Just This

Okay it's been awhillle since I last blogged.  We got back from Spain toward the end of June, and then spent an amazing week and half in New England, before road-tripping back through Canada, then to Salt Lake and finally ending in Los Angeles.  It's been a pretty awesome summer, meandering through the country.  But now I'm back in Claremont, setting up shop in at my parents until I can get a decent, affordable place in LA.  I'm finishing my degree at UCLA, which I'm super excited about...east coast living and those private schools are pretty pretty expensive, here's to state school!

Okay, we spent a month and a week, and saw a bit of Portugal, Morocco, and Spain...the last few posts are from the road at some of the spots we stayed.  Anyway, here's the itinerary:

Lisbon, Sintra (Portugal), Madrid, Toledo, Granada, Gibraltar, Fez (via airport in Seville), Seville,  Basque Country (San Sebastian), and finally Barcelona.

I feel like we got a nice taste of Spain.  We opted to stay longer at the places we went, versus cutting days here and there to add more places.  It was really cool...plus I'll just have to go back some day to do those things we missed, I'm talking about you Camino de Santiago.  I have pictures to put up for probably the next few posts, plus I'll put some up on this traveling, city photoblog I started.

Okay, these are a few of my favorites and why I pretty much loved everywhere we went:

Granada, Andalusia.  Home of the famous Alhambra and also a super cool
underground street art scene in the old Arabic quarter.

Madrid. I loved Madrid sooo much.

The working Museum-bed-and-breakfast in Subugo, Portugal.  I can't believe how beautiful everything about it was.  Called the House of the She Pine Tree, stay there!

The Baixa in Lisbon

"Lady, lady, lady. Picture?"  Fez, Morocco

Tapas!  Iberian ham!  Madrid

Rooftops in Lisbon

Street performed on his way home.  Madrid

Courtyard in the Moorish palace, the Alhambra.

Musician in Morocco

There was amazing graffiti pretty much all over Spain.  Madrid

Flamenco in Andalusian capital Seville.  Home of all those Spanish stereotypes: fiery women, amazing guitar, Carmen, bullfighting, and the West Indies trading ports circa Columbus era.

Morocco for the week? Yes Please

The Medina

After discovering no-frills airline RyanAir offered flights from Seville, Spain to Morocco for only 16 euros, Melissa and I decided we could not pass this up and we jumped on a flight to Fez...UNESCO protected and home to a very old, large, car free Medina that has functioned in much the same way for hundreds of years.  It was incredibly overwhelming, in almost everyway, good and bad.  The Medina is a labyrinth of alleys and small passageways, covered and open...on the main routes souqs dominate with touts attempting to sell you any number of goods with leather work and ceramics a specialty, on the passageways and smaller alleyways there are shops but mostly its homes, which are more like slums.  In many of these areas the hygeniene is not great and the smells can be pungent - the donkeys which are used to haul goods everywhere also contribute to this.

Often gritty exterioirs house amazing insides with courtyards that are so incredibly beautiful.  It was like nothing I have ever seen before.  Basically, its is pretty much what you would expect from a ridiculously old bazaar in Muslim Africa where there are no cars only mopeds and donkeys...overwhelming.  We spent about half our days wandering the Medina, and by the end were relatively comfortable in such a completely foreign setting...the other half we spent lounging by the beautiful pool at our ridiculously nice hotel...have to love expedia.  Feels pretty, pretty amazing to relax in luxury after a number of weeks of roughing it.

Interior of a gritty building in the Medina

Photos from here.