Last night

Tonight is my last night abroad--my flight leaves from Madrid at 11:00 local time tomorrow morning and arrives at Dulles at 2:00 PM Eastern time, for a total of 9 hours in the air. It will be exactly 8 weeks since I left JFK in New York.

Anyway, for what COULD be my last entry, although I'm not entirely sure about that, I just wanted to share some of my better and more interesting memories. I'll keep it short and sweet, so I have plenty of time for dinner and a night on the town in Madrid. These kinds of recaps are always flawed and incomplete, so this is by no means definitive, but here are some of my favorite things I saw and did on my trip in Italy, Spain, and Morocco.

Favorite things I saw:
5. The Duomo di Milano/the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona: I've seen sooooo many churches in the past two months, I had to include my favorite(s) on here. It's a tie.
4. Mar Bella--that is, the gay beach in Barcelona: This short stretch of beach was just too funny. It was distinctly different from the beaches stretching away on either side of it, and I can't help but appreciate that things like this can even exist at all.
3. Chelo making paella: Watching Chelo Vazquez make paella was very cool. I intend to learn to make paella, and she intends to teach me. And if watching it was one of my favorite things, don't even get me STARTED about eating it.
2. The Palio di Siena: Watching this event for the second year in a row, again on my first day in Italy, was as much as I could have hoped for. Last year´s palio may have been more intense, but this year I saw more of the preparation, and it was great.
1. Opera on the Spanish Steps: Perfect way to spend my last night in Italy. Perfect.

Favorite things I did:
5. My night tour of Rome with Riccardo, Barrett, Megan, and Ashley. Beautiful city, beautiful people--overall a great experience that I won't forget. It made me ever more intent on living in Italy ASAP.
4. Eating with the Moroccans: The owner of our hotel in Fez, Mohammed, invited us to eat, and it was amazing Moroccan food, three nights in a row. It was so great to avoid tourism and get an authentic taste of the country.
3. Swimming in Taormina: I believe I wrote about this... Anyhow, the water was incredible and diving off of the rocks was such a rush. Best place I've ever swam, ever.
2. Tapas and clubbing in Barcelona: Good beer, good food, and dancing are all things that I love, so that night was pretty much amazing.
1. Eating with the Vazquez family: Yes, this includes the paella, but so much more. Dinner is when they really showed their hospitality and made us feel welcome, and the food was all amazing.

And I can't leave out some of the STRANGEST things I saw or did:
5. Barcelona: What a weird place.
4. Drinking in front of the Vatican: Ok, I did it on purpose, because I don't quite love the church, but it DID feel pretty weird.
3. Finding an episode of Friends on TV in Marrakech (stranger because five minutes earlier I commented that that was all I wanted). They really do play it EVERYWHERE.
2. The bartering attempt that resulted in an impromptu lesson on the Fay-Bans (Fake Ray-Bans) industry permeating Italy. Very enlightening. I really should have bought them. I got the guy down to €8, but I didn't want to spend more than 5. Either way, the guy selling them was cool.
1. The McDonald's in Tangier playing an American Major League Soccer game (Colorado Rapids vs San Jose Earthquakes) with Arabic commentary. Seriously, what the hell.

So yeah, travel has been great, and fun, and sometimes very weird. But I don't want to get too down about going home, so here are a few things I'm looking forward to there as well:
5. Not living out of a bag. I can't wait to pull clothes out of drawers instead of a backpack.
4. Exercising again. I miss running, and I'm pretty sure I've lost weight (in a bad way).
3. Catching up on American TV shows. I'm behind on new episodes of Futurama and Friday Night Lights, and I think I'm going to start watching True Blood again. We'll see. Friends might warrant another run through the series from start to finish.
2. Teaching myself to cook. I'm going to try to replicate some of the things I ate here and become a master chef. Oh yeah.
1. Getting ready for the great American tradition of Halloween. Yes, America has culture, too.

Thank you for reading, everyone. It's been an honor to travel blog for you!

Marrakech

Marrakech is the last city on my tour of Morocco. We arrived and found our hostel with less trouble than in Fez or Tangier (although what is with hostels in this country being practically empty? They're like relatively nice, pretty clean ghost towns. But they offer less amenities than their European counterparts, and they don't serve breakfast during Ramadan). Anyhow, so Marrakech is my last city to blog about.

Marrakech is much more developed and therefore more touristy than Fez. Normally, groups of tourists bother me, but here, it's kind of a breath of fresh air. I don't stand out so much in Marrakech.

So here are some pros and cons of sticking out like a sore thumb in Morocco:

Pro: adorable little kids say "bonjour!" when you walk past; some people stop to ask where you're from and welcome you to their country (and everyone here says "you're welcome" instead of "welcome" without perceiving a difference, which is kind of charming);

Cons: every taxi stops to ask where you want to go; every tout in the medina asks you where you want to go (and they literally do not believe that you might JUST want to walk with no specific destination, which is USUALLY what I'm doing); cars beep at you when they drive past; everyone assumes you're rich; etc.

But you have to understand, it's harder to come up with pros because my good experiences here have nothing to do with how much I stick out; they have to do with meeting nice people and eating good food, regardless of whether I'm walking around with a neon sign flashing "WHITE GUY." So the point of this tangent is, it's nice not to be a target.

So Marrakech has a lot of nice streets and parks--I'm sending this blog entry from the "Cyber Park," which has outdoor touchscreen computer terminals along its paths and wi-fi for portables. The market is less authentic than in Fez, because Fez is really one of the artisan capitals of this part of the world, but it's colorful and fun regardless. However, people in Marrakech are completely willing to exploit Western ideas of the Arab world. The main square in the medina is almost impossible to walk through without being accosted by monkey-handlers, snake-charmers, henna-tattoo-"artists," and the like--yesterday, a man tried to entice me into his shop with the advertisement "Berber carpet? Flying carpet?" Tonight, on our last night, we're going back to the square, where there are supposedly tons of street shows and a lot to see... Belly dancing, perhaps?

So it's probably not difficult to tell that I enjoyed Spain and Italy more than Morocco, but I wouldn't mind coming back--I would like to see the mountains and deserts, especially. I hope I didn't give too negative an impression, but it has been a bit of a culture shock, and it's taken some adjustment. I'm from the country, where you always say hi to strangers, and this place is different, which is kind of hard for me. A lot of people want to take advantage of foreigners, but I survived it, and I was cussed at a bit and hopefully not taken advantage of too much. Morocco is a pretty crazy place.

Tomorrow I fly back to Spain, where I can see the Vazquez family again! And then the day after, I fly home. It feels bizarre to be able to say that.
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Fezzz

Walking home from the tea shop from where I posted my last blog, I felt a stronger pull from Tangier than I had so far. It was around 11:45 PM, and the streets were full of people sitting at tables outside rows of tea and coffee shops, sitting around parks and squares, or just strolling along the markets, still open. I was reminded of the Italian "passeggiata," when everyone walks along the main course of the city just to enjoy the evening. The Moroccan version was unexpected, but August is the month of Ramadan, and so I suppose life (and tea and dinner) really begin in earnest after sundown. The streets were brightly lit, crowded but tranquil, and the evening was finally a bit cooler.

However, the train to Fez was stifling. I felt disgusting. I was fanning myself with a map of Tangier and a man walking down the aisle stopped beside me and said, "it's hot!" I said, "yeah, it is." He asked where I was from, and I told him Canada, and he said, "welcome!" before he continued down the carriage. When people are that nice I kind of feel guilty about the Canada thing...

But then this morning on the way to the train station some guy stopped me in the street to ask where I was going--he did the same yesterday, we recognized each other--and then asked, trying to look into my bag, for a souvenir, despite the fact that he did NOT guide me anywhere or help me in any way. I know where I'm going. Leave me alone. And so the point is, I never know if people who start innocent conversations are hawking me or welcoming me to their country. What's a blonde white foreigner to do? I just can't blend in.

Fez was more of the same, but in a less ominous/threatening kind of way. It's a lot bigger--the medina (that is, the old traditional city) is the biggest in Morocco, and maybe north Africa, and it may be an illusion, but it SEEMED like there were less tourists in the medina. The medina is somewhat labyrinthine, good maps of its thousands of streets and alleys just don't exist, and therefore being a foreigner attracts a LOT of attention from locals who want to give you unofficial tours and expect to be tipped. They're persistent in varying degrees; some polite and friendly, some REALLY not wanting to take no for an answer. If I had a dirham for every person who shouted the word "tannery?!" at us, trying to guide us to the tanning district... I'd have like 50 dirhams, which is actually only like 5 euro. But I could buy 25 liters of water to fend off my dehydration. My favorite hawkers, depending on a liberal definition of favorite, are the ones who want to lure you into their restaurants. If you're not interested in eating, they don't mind--just take a look at their menu anyway. Why? I don't know, and I don't want to. But looking past hawkers, there were a lot of cool markets and things to see (and the tannery WAS very cool, when an actual guide took us there). All-in-all, much cooler than the medina in Tangier. I understand why everyone says you shouldn't miss Fez.

We stayed three nights in a hotel in the new medina (a different district--I can't really explain it well), but hotels in the medina are not what you're thinking of. It's more just a rented room in a building where a lot of Moroccans actually live. The guy we rented from, Mohammed, was awesome. He invited us to eat with him and his family/friends (unclear, really, as most of them didn't speak English) our first night, which was a surprise. And then the second night, too, which was a surprise. And the third night we went out because we didn't want him to feel obligated to invite us again, but when we came back he insisted we come eat again, and he had looked for us to invite us before, but we had been out. So we ate. Moroccans want you to eat. They really do, and they don't accept no. Even the ones who don't speak English keep putting food in front of you--they just do it without asking if you want more. I don't know how to spell it, but I know how to say "eat!" in Arabic. All of our food there was in-freaking-credible. And they had real toilets.

Today, our train to Marrakech is going to take 7 hours. Morocco is SO much bigger than it looks on a map. Africa is a deceptive freaking continent. God, I hope it's cooler than our train to Fez.

Tangier

I am in Africa. How weird is that? It seems weird to me, at least. We arrived by ferry, where I got a passport stamp (I love passport stamps) with Arabic writing on it. And I had no idea they were this close, but we could see Morocco from the southern coast of Spain. However, proximity does NOT alleviate culture shock.

In most regards, culture shock here has not been bad so far (further inland we'll see about soon). Many signs have French in addition to Arabic, which is helpful if words are similar to Spanish or Italian and comforting if only because it's a recognizable alphabet. I don't have high standards for accommodation, so I don't mind the minimalist pension we found here, although I did have to use a squat toilet for the first time in my life, and I didn't love it. But the one kind of shocking thing is the hawkers.

I knew they would be around, especially in Tangier, but people here often call things to you, try to sell you things, try to give you advice on where you're going, try to get you to their restaurant or tea shop, and they do NOT stop at "no thank you." They're persistent and often, when rejected, are not friendly. First we tried ignoring them, thinking they might not follow us or they'd give up quicker, and we got SERIOUSLY cussed at. Cussing so much it made even ME blush, and I'm a 22 year old recent college grad, so I've heard some cussing. Then we tried pretending not to understand English, thinking Italian is less universally spoken, but turns out a lot of them speak Italian, too, so that trick didn't get us off the hook even once, and then I had to have the same wearisome "no thanks" conversations in Italian. No, I don't want to buy shirts, and I frankly just don't believe you really want me to come to your shop, look around, not buy anything, and have a free tea. I don't believe you'd let me off that easily, and I don't need the trouble. So basically, hawkers make me uncomfortable. One guy followed us to the beach yesterday, and to be fair, he was very friendly, but he would NOT leave us alone, and he actually sat next to us on the beach for probably 2 hours before we just decided to go back to the hotel. We got rid of him by lying that we would come meet him at this restaurant at 8:30, which we did not do. Speaking of lying, we're also telling people we're Canadian, when it comes up. I'm probably being paranoid, but enough people told us to be careful in Morocco that I trust no one, and I'm not sure how they feel about Americans--the Vazquez's recommended the Canadian trick, and they've been to Morocco many times. I carry as little as possible with me. I just feel, overall, a little edgier here than anywhere else I've ever been.

Which is NOT to say that I'm having a bad time. Good comes with the bad, and while I don't love the section of the city we're in and spent our time yesterday, today we discovered cleaner, nicer areas, without hawkers everywhere. There are beautiful buildings, fountains, and plazas here, and many streets look very European. The architecture is very different--mosques are not so grandiose and picturesque as the catholic cathedrals that I'm used to--and people are very different, but the few non-hawkers I've come into contact with have been very friendly. And, I didn't know this before, but Moroccans are very attractive. So that's always a plus too.

It's a day earlier than we'd planned, but I think we're done in Tangier. Tomorrow, we move on to Fez.
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the Vazquez family

We arrived in Madrid around 7:30 in the morning with the foolproof plan of "find Chelo Vazquez," a woman who neither of us had ever met in real life and who doesn't speak English. We looked around the bus station, wondering if she would be inside or outside; we stared at a lot of strangers wondering if they were Chelo; but then she arrived, and she was entirely unmistakeable. Chelo, her husband (Felix), and her son (Pablo) are completely amazing.

Therefore, we've been staying in a suburb outside of Madrid called Majadahonda. They are great hosts and guides; our first morning, Chelo and Pablo took us for churros and chocolate, an incredible Spanish breakfast, and gave us a quick drive around the city to orient us (only moderately successful), and then took us walking around several of the sights, palacios (palaces), catedrales (cathedrals), and plazas of Madrid. Pablo took us into Madrid one evening and another day, Toledo another day, and he and Chelo together took us to El Escorial and Segovia yet another day. Chelo takes more pictures of these places than I do. I'll write about Madrid a bit later, but this post is dedicated to the Vazquez family, so tourism can wait!

The language barrier is an interesting situation. Pablo speaks English, and Felix speaks some Italian, but at dinner, for example, there's a whole lot of Spanish flying around. I can understand a lot of it--when they speak to me, because when they're speaking to each other it's another language entirely--but I don't know how to say very much. However, they're the nicest and friendliest people, and my stupidity doesn't seem to bother them. On the third or fourth night, actually, they told me that my Spanish was already better than when I arrived. Of course, it's always easier to talk after a few glasses of wine (more confidence, less thinking too much), and Felix always keeps our glasses full. Their Spanish accent sounds very different than all the Latin-American Spanish I'm used to hearing, though. Their pronunciation is different, and I'm actually trying to modify my Spanish a bit, because when I move to Italy, it seems more prudent to speak the local pronunciation. So, as an example, they don't pronounce the "c" and the "v" in cerveza like "s"; rather, they pronounce it more like the "th" sound in "thin," so it sounds like "thervetha" instead. It's very difficult to explain in writing, but in speech it's a very clear distinction. They also pronounce their j's, ge's, and gi's with a lot more throat. So basically, ejercicio is absolutely impossible to pronounce. But I'm getting better. A little bit.

Chelo is like the sweetest woman on earth. It doesn't even matter that we don't speak the same language. She gave Carrie and I gifts on our second day here (a shirt for me!), she makes us serious lunches (two or three dishes, plus dessert) every day, she sends us platters with horchata and snacks in the afternoon, and she laughs all the time--she likes explaining things in Spanish. We danced in her car on the way to Segovia after we all agreed that we liked a particular song that we always hear on the radio, and I asked her in Spanish what the song was called. She didn't know, but the next day she handed me a post-it note with the name and artist written on it. She searched online at work through popular summer songs to find out for me.

Felix is awesome, as well. He's really friendly. He summons me to show me things like his grill and a robot that cleans their pool. He taught me a trick with wine corks, and, as I already mentioned, he never leaves my glass empty. He gave us España souvenir bracelets and some currency for our arrival in Morocco. At dinner last night, he ordered all kinds of food, kept my glass full of tinto de verano (a bubbly red-wine drink), and then ordered a platter with five different liqueurs for Carrie and I to taste. Then he asked which was our favorite (pacharán--sloe gin), and then he ordered three glasses of it. And then two more rounds of shots for the three of us. In fact, emptying my glass in front of him is a bit dangerous, because he always tells waiters to bring me more of whatever I'm drinking, or does it himself if we're eating at home. I feel accepted into his Spanish drinking culture. Really, I don't think I had much of a choice to begin with, but I'm very happy about it--the acceptance, that is, not the drinking!

They have been amazing and generous hosts, and I wish I knew how to pay them back. If any of them read this blog... ¡No hay suficientes gracias en todo el mundo! ¡Hacéis demasiado! ¡Muchas muchas muchas gracias!

Barcelona

When I decided it would be easy to tack Spain onto the end of my Italy trip, I did not think about what I was doing. Spain and Italy are, in fact, very different, and I just don´t speak Spanish. Furthermore, I landed in Barcelona, and I speak even less Catalan. In fact, I didn't even know Spanish was not the primary language in Barcelona, and I arrived thinking, "what the hell are these signs in the airport, and why doesn't that look like Spanish?" So that's how mentally unprepared I was for Spain. While I always qualify my Italian ability as "solo un po´" or "un pochino" ("just a little" or "very little"), my Spanish ability is so much less that I feel like this is the first time I've ever been to a country where I didn't speak the language, and it took me a day or two to adjust. However, I couldn't have asked for a better city to adjust in than Barcelona. My love for Italy notwithstanding, I have to include Barcelona as one of my favorite two or three cities that I've been to in all of my time in Europe. Like Milan, it has a vibrant quality of life beyond the tourism that makes me comfortable; deep down, I found myself thinking, "what if I lived here..."

Carrie and I did the tourism thing for the first evening and the next day. The city is beautiful and strangely esoteric. Aesthetically, I doubt there's another city like it in the world. The architectural influence of Antoni Gaudí shapes the city into something entirely unique--it is nothing like I expected.

We continued tourism sporadically after that, but we got more caught up in the life of the city. We left the beaten path for a tapas bar which was packed and ordered beers and not-even-slightly-understood tapas platters from a waiter who spoke no English using a lot of bien´s and si´s while exchanging confused and helpless looks. But they were good freaking tapas. And we felt much cooler than all the dumb tourists getting tapas off English menus at restaurants on la Rambla, because we have tourism superiority complexes. We fell in love with horchata--don't ask me what it is, I don't have any idea--and we bought sangria at a supermarket--tacky Americans. And then we discovered the night life. We wandered around the Eixample neighborhood until we started passing bars, and we found a small discoteca; I bought a beer and we danced; we met a local and hopped to a much bigger disco; we got free beers with our admission and danced until 4 AM. The disappointing thing is that 4 AM is early to go home here--discos are generally open from midnight until 6 or 8 AM--and I didn't get any useful contact information from any of the people we were talking to, so that night will just stand disconnected in memory as a great introduction and welcome to Barcelona night life. And then, the next day, we discovered the beach, which we alternated with urban exploration four our last three days in Barcelona. While swimming in Italy was incredible, Barcelona's wide, free, sandy beaches trump Italy's craggy, crowded coasts for sheer lazy relaxation, and I hear there are incredibly nice beaches in other towns nearby, too. We talked to a few locals on the beach, and I felt right at home.

Then we took an overnight bus to Madrid, and I couldn't help but think, "I just got here... do I have to leave already?" I wonder how soon I can go back...

Italy in pictures

I won't write much here, but I finally have access to a computer with a connection fast enough to upload some pictures, so I chose a dozen of my favorites from all around Italy. I've taken over a thousand, so expect to see a lot more on Facebook once I arrive home and sort through them properly, but here's a small sample.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan--the 150th Anniversary sign on the left celebrating the unification of Italy in 1861. The crest below the big 150 represents A.C. Milan, the football club founded in 1899 with 18 official UEFA and FIFA championships.


Most of what struck me in Milan was the life of the place, so many of my pictures reflect everyday objects instead of monuments or landmarks. This was a newsstand advertising the Italian men's edition of Vogue, with Beyonce on one of the covers.


Milan--just a sign outside of a bar. Marilyn says, "with coffee this good, I only drink it here!"


Trieste--not the best picture I took here, but this was a particularly charming cafe setup.


Palermo--while I did take a picture of the garbage mountains in this city, it wasn't all so dirty. This is a fountain in front of the Cathedral of Palermo.


Piazza del Duomo in Catania--one of my favorite piazze (plazas/squares) in Italy. Statue of the elephant "u liotro" visible on the pedestal on the right.


The Duomo di Catania at night. One of my favorite cathedrals in Italy.


Taormina--I swam around this island, Isola Bella.


Taormina--I don't know exactly what this church was, but the skull and crossbones seemed strange. The church was beautiful.


Rome--the changing of the guard at the Quirinale, the house of the Italian president.


Rome--the Vittoriano at night. Mad self-picture skills.


Rome--opera in front of the Spanish steps on my last night in Italy. Perfect.