Morocco Featuring Matt =)

Michael and I flew from Madrid to Marrakech in Morocco, North Africa. Marrakech is one of the bigger cities in Morocco and has lots of flights coming through each day, having said that we did not anticipate the 1.5hr wait in line at customs on our way in!!

Once we finally got through customs and to our hostel (and drank some free mint tea) we decided to have a walk around the centre of the city and just explore. Well, let's just say it was pretty full on. The main square of Marrakech is El Fna Square - it's crazy! Full of vendors selling random good as well and locals and tourists just walking around. There was also snake charmers, which completely freaked me out. 

We headed to the Souks, which are huge markets you could quite easily get lost in. There are quite literally hundreds of stalls and shops selling everything you can imagine. My favourite part was walking past all the herbs and spices because they smelled amazing, although I was never quite sure what most of them were.

The markets in Marrakech are filled with men (mainly) trying to sell things to tourists, they can get quite pushy (and annoying) and it was kind of overwhelming not being able to walk 5 steps without being approached by a local wanting to sell us things.

Sacks filled with every spice you could imagine!

Morocco isn't what I would call a third world country but it is definetly far less developed and has far lower hygiene standards then Australia, we couldn't drink the water and had to make sure we were careful about what food we ate (which pretty much meant restaurant only dining as there wasn't really a supermarket in Marrakech). Nearly all the buildings are rendered in a pink kind of concrete but many of them are broken in parts and all the footpaths/sidewalks (where they are any) are not in great condition either.

Later that evening a good friend of mine from high school, Matt, arrived! The three of us went to explore Fna Square at night as this is when it gets busy. It was packed with people (and more snakes.... ahhh...) and food stalls. We decided to walk through the food stalls which was a huge mistake as we were immediately swamped by men trying to get us to eat at their stall, it was way too much for me! We made a fairly hasty exit and had a celebratory dinner, toasting with OJ and Coke (as there is very little access to alcohol in Morocco). 

The next morning we picked up our hire car and Michael had to learn pretty quickly how to master driving a manual on the right (wrong) side of the road! We set off towards the Sahara dessert but with plans to make several stops on our way.

The first restaurant we stopped at for lunch we all opted to give the local speciality a go, tagine is huge over here - its basically meat and/or vegetables cooked in an oily kind of sauce and served on a hot plate/bowl.

We were headed from Marrakech to Ourzazante (pronounded whaa-zar-zat) and went through the scenic Atlas Mountains. The roads here were crazy, really narrow and Moroccan drivers are pretty crazy. There seem to be road rules but drivers overtake on the wrong side of the road at fairly inappropriate times and don't bother to indicate most of the time!

As you can see we stopped and took a few pictures - there were heaps of amazings views through the mountains and lots of small towns (although it's hard to believe there are people living in some of them) in really dry areas!

We stopped for the night in Ourzazate, which is home of one of the sets for Game of Thrones! For those who are as addicted as me, many of the scenes with Daenerys Targaryen in season one with the Dothraki and then more scenes with her and the Unsullied and many of the other places she takes over are filmed in Ourzazate, Morocco! While we were driving around it was definitely easy to see the resembelence between those scenes and the landscapes here!

The next day we were driving again - this time heading to Tinghir. We took a detour through the Dades Gorge, a windy, twisting road that passes through a gorge that is pretty easy on the eye!

There was actually a fair amount of greenery in this area, which is unusual for the dessert and many houses scattered all through the Gorge!

Again we stopped for a break and took some pictures! It was about 30 degrees and yes I was really hot in pants but it's kind of respecful to cover up a little as a female in a Muslin country so I pretty much only wore tshirts and pants to make sure I was mostly covered up.

We stopped at a restaurant with a panoramic view over part of the Gorge (as you can see the boys were more interested in the menu) and I got another tagine (at the time I thought they were amazing but by the end of the week I was very much over them!)

 Not a bad view from the restaurant!

This is one of the panoramic photos Michael took of the Dades Gorge, probably more artistic than anything I can come up with!

Our next stop was Todra Gorge, we parked our car and started walking through the Gorge. There was a hotel built at the bottom of the Gorge - which we all thought was really strange, can you imagine a hotel at the base of the Grand Canyon!?

Given the long and windy road that we had to drive along to get to Todra Gorge there was a fair amount of tourists and in Morocco, where there are tourists there are locals selling things - although the people out here were not nearly as pushy as the people from Marrakech and since there wasn't as many it was much easier to run away!

 My favourite photo of the boys walking through Todra Gorge

Some of the cute little things sold at one of the stalls of Todra Gorge - it was hard trying to take a photo without being chased by the owner of a stall, I actually literally ran away after taking this oen!

We stayed at a pretty nice hotel that night, Matt ended up doing a pretty good job of bartering with the owner (and distracting them by asking about Tea - which is so common in Morocco it is often free) so that we got a pretty good bargain, a hotel room with ensuite and airconditioning (rare in Morocco), dinner (we sneakily ordered entrees and mains each) and breakfast included! This picture is of me on the rooftop restaurant!

The next day we drove - again!

This time we were on the home stretch, headhing from Tinghir to Merzouga where we had booked a camel trek into the Sahara desert with a dinner and overnight camping! Things don't exactly happen on time in Morocco and we arrived at about 5:15pm (15 mins early) and didn't leave until about 7pm (after more free mint tea of course). Our leader was called Mohammed and he was a really cool bloke who spoke like 8 different languages and also knew how to make jokes in each language, which I was impressed with.

Take note: Matt, the tallest guy in the group, sitting on the smallest camel - pretty sure the locals were trying to take the piss!

We finally headed off on a 2 hour camel trek into the Sahara desert - it was impressive, all you could see for miles was desert! The camel trekking was pretty fun and also pretty challenging, they walk really awkwardly and you always feel like they are about to fall down and take you with them!

My favourite photo of us trekking through the Sahara on camels - pretty good photography by Mohammed!

Me on my cool camel that I decided to name Ruben, we had an understanding! Michael had a slow fat camel and mine kept catching up to his.

A sneaky photo I took of the sun setting while we were trekking. It was pretty lucky because it was ridiculously windy after we stopped and the sand in the air kind of ruined the sunset. The huge red sand dunes were unlike anything I have ever seen before, it was really beauitful.

Desert, desert everywhere!

The boys admiring the view from the top of a high (ish) sand dune in the Sahara!

That night we had a huge Moroccan feast with a giant salad and huge bowl of tagine - probably the best one of our whole trip! We all ate in a huge tent (we kind of had our own little eating area because everyone else spoke Spanish and we got kicked out of the cool club...) and then the tour guys played some local Moroccan drum tunes! The Sahara is supposed to have one of the darkest night skies in the world - although it was kind of ruined by the sandy haze. It was weird not being able to see the saucepan too haha!

We were up until past midnight that night and super tired after a really long day, then we were woken up at 6am for the sunset! Neither Michael or I are morning people so lucky this was a once in a lifetime kinda thing!

The below photo is Courtesy of Matt's photographic skills.

Once again we set off on our camels back to Merzouga. This time it was far less enjoyable, we were all considerably sore from sitting on the camels the day before so the trip back seemed like it went for a pretty long time! 

Note: Matt again on a small camel!!

I took some pretty decent photos of the sun after it had mostly risen and while we were trekking back - it was much clearer than the day before and you could see rolling orange sand dunes stretching out for miles!

 My attempts at taking creative photos of our shadows while we trekked back to Merzouga on our camels.

This photo is the only shot we got of all three of us (somehow we didn't seem to think to get another one) with Mohammed, who was the leader of the tour! He had a really sweet purple turban - I actually saw him the night before once he took it off and he had dreds and looks like he should be in a reggae band!

Riding camels in the Sahara was something Matt and I had been talking about for a while so I was so happy that we finally got to do it together, it was definitely an experience of a lifetime and I am so grateful I got the chance to have such an amazing experience!

Our drive home was not too exciting, it was long and windy and we were all just ready to head back to Marrakech and get a good nights sleep. 

This photo is taken of the El Fna Square at dusk in Marrakech, in the background you can see the Koutoubia Mosque (that big tower), which is the biggest mosque in Marrakech. Every morning at 4:30am I was woken up by the prayer call that is made from the mosque (I was actually woken up by the prayer call in nearly every city we were at but I think I'm a pretty light sleeper). Most of the lit up stalls are food stalls, selling BBQ'd meats (which sit out in the sun for a long time, so I was definitely questioning the hygiene of these stalls...) and closer to the bottom of the photo are other small stalls and vendours selling goods.

These photos were taken from a restaurant with pretty good views over the square and we spent most of our time poeple watching. There were always men selling clothes in the square, they would literally walk up with a huge garbage bag full of clothes and dump it on the ground and the locals would actually flock around them grabbing clothes and sussing it out. They always sold the clothes really fast and got a lot of interest from all the locals in the area. It was the weirdest way to sell clothes I've ever seen but so long as they weren't taking the clothes from our hostel it was fine by me!

We were also lucky enough to get a pretty good sunset on our last night in Morocco!

All in all Morocco was a very colourful and interesting country, albeit very full on and unlike anything I have ever experienced! I would definitely reccomend a trip to the Sahara if anyone happens to head over there! 

Having said that I am happy to be in my nice clean hostel room in Porugal with drinkable water and an enclosed shower!

Madrid!

We first arrived in the Spanish capital of Madrid at about 8pm at night and to my absolute delight the Hostel we were staying at was serving 3 euro plates of seafood paella at 8:30pm - it was absolutely delicious! They served it for dinner several times and week and becaue it was cheap and delicious we ate it every night it was available!

On our first full day in Madrid we decided to do the free walking tour offered by the hostel, this is actually not so free because it involves you tipping the guide at the end of the tour but it was still a cheap way to see the main sites of Madrid and learn a little bit of history in the process.

We stated off in the Peurto De Sol, which is the main square in Madrid (they are really into plaza's and squares in spain) stopped by the Royal Opera House, the Royal Palace (pictured below) and the Cathedral of Madrid. The Royal Palace is covered in bullet holes from the Civil War! I didn't take many photos while we were here because we were walking around a fair bit and a lot of the places we visited didn't allow photos! The photo below on the right is of Plaza Mayor, another huge square in Madrid, lots of events are held here and a dingy little apartment here costs upwards of 1,000,000 euro!

Below is the Cathdral of Madrid. The photo with Michael in it is the church as viewed from the Royal Palace - apparently it was deliberately designed to not appear too beautiful so as not to show up the Royal Palace. The view of the church in the picture I am in is from quite a distance and from the Royal Palace you cannot see this side of the church, apparently this angle was made to be much more beautiful because it could not be viewed at this angle from the Royal Palace - sneaky!

We spent almost 4 hours walking around Madrid, learning a lot of Spanish history which was not overly exciting - although I did learn that the Jews were also run out of Madrid during the Spanish Inquisistion - they did not have much luck.

After grabbing the biggest set menu lunch ever (bread, an entree of pasta, a huge main dish, dessert, drinks and coffee for 11 euro) with a group of people we met on the walking tour we all decided to head back to the Royal Palace to see what was inside - this is where I was told I wasn't allowed to take photos!

 The view of the Cathedral of Mardird from the Royal Palace and below is the view of Madrid from the Royal Palace! We actually met a crazy American who took heaps of sneaky photos but has yet to email them to me and I'm not holding my breath!

We were lucky to be staying at a Hostel with heaps of activities and the next night was free drinking games and Sangria! This is something I am always up for! We spent a few hours drinking off of the available (and most importantly, free) Sangria and playing drinking games with other tourists. Afterwards we headed out with some other travelers to grab a few drinks. We actually stumbled upon a free concert happening at Plaza Mayor and stopped to watch for a little while - I have no idea who the singer was but he must be famous in Spain cos the locals were going nuts for him!

The next morning was very uneventful, we spent most of the day at the train station (2 hour lines to book tickets – INSANE)…. Once that was finally over and done with we went for a walk around Madrid and checked out the Temple of Debod, an ancient temple which was a gift from the Egyptions and is now also a museum. 

 The view behind the monument was pretty amazing (you can see the Cathedral of Madrid in the background - behind Michael) and we then spent some time wandering through the Park Del Oeste and having a quick lie down in the sun. 

Park Del Oeste

Later that afternoon we headed to a café that Michael had read about online, called J and J’s English bookstore. It was an awesome café, full of English speaking expats who were living in Madrid or traveling through Spain. Downstairs was an awesome bookstore which we spent a while looking for and Michael finally got a new book (which he has almost finished by now).

That evening we joined a group of people from the Hostel for an all you can eat tapas night! We headed to a local tapas place (you don’t usually get to have a seat at these places, which isn’t my favourite thing but I guess it was authentic!), which was definitely not the most glamorous place but was filled with locals eating tapas and drinking sangria. We each got a half litre glass of sangria and the tapas just kept coming. Spanish tapas are very different to what we have at home! Most dishes are just a variety of meat or vegetable cooked or dressed in some kind of oil and placed on top of a piece of bread. We had several kinds of ham, cheese and chicken on top of bread, some kind of fried balls similar to risotto balls (my favourite), croquettes (this strange Spanish dish that looks like omlette but has potato in it) and stuffed mushrooms (everyone’s favourite) - I wish I had taken photos but the place was crazy, people everywhere and we were all jammed around this tiny table! Eating dinner at 10pm is overrated, that's all im saying!

The food in Madrid was amazing but definitely not healthy; I was more than ready for a few good servings of fruit and vegetables by the end of this trip. We had chocolate dipped churros, probably my favourite food in Madrid and ate at a restaurant at which nobody spoke a lick of English – if anyone can read the menu below please tell me what it says because not even google translate was 100% sure.

On our final day in Madrid we were ready for a bit of relaxation and I was ready for some exercise after all the food (and so much bread) – we headed to El Retiro Park, which is my favourite park in Europe so far. The park is huge and full of heaps of different gardens, buildings, cafes and street performers. I did a little exercise and we spent several hours walking around. Pictured below is a giant boating lake, it served as a kind of central area in the park. It was surrounded by cafes, food stands and street performers. Lots of people had rented paddle boats and were cruising around on the water. It was actually a really beautiful but slightly crazy area of the park.

We also checked out the Crystal Palace (which is legitimately built entirely of crystal), which is very pretty from the outside (the lake is full of turtles haha!).

The Crystal Palace

Finally a beautiful day in Europe!

 Madrid was full of beautiful weather (finally) and lots of eating!

We flew from here to Morocco, which is where I am writing this post from - I will be sure to write a post on this crazy country once we leave as it's different from anything I have experienced!

San Sebastian - Pintxos with a View

It was a bi put of an effort for us to get to San Sebastian but as it turns out I am really glad we did because it has been my favourite destination so far! After being told by a man in the French ticket office that San Sebastian didn't have a train station I was a little miffed because I was certain it did, a quick search online confirmed that. Having said that we had to catch two trains and a bus from Bordeaux to get there which was a little painful but only took about 3.5hrs - we are getting pretty good at navigating foreign public transport systems!

The first thing we did when we got there (aside from eat) was take a walk to Monte Urgull, this is a mountain that kind of sits between the town of San Sebastian and the sea - it was once designed to be a military base of some type to protect the city but was never fully finished. Below are photos of Michael and I around the base and some of the walking tracks we took to get to the top.

After walking along many different paths for about an hour or so we were at the top, it was actually a really nice walk (I loved it so much I came back and went for a run here a few days later), the photos below are mostly overlooking the bay of San Sebastian, which would be amazing in the summer! I wish it had of been warm enough to go for a swim!

Below are photos of both sides of Monte Urgull, the top two are of both of us in front of the bay side (which is a beautiful view!) and the bottom picture is of the other side of the mountain, this is the surf beach in San Sebastian.

The next photo is just of the walls and partially built military base near the top of Monte Urgull, there is also a giant statue of Jesus, which actually looked pretty cool. You can see this statue from virtually anywhere in San Sebastian.

As you can see by the above photo we decided to venture down to the surf beach and chill for a little while, it was still pretty cold here but the sun is starting to come out so there were heaps of locals sitting around by the beach too (although you can't really tell by this picture).

Sorry for the abundance of Monte Urgull photos, it was one of our favourite parts of San Sebastian!

We scored with our hostel accommodation, we were located in the centre of the old town (the middle picture below is taken from our window!) which was absolutely packed full of restaurants, bars and cafes! Turns out Spanish people love nothing more than to eat, drink and then sleep for a long time. 

The old town is full of tiny, narrow cobblestone streets with high apartments and hostels/hotels built all around it. It was a really cool place to see and very different from anything we have back home!

The thing we find the strangest thing about Spain is the opening times of everything - things don't seem to open until around 10am (give or take) and then everyone goes on Siesta in the afternoon so shops start to close around 2pm and don't open again until 4pm so everyone can go home and have a nap or lunch with their family. It's really weird for us as we are used to things pretty much being open all the time (most of the shops close on Sunday in Spain too!).

The next best thing, aside from the views, in San Sebastian was the food! The first night we were there we discovered Pintxos and couldn't get enough! Pintxos are like tiny portions of food (kind of like tapas but more like finger foods or snacks in small portions). At most Pintxos bars or restaurants there is a huge selection of different plates of food all along the bar and you just ask the bartender for a plate (platos) and pick the things you want to try. Usually you are supposed to only try a few Pintxos (accompanied by a drink) at any one bar before moving onto the next one. Some Pintxos bars have all their Pintxos spread out on the bar and at others you order from a chalk board.

The photos in the above left picture are actually at a restuarant we went to, believe it or not this was my entree (only 3 euros!), while the photos on the right are mostly of the Pintxos at one of the bars we ate at - YUM!

More Pintxos, from a bar called La Vina, which is actually famous for its cheesecake! We got some Pintxos and wine and headed back later for cheesecake, which was nothing like ours but it was delicious - it actually kinda tasted like cheese. The Pintxos in this photo were cooked to order and probably my favoutite!

Another really strange custom when eating Pintxos is that after you eat you are supposed to throw your napkin on the ground, the more napkins on the ground at a Pintxos bar the more customers have been eating their food and therefore the better the Pintxos bar is!

Bar Martinez was another Pintxos bar we loved. All the Pintxos men (they were nearly always men) were so friendly here and always insisted we 'feast before pay' - we have definetly found that the people in Spain are much more friendly than the people in France! The barmen were so happy for us to sample their food and wine and were always giving us recommendations!

We walked along the boardwalk of the beautiful San Sebastian bay - you can't really tell by these photos but it was actually pretty cold!

The below photos are just of us in front of the bay and of the Palace of San Sebastian, where the royals used to live but no longer do (boring!)

We checked out what was supposed to be some famous art work/sculptures called The Wind Comb, pictured below - we actually enjoyed watching the waves more than we did the artwork because the water looked pretty cool. 

Later we headed up another mountain on the opposite side of the San Sebastian bay - this was was called Monte Igueldo and we headed up in the strangest looking little cable car that I was afraid might break at any second. The whole place was kind of hidden and there was hardly anyone there, we weren't really sure if we were even going to the right place but we made it!

As you can see by the photos the views were amazing!! 

On the far left you can see Monte Urgull which we had walked up the previous day and the statue of Jesus at the top, at the very foot of this mountain is the old town area of San Sebastian that we were staying in.

The combination of amazing food (Pintxos!!) and views has definetly made San Sebastian our favourite stop so far and I would definetly recommend it to anyone who wants to visit Spain! It actually reminded us quite a bit of a beach town back in Australia, it had a very relaxed and peaceful feel about it - although I imagine it would be packed with people over the summer!

Just a few other random photos I took of Pintxos (the two on the bottom left were really random) and the prices of alcohol here, it is ridiculously cheap to buy bottles of alcohol at the supermarket as they don't have the taxes we do - crazy! We were also drinking glasses of wine at most Pintxos bars for around 1.6-2 euros and the best part of that is that Spanish wine is good!