treceava parte
SOoooo behind (again)…wow. I am back in Granada now, after having been to Sevilla, Cádiz, Terifa, Tanger, Ronda, Málaga, and Nerja. Whew!
We left Granada and headed for Sevilla last Thursday(?). The Oasis there is very different from the one here! It is two buildings, one of which is just rooms and the other, with the pool/bar/reception/etc as well as rooms. I think it was recently remodeled; it felt almost nothing like the one here in Granada, but it was nice. We walked around the town a bit and we saw the Reales Alcazares and we tried to see the cathedral but it was closed when we went by. We went on the tapas tour but the group was so huge it was pretty hopeless…The next day we got up and went to Cádiz for the beach, which I had heard was worth seeing. Maybe we just missed it or something, but the beach we saw was not too spectacular. We lay out for a little while and then decided to head to Terifa. Honestly Terifa is a fun little place and mom and I both wish we had a few days there. We stopped at this beach on the way into town, not quite Terifa proper, and it turns out it is a total hippie heaven, windsurfer paradise. It was great, it would have been a lot of fun to spend a few days there hanging with chill people. We headed into Terifa later on and managed to find a room (very overpriced) in a hostel there. Wandering around for dinner, we saw this Terifa EcoCenter with a vegetarian restaurant! To me this is always a sign that there is something redeeming about a town, that an ecocenter is sustainable there. We also walked around the old part of the city near the port for the ferries and such, and there is quite a lot going on in that town. We slept there and got up Saturday morning to take the ferry across to Tanger. The ferry advertising says “Terifa to Tanger, 35 minutes!” which of course may be accurate in some sense, but all the hassle of waiting and buying tickets and waiting in line to get on the boat and etc etc makes it a two-hour ordeal, at least. Anyway, once across we got out of the port area into a plaza with a ridiculous number of Moroccan flags flying and restaurants lining the square. We managed not to get too harassed and found a place to sit and eat lunch. I had couscous and it was delicious. Then we decided to check out the chances of getting to Fes. We checked in the bus station, and the bus takes 6 hours. We finally flagged a cab to take us across town to the new train station, where we learned the train also takes 6 hours. The thing is, they say 6 hours, but then if anything else happens it could end up taking much longer, and if we only have a few days to spend in Morocco we don’t want to spend the whole time crammed into a hot train instead of seeing the place. We decided just to stay in Tanger, because that way at least we would get the chance to really get a feel for the place. We got another cab and after some difficulty managed to find this hotel Mom wanted to try to stay at. The cabbie had never heard of it, and a few times he pulled over to ask other cabbies about it and seemingly nobody had heard of it! Mom and I were having memories of our experience in Mexico last December, when a similar situation happened. It was a little strange this time though, because the hotel is within a block of the Grand Mosque in the Medina, on a well-known street, so why so much difficulty? We finally just asked him to drop us off nearby, and we would find it ourselves. The guy at the train station had been very friendly and warned us we should not pay more than about 10 dirham for the ride into the Medina. The meter read something near 8, but when we stopped to get out of the cab the driver cleared the meter (sneaky!) and demanded five euro. WTF? That was a ridiculous demand, and I would certainly have handled it differently from how Mom handled it, and I was very uncomfortable because my side door would not open and I could not get out of the cab. Finally she gave him some money and we got out, and soon found our hotel. We dropped our stuff off and went out walking around. We walked down on the street along the beach and ate crappy paninis in a cafe and got our feet wet in the incredibly warm Mediterranean and walked on the beach next to camels. The next day we had tea in a cafe in the square near the mosque, walked around the Kasbah and the oldest part of the city, went to a small art museum, got lost in the Medina (bound to happen, yeah?) and browsed through some shops. On our way to the ferry I saw Miguel and Claudia (cooks from the hostel in Granada, cool people) walking uphill towards the Medina. They were too far away to hear me, but it was a reminder that it’s a small world after all. Mom and I headed back over on the ferry and tried to figure out what we wanted to do next. I was set on a beach day for Monday, the next day, so we drove along the coast and up an hour or two to see Ronda, which has amazing old Roman ruins. We made our way back down to the coast afterward, got lost a bit in Málaga, and finally got to Nerja. We stayed the night in a (very expensive) hotel and ate dinner at an Indian restaurant. The next day we had the morning on the beach and by the pool, and the sun was so strong we decided against the whole day at the beach and started heading back to Granada. We checked in at the hostel (almost felt like coming home– I was so happy to see Francesco at the desk!) and relaxed a bit. In the bar we met this guy Patrick, from Louisiana, who is here in Spain traveling with his brother Joe, who is in a band. Turns out Joe has been living in Amsterdam for a few years, and he and 10 or more friends of his travel around playing music in squares and living like gypsies. We talked and drank together on the patio at Oasis, and ate the paella dinner at the hostel, and they invited us to see their show that night. I am really glad we went. I ran into Eric, Oscar’s flamenco-guitar playing roommate, in the street, and we chatted for a bit while the band did a mini-show at the intersection of Elvira and the street by Oasis with all the shops (what’s it called?). Then the band grabbed their gear, accordion, mandolin, violins, guitar, stand-up base, drums….and we headed uphill into Albayzín to Plaza Miguel Bajo, which they had heard from a friend would be a good place to play. While they were resting from the hike uphill, Patrick and Joe took Mom and I into this bar to try some Spanish liquor whose name I cannot remember (started with an a, I think). I was sweet and interesting, a little flavor of anise, among other things. Mom and I sat and drank beer while the band played and I wanted to dance, the music was so incredible, and when Mom wanted to leave I knew she would not be able to find her way back so I left a note for Joe and Patrick with my email address and we went back to Oasis. Oscar came in after a few minutes, apparently about to start working the graveyard shift in reception. He was clearly very glad to see me, which was nice. We chatted for a few minutes but he had work to do. Francesco, his friend Claudio, Miguel from the bar, and two Italian girls from the hostel (they had been on the nature tour last week…yikes, I haven’t mentioned that yet!) and I hung out in the bar and chilled, and Oscar joined us after a while because the desk was slow. We spent some time just chatting and relaxing, before the driving and beach shenanigans caught up with me and I went to pass out.
