car. It was awesome. Rachel could do pretty much whatever she pleased, which involved a lot of running down the aisle and having tickle fights with the previously mentioned cute old gentleman.

We got into Madrid at 2:30 PM and took Rachel to the turtle pond right away. We thought she would be excited about it, but apparently turtles are only exciting in theory. She simply wasn't interested in waiting around to see when (or if) the turtles moved. They probably looked like rocks to her for all the excitement they were causing.

So we gave up on that idea and just got on the Metro to find our hotel.

It's in a wonderful location, right by the palace. We were a little worried about this hotel because they emailed us to say that a baby cot would cost us an extra 21 Euro per night. We declined the cot and thought that we'd have to endure a sleepless night with Rachel in bed with us, but instead when we checked in the man at the desk said he gave us a bigger room because they aren't very full today. Same price, but more beds. We have a double bed and a single bed, but we ended up putting Rachel in the hide-a-bed, hoping that the arms of the couch will keep her from rolling out of bed. We'll see, I guess.

We could sleep 5 grown people in our room, though. It's huge!

Anyway, after exploring our room we went to see the El Prado Art Museum. It's just a short walk from the Metro, but quite an entertaining one. The "Parade of Cows" is in Madrid right now so we got to see some interestingly painted cows. Rachel was much more excited about the cows than she was about the turtles. She couldn't stop mooing.

She was a pretty sleepy girl and fell asleep soon after we walked into the museum, which was nice. I really wasn't looking forward to spending the afternoon trying to make Rachel behave in a manner appropriate for an art museum. I couldn't have timed her nap better if I had tried!

Andrew and I had a fun time walking around the museum together. We saw a number of famous pieces, including Fra Angelico's The Annunciation, Durer's self portrait, Raphael's Cardinal, and Caravaggio's David Victorius over Goliath, and a number of still life by Sanchez Cotan. There was a multitude of paintings by Velazquez. He seemed to be pretty special to the museum. There's even a statue of him out front.

There's nothing really modern in the museum, which I appreciated. Modern art isn't something I am able to eat up. Most everything was from the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque time periods. A lot of things were originals, but some things mentioned that it was a copy of an original, which sounds kind of lame until you realize that the mimicked artwork was finished in the 1600s so is still older than most of America's history.

That cracks me up about Europe. When we were in the Seville Cathedral there was a sign mentioning that only two of the towers were original--the others were added later on. In like the year 1500. When I first started reading the sign I thought it was going to say that the others were reconstructed in 1995 or something like that, but no...they aren't original because they were built in 1500 instead of 1400.

Anyway, the museum was nice even after Rachel woke up, although instead of talking about the paintings and artists and styles, Andrew and I started pointing out horses and dogs and babies to keep Rachel occupied. I'm sure glad she wasn't awake for much of the museum because she sure was a handful once she was up!

Me in front of the Prado

It was pretty much dark when we left the museum but we headed off to see the Royal Palace, anyway.

We didn't spend a lot of time there because it was:
A) closed to the public
B) cold
C) nearing Rachel's bedtime.

But we did see the main buildings: the palace, the opera house, and the cathedral, as well as a statue of a horse. We never miss seeing those with Rachel around.

And that's the last we'll see of Europe for a while, I guess. Goodbye clean water. Farewell fresh air. Adios good food. We'll miss everything about Europe...except the high prices!

Goodbye Euros...Hello Moroccan dirhams!

Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda,

Here we are in Spain, Granada!

Spain's been very entertaining, and we're having fun although it has been raining.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist. That song has been stuck in my head for days so it was inevitable that it would end up on the blog.

Our train pulled into the Granada station at 9:45 PM, which is pretty late for a sleepy city like Granada. The first thing we noticed was that it was cold in Granada--several degrees cooler than Cordoba and Seville. We were freezing.

Next we noticed that hardly anything was open. The serrandas were all drawn and the streets were gloomily empty. The graffiti on the walls added a grungy feel to the city and, since there is so much construction and restoration work going on, many of the routes we ended up taking were simply small tunnels under scaffolding.

It felt like we were sneaking around like sewer rats, unwanted in the cold, wet alleys of the city.

We'd only been in Granada for 10 minutes and I already didn't like it.

We asked for directions at every opportunity that presented itself and ended up wandering around far more than should have been possible. Finally we ran into some tourists huddled around a map.

They let us borrow it for a minute and we were able to figure out where we were and how to get to the main square in town. There was another map there and we were able to locate our hotel and walk straight to it.

Our hotel room was warm and cozy and made Granada seem a lot more friendly. I decided to hold off judgement about the city until the morning.

Things usually look better in the morning (unless, of course, you happen to be Rachel, in which case they look far worse), and Granada was no different.

Why did you wake me up? WHY!?

With the serrandas open, half the graffiti of the city was gone. The streets were full of people and the sunshine had cheerfully pushed away the rain clouds. We enjoyed a brisk walk up a steep, narrow hill to the Alhambra. It was a lot colder than we were expecting it to be. We could see our breath; and there was ice. (Two things you don't get often, if ever, in Cairo).

We were excited to see the Alhambra but weren't too happy to find out that the ticket booth is a 10 minute-walk uphill from the entrance gate. We had to walk past the entrance gate...for 10 minutes...buy our tickets, and then walk back to the entrance. Who thought that one up?

They schedule time for tourists to visit the Palacios Nazaries (Nasrid Palaces), and our time was 11:00 which meant that we had to just hang around until then. Rachel was pretty impatient, but it was well worth the wait. It was very ornate. I can't imagine how much work went into creating all that detail. Seeing it made me want to go see the Taj Mahal more than ever--this is kind of how I imagine the Taj Mahal would be, only on a bigger scale.

It was so cold inside the palace, though, that it was all we could do to keep warm. We kept having to add more clothes. First we put on our gloves, and then after a while added our hats. It was freezing. But Rachel thought it was fun to see all the "wa-wa" so she cheered up a bit. She loves a good fountain.

We tried letting her run around by herself for a bit but she was so overwhelmed and distracted by everything that she kept running into people, so we had to keep her in the stroller.

Once we got outside of the palace things started to warm up, at least a little bit. The sun had made the final push over the hills and we could feel what little warmth it offered. It at least let us enjoy the Generalife gardens without the annoyance of our teeth chattering.

Clearly we were not expecting Granada to be this cold. It was so cold that, for me, it was almost not enjoyable. If everything hadn't been so beautiful I would have focused entirely on being cold and miserable (which, for me, are synonymous). But as it was, things were quite beautiful and every now and then I decided that I liked Granada, despite the cold. It's not Granada's fault it was so cold.

Besides, we had plenty of exercise carrying Rachel's stroller up and down all the stairs, which helped keep us warm. There are so many stairs at the Alhambra! I'm not even kidding. I don't know what the royal families did when they grew old and couldn't use stairs anymore; there's no such thing as a rambler here.

Things would even be marked as wheelchair accessible, so we'd go in with Rachel's stroller only to find that there are scores of stairs every direction we looked, but no ramp or lift of any sort.

Sometimes we'd go up one staircase and go down another only to find that we didn't have to go up the stairs to get where we wanted to go at all. We joked the whole time that the only reason the Alhambra was an Arab stronghold for so long was because it was built on this blasted hill that no one wanted to climb in order to overthrow them.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the sole reason they were in Spain for so long, actually.

From up on that hill you'd already have a perfect view of everything going on around you...and then they built this super tall tower to give even more of an advantage. We could see for miles!

I was planning on taking a nice picture of Andrew holding Rachel with the city sprawling out behind them (since we haven't taken any pictures like that before *sarcastic wink*), but Rachel wouldn't look. When Andrew prompted her to look at me by saying, "Where's Mommy?" the whole setup completely fell apart. Rachel squirmed out of his arms, ran over to me, and gave my leg a big hug.

Leaving the Alhambra was a lot easier than it was coming; we just had to do our best to keep up with the stroller. Rachel was, as you can see, in a much better mood.

For all the complaining I've done about Granada so far, you might have come to the conclusion that I didn't like it. But that's not true. I did like it. I just didn't like being so utterly lost upon arrival. And I didn't like how cold it was. But it was a pleasant place to be. Surprisingly enough, we found it less touristy than Cordoba. The prices were better and things were less crowded. It really was quite a charming city, in broad daylight, when we knew where we were.

I especially enjoyed it from the cafe we ate lunch in. I tried a potato tortilla, Andrew had a bacon-something-or-other, and we enjoyed our lunch looking up at the Alhambra from the valley, in the warmth of the restaurant.

I also enjoyed the moss. I love moss. I think I'll always be a Vancouver girl at heart and moss just makes me feel at home.

After we were full of such wonderful, warm food it was a shame to head out into the cold again. Such a shame that we decided to go back to our hotel and take the afternoon off. It was wonderfully relaxing and Rachel actually took a nap, which helped improve her mood even more.

When she woke up we got all bundled up to go outside again. If we wanted to visit the cathedral we were going to have to get a move on it. It closed pretty early, we thought, but we made it in time, purchased our tickets, and went inside. The cathedral was a lot smaller than it looked from the outside. So small, in fact, that we weren't sure we were in the right place.

We weren't.

We had purchased tickets just for the Crypt and Museum of the Catholic Kings at the Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) of Granada. It houses the crypt of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the King and Queen that sponsored Columbus' journey across the Atlantic Ocean, as well as some more members of the royal family. That was cool to see, although Rachel was a little freaked out.

She really doesn't like statues of people--they worry her for some reason--and since there were several statues around, including some huge ones on top of the crypt, Rachel was pretty nervous the whole time. For some reason she finds cherubim particularly worrisome. She just doesn't like that innocent "babies" are frozen in stone, I guess.

We were a little disappointed with our visit because we had hoped that we would get to see the rest of the cathedral. But the allowable pathway through the Royal Chapel is clearly marked and there was no where to go but out.

Determined to get inside, we wandered around the cathedral for some time until we noticed two people coming out of a hallway, hidden from view by the cathedral wall. We followed it and found the entrance to the cathedral! We were pretty excited.

It was basically deserted inside (apparently no one else could find their way in, either), but it was one of the nicest cathedrals either of us had been to. Instead of austere silence, they were piping cheerfully reverent classical music through speakers.

The sun was just starting to set, making the stained glass windows on the west wall glow in vibrant, warm tones. It was simply gorgeous.

One of my favorite things was all the music books they had on display. Each song began with a beautifully illuminated letter and there was a beautiful border around each page. They are big, too! They are about as half as tall as I am! They had a book sitting on the conductor's stand by the choir seats and we could read it from the floor, that's how big the font is. It must take a million page turns to get through a single song!

Rachel's favorite thing was...any guesses? A statue of a horse. For some reason statues of animals don't bother her as much as statues of human figures. Horse statues don't bother her at all. In fact, she prefers statue horses to real horses. Our visit to the cathedral was a wonderful way to crown our stay in Granada. It was nice to spend the afternoon in such a relaxing atmosphere. Kind of a shame we didn't have more time in Granada--there were a few more things we wanted to see, but if we wanted to do anything in Madrid (which we did) we had to cut our Granada experience a little short.