Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is our day to return from Morocco to Spain. I do not have to be “back at work” until tomorrow afternoon but we figured that trying to get back to Cáñar tomorrow would have just way too hectic and risky and not worth it.  So instead we have a semi-leisurely day today to work our way back with the expectation that we might not get back to our village until after midnight.  Going back today also made it so that Shawn and Rachel can return the rental car easily tomorrow afternoon.

We started the day at the riad.  We had breakfast around eight thirty.  The same delicious bread selection and eggs that we had yesterday.  Dominica and Luciana were not able to join us while we ate but came up around nine to eat.  When they came up I went down to settle the bill and take care of that stuff.

As with nearly everything in Morocco (and many things in Europe) just because they have a credit card sign on the door and advertise that they take credit cards doesn’t mean that they take credit cards.  We needed cash, and a lot of it, to settle the bill.  We had been working very hard to have our cash down to zero so that we could leave Morocco this morning.  We had been calculating this carefully.  We were very, very short on paying the bill.  This was very frustrating.

Thankfully the taxi driver covered the tab for us and we were able to pay him later.  This is the same taxi driver with the SsangYong that we have seen every day.

It took a bit yet to get everyone ready and into the cab.  Then we drove to the ATM and got cash to pay for the hotel and the driver.  I could not get enough from a single ATM transaction to cover the train, though.  We figured that we would have to just get our tickets with a credit card at the station.

Our driver dropped us at Gare Fes.  There was plenty of time to get tickets and get on the train.  Rachel and Shawn stayed with the girls while Dominica and I went to buy the tickets back to Tanger.  And thus began our next adventure in travel woes.

We went through the entire line for tickets where they had a sign that they took credit cards and when we got to the front, again, they did not take credit cards.  Pretty much the entire line was people there to pay with credit card and getting turned away when they got to the front.  They sent us to an ATM across the way.

When we got to the ATM there were Americans there from Maryland complaining that the ATM did not work.  We tried it and, the moment you put in your pin the machine went blank and did nothing.  Thankfully, eventually, it spit the card back out.  But it made no attempt at getting you cash or anything.  So, we knew instantly that there was a skimmer on this machine and our data had been stolen.  Wonderful.  Now on top of everything else we know that we have a compromised debit card and we need to deal with that super fast or our bank account is going to be drained.  What a morning.  Now we have no money, no access to money and no way to get train tickets.

We tried some automated ticket machines but they did not work either.  We spent at least fifteen minutes trying to buy tickets that way.  OCNF customer service even came over to see if they could help.  Nothing worked.  The station we wanted would cause the machine to restart.  There was no way to get kids’ tickets.  Paying didn’t work.  Nothing.  Just did not work at all.

Finally, after thirty minutes of trying one thing after another customer service finally took us back to the desk and took our debit card there.  All of this could have been avoided and tons of our time, our compromised debit card and customer service’s time had they just done what they said that they would do in the first place when they advertised that they took credit cards!

We got tickets, first class again, in cabin number nine (the very last one available) on the train heading to Tanger and pretty much had to run for the train.  To make things more hectic, once we were on the platform someone gave us directions in the wrong direction to first class.  So we had to traverse the length of the train twice.

Once we were on we were quickly underway.  At least we were on the train, in first class and in a cabin to ourselves again.  The worst of things was now over.

I immediately set about trying to cancel the debit card.  It is a holiday in the US which will make that more complicated.  I tried calling the customer service number but, of course, the foolish bank only gives an 800 number which, of course you cannot call from outside of the US!  How short sighted is that?  Why use an 800 number which saves no one money when they could spend less and actually protect customers with a normal number?

I texted dad.  It was five in the morning where he is in New York but he was awake and in a little bit was able to call in and cancel the card.  That was a relief but it would not be until tomorrow morning before we would be able to look at the account and see if any money was taken out before we were able to stop the card.

The train journey was quiet and uneventful.  We had no cash to get food from the cart because every bit of cash that we had was necessary for getting the taxi from the train station in Tanger to the ferry terminal.  We were running very, very lean and as it was were going to have to tip in Euros.

We all just relaxed on the train.  Everyone napped a little bit except for me.  I got to watch all of the scenery again, which was fun.

It was a good time when we got to Tanger.  We were able to squeeze into a Grand Taxi again and zip over to the port.  We emptied out all of our Moroccan cash, tipped in Euros and were onto the ferry in no time.  We made it for the four o’clock boat and were the very first people to get onto the ferry so we had every seat to chose from.  We actually chose the exact same seats that we use two days ago.  We all even sat in the same ones.

We tried to get food on the ferry, but their credit card machine could not connect.  Will this ever end?  My card is cancelled now so even with an ATM I cannot get cash.  We were stuck on the ferry too, without any food or drinks.  At least the ferry trip is a short one.

This time I convinced Dominica to go out on the deck as I was sure that she would feel better.  She did and she did.   Much better.  I stayed inside with the girls where it was warm and uncomfortable but the motion of the ship really did not bother me.

Once in Tarifa we got through security and were back in Spain.  We got out to the parking lot where I was able to prove to Dominica that the people two days ago had been lying to her about discounted parking options to get her to go away.  It was full price, no exceptions.  We tried paying in the automated caja but that did not work.  Thankfully there was an attendant and we were able to pay her the something like one hundred and twenty Euros to get our cars!

We were off and on the road home.  We had a great time in Morocco but are glad to be back home in Spain too.  Everyone is looking forward to getting home and getting a rest.

We went east out of Tarifa towards Algeciras and I pulled into the mirador that has a refreshment stand there.  I have been past there twice before and always wanted to stop and was very happy that we managed to stop this time.  The views from here to Mt. Moses and Morocco are amazing.  The snack bar there had big sandwiches, ice cream and other food so we had our meal there since finally someone took credit cards!  Ah, Spain.

The food was actually good and now that all of our challenges of the day are over we were pretty excited to just sit for an hour and relax.  We sat outside to eat at first but it was way too windy and we eventually moved inside once some other people left and the space was free.  We took lots of pictures while we were there, it is a very unique view.

It was early evening when we got on the road and started the long drive from the mirador back to Órgiva.  This was uneventful and being tired we just took the toll road to speed things up.  We encountered no problems and were back in Órgiva before it was super late, but nearly everything was closed.  We stopped on the main drag and I took Dominica’s credit card and got as much cash as we could out of the telebanco hoping that it would still work and hoping that if someone was still attacking it that we would at least have that much less money in there for them to touch.  It worked and we got cash and were very happy.

Up the mountain we went, parked and were home.  Finally back home.

It was late enough that all of the bars in town were already closed.  We thought that it was an emergency but Rachel discovered two bottles of red wine in the house and I found a white one in the fridge.  Rachel, Shawn and I went up to the terrace to enjoy the quiet views of the twinkling lights down in Órgiva and polished off the last three bottles before retiring for the night.

Today was our last day with Shawn and Rachel.  Their time in La Alpujarra is now down and they are nearly three months into their European adventure.  Tomorrow they are getting up and getting straight onto the road to return the rental care to Granada Airport and from there they are getting a bus to the north and moving onto their next location where they will be for almost two weeks before figuring out how to get to Montepelier, France where they will be for almost a month, I believe.  They are now working each place that they go with WorkAway instead of couch surfing everywhere that they go.

It was late when we finally turned in.  This past weekend was quite the adventure, but now it is over.  With Shawn and Rachel gone we are going into our final week in Spain ourselves.  Tonight, when we went to bed, is almost exactly the one week mark to our time leaving Spain.  We leave late on Monday night, a week from tonight, to head to Malaga airport so that we can fly out in the wee hours of Tuesday morning to go to Norway.

It is very sad to think of our time in Spain coming to an end.  We have all really loved it here.  Shawn and Rachel will actually still be in Spain about one week after we have left.  But all of us are wrapping up our time on the Iberian Peninsula for now.

Today is our one full day in Fes, Morocco on this adventurous three day Memorial Day weekend.  We all slept as much as we could.  The Riad Khouloud was very comfortable and we slept great.  We all needed that a lot.  We were refreshed and ready to face the day.

Late last night some other people came to the riad, a big group from Lithuania were staying there too.

At nine thirty we went up to have breakfast.  The riad is a bed and breakfast style arrangement so this breakfast is, I believe, included with the room.  It is a set breakfast rather than one that you order, but it is not like a continental breakfast at all.  We were brought two kinds of flatbreads plus the round loaf style bread that we had had with dinner last night too.  There was a poached egg for each of us and tea and coffee.  There was butter, olive oil and peach jam all provided. It was a very nice breakfast.  A good way to start the day.

While everyone else finished up having their breakfast, I went down and met the tour guide and worked out the price and the plan for the day which took about twenty minutes or so.  Dominica got the girls ready and it was probably ten thirty before we were ready to get going.  Our tour guide surprisingly had a problem with his voice box that required him to swallow air to speak rather than using his diaphragm which was amazing that he chose to work as a tour guide because the amount of work that he had to do to talk about all of the places that we were going and to be loud enough for us to hear him was really something.  He worked hard to do this job!  He was really nice and we liked having him as a tour guide.

Because our riad was right in the medina, it was easy to start the tour as we walked right out of the riad and were right in the middle of things.  We started off going to a bank so that I could get cash as we were going through our dirham much faster than we had anticipated.  Not because things were expensive, just because we were using cash for absolutely everything like train tickets.  This is a cash intensive society, and for good reasons.  It was amazing seeing a bank in the middle of the medina.  It is built right into the old town and such a bizarre mix of ancient and new in one spot.

One of the neat things that Dominica spotted right away was a gas station with the pumps inside of a building.  The ground floor doors of a corner building could open up and you could just pull a small vehicle up to it and get petrol right there and at night, when closed, it would be completely nondescript and look exactly like every other building.  So weird.

Our guide had warned us before leaving to make sure that the kids were holding hands with us and carefully watched all of the time.  The medina is pretty safe, but it is very crowded and hectic and there are tens of thousands of tiny little side roads and the kids could disappear very easily in the crowd.  The things that make the medina so awesome are also what make it rather precarious.  That being said, the medina was full of children, clearly healthy, happy children, running around freely and at no point all day did we ever feel unsafe in any way.  You very much got a friendly, welcoming vibe from everyone.  People were smiling and happy to have visitors or just ignored us as they were very busy.

Almost immediately we dove into the main market in Fes which came as a huge shock.  Our guide told us that we were going into the market and that things were going to get crazy but I was not at all prepared for what the market was really like.  The market is really just small stalls all along the already tight and twisting streets of Fes.  It goes on and on for an incredible distance.  There were people selling every kind of food stuff that you can imagine.  There were “districts” within the market.  Whole streets of just produce or just fish or whatever.  It has to be completely crazy trying to shop here but it was clearly not for tourists, although we were free to shop of course, but this is actually where the population of the medina actually comes to buy their food every day.  This is real life, not a show for us.  And this is how the market has been operating for likely many hundreds of years.  It was amazing and crazy all at once.  Really glad that we got to see that.

Much of seeing Fes is just… seeing Fes.  Looking at the old buildings, going to see the outside of the mosques (non-Muslims may not enter them here), exploring tiny little streets.  There are so many tiny little streets.  It is really something.

The temperature was nice this morning but the sun was really beating down on us and the humidity was high.  We had seen some rain while on the train yesterday and had seen some in Fes, like while we were waiting on the taxi we had gotten to see them squeeging up the water in front of the train station as it was collecting there.  We knew that some rain was expected today in Fes but had hoped that we would have an overcast day for walking around all day.  No such luck.  Unadulterated sunshine with the humidity that comes before the rain.

One of the first places that we got to visit was one of the religious schools.  As we were not allowed to go into a mosque, this allowed us to go into the closest thing and see how students of Islam would live, study and worship.  It was pretty neat and interesting.  There appeared to be no classrooms, which was odd.  Just dorm rooms and a worship area.

From there we went to a carpet dealer.  We had told the tour guide that we wanted to do no shopping and he agreed, but welcome to Morocco, any tour is really just taking you to shopping.  You have to accept that a certain amount of being scammed about that and being pressured to buy things is what happens in Morocco and if that didn’t happen you would not be getting an actual look at Morocco.

The carpet “store” that we went into was in an enormous, beautifully conditioned riad.  Much bigger than the one that we are staying in.  We were told, but who knows what is true, that this was a government run carpet store where the main salesmen is paid by the government to show carpets so that we would be under less pressure to buy and he has to tell us that because it used to be private sales and they would do very high pressure sales tactics.  This was very high pressure compared to the US, but very low pressure compared to traditional Morocco.  So, splitting the difference, I guess.

We were given a tour of the riad and a trip up to the roof to see the view of the area which was very nice. When we came down they gave us Moroccan tea and set up a carpet for the girls to play on while we were taught about Moroccan carpets and shown a bunch for sale.

Dominica and I love getting artwork from the places that we travel so we gave in to looking at carpets for a while and haggled, probably very poorly, and are sure that we paid way too much for a small, hand made, Berber carpet to hang above our bed, once we finally have a bed and a wall and a house.  So, for now, it is folded up and in a little bag to carry it.

Carpet buying was a multi-hour adventure that we foolishly had not planned on.  But we are pretty excited about our carpet too.  It is our work of art from Morocco and something that we will be able to keep for forever.  We always buy art on our travels so we feel pretty good about it and it was an amount of money that we could part with, even if it was more than we should have.  There were a lot of carpets that we would have liked to have purchased but they were much larger and much more expensive.

After the carpet shopping we visited the tannery which sits right on the Wet Fes (wet is the Arabic term for river, that should be easy to remember) – this was not high on our “must see” list but it was interesting.  Getting to see the river, which is polluted beyond imagination, was interesting and seeing the old fashioned tanning operations was something we have never seen before.  A whole district of the city that is just open vats of water and pigeon poop used to tan the leathers.  The number of people and donkeys involved in leather processing in this part of the city is staggering.  Apparently this is a major industry here.

We got an explanation of the tanning process and were then, after we were done taking pictures and examining the tanning process from a rooftop, we were led down to the showrooms where we got to see shoes and furniture and purses and other leather goods.  I am not sure if the guide really did not understand what vegetarian meant because Dominica was pretty disgusted by the whole thing and none of us had any desire to buy anything there.  The people were very nice, but leather good are not something that vegetarians typically buy or want to spend they time looking at.  The walls were lined with skins and it was really nasty.  Thankfully the kids did not understand what they were looking at as it was rather disturbing much of the time.

After the tannery the guide took us to an “authentic Moroccan restaurant.”  This, I feel, was his biggest fail of the tour.  He did explain, so there was no pretense, that this was a restaurant in the owner’s house and that only tourists ate here.  Why he thought that would mean we were happy with it made no sense to me, it was exactly the opposite of what we would want.  The last place that we want to eat is a place just for tourist.  And the prices were accordingly way, way too high.  Even more expensive than eating authentically in Spain, which makes no sense.  On top of that, the menu was tiny and not very vegetarian friendly.  There was one option, but only one.

At least the food itself was good.  We got vegetarian couscous, which Liesl, again, raved and raved about.  She loved the food.  Everyone was very happy with the food, for the most part.  The price and selection was not good and the food was mostly the same that we had the night before.  So it was not much of a new experience like we had hoped and it was hours later in the day than we had requested.  I was dying of the heat and the kids were way past the point of needing food.  So that was handled very poorly.

After our way too expensive lunch (if you ever get a tour, demand that you stop someplace that you see and do not let your guide take you somewhere that they have prearranged) we went to an apothecary that made Moroccan products, mostly from Argan oil but also from black iris and other things.  This was nothing but a showroom for beauty and health products but they were nice and had some interesting products and we all ended up buying some stuff.  There was a lot of trying oils and ointments.  The girls kind of enjoyed it.

The funniest part of the whole thing was when we had to all try black iris.  The guy who owned the shop took some black iris, put it in cheesecloth and suddenly shoved it up Rachel’s nose and made her breath it in, which burned her sinuses and throat.  It was super awkward and surprising.  Then he took the same cloth and went around the adults (thankfully not the kids) and made us all do it, from the same cloth, which was pretty weird and kind of gross.  I was last, of course.  I did find that it helped my sinuses and ended up buying some if it to try out as I have so many sinus problems.

We did get to see two girls sitting on the floor making the oils.  It was obviously just for show, but it was neat.

From the apothecary we were taken pretty much next door to a weaver which was far more interesting.  As we walked in the lights kicked on revealing several people who had been working in the dark, which surprised us a lot.  There were two guys working at traditional looms which was really neat to watch.  The girls got to learn how cloth is made and there was a huge shop full of cloth and products to buy.

The girls had been so desperate for ice cream and the tour guide kept refusing to take us to get any (he would say that he was and then taking us somewhere trying to sell us something, we were getting less and less happy at this point) that here the people who ran the shop actually sent someone out to buy ice cream for the kids.  And the ice cream that they got was awesome, but of course, because they did not let us go and get the one thing that the girls will eat (plain vanilla) they got awesome ice cream that both girls refused to eat.  So Dominica and I got ice cream and the girls just got more upset.  Our tour guide really does not know how to handle groups with children or to do what the group wants to do.

If you have a tour guide, do not go into any building with him unless you want to be sold stuff and have your “tour” actually be a shopping trip.  Simply state up front that there will be no shopping and if he tries to go inside somewhere, just stay outside and explain that you are not paying him for a shopping trip for him or for you.  It is your tour and you need not pay if he is doing his own shopping or if he is not providing the tour agreed upon.  Had I realized how this was going to work, we would have skipped a lot of this.  The tour went way, way too long and we were not able to get food when we agreed to have gotten it, we did not get the ice cream we were promised nor did we wrap up at the time we had decided we needed to wrap up because the children could only go so long.  He had his own agenda and ignored all of the stuff we had agreed on.

The weavers were really nice and had a nice selection of stuff.  We tried on a lot of things and the girls ended up each picking out an outfit, which was pretty cool.

While we were at the weavers, it started to rain.  Really rain.  A crazy amount of rain.  This was long after our tour guide had agreed to have us done for the day so we would not have been caught in the rain had he not been refusing to take us home and instead getting his commission at one store after another.  He tried to get us to get a taxi but we were okay walking.  It was chilly outside but not unbearable.  It was a lot of rain, though.

We walked for a bit but instead of taking us back to the riad, the guide took us back to the tannery.  We have no way to know if this was really on the way back or not but we went in there to be out of the rain for some time.  At least half an hour, maybe more.  The rain just got harder and harder.  This was actually one of the better parts of the day since we were very cool and had nothing to do but to hang out with the locals and talk. And watching the Wet Fes rise during the time that we were there was really, really cool.  I am so glad that we got to see that.  When we had arrived at the tannery a few hours earlier the Wet Fes was basically a little stream coming down in front of the tannery and not impressive at all as a waterway.  And, like all of Morocco, there was trash all over the place.  But as the rain was getting going the little stream turned quickly into a real river.  A really dirty, nearly black river that went faster and faster and climbed higher and higher.  The river rose many feet while we were standing there watching it.  Amazing.

I talked to the tour guide and he said that this was definitely the biggest rain storm in at least seven years, maybe a lot more.  Not a typical rain storm for Fes.  Fes is a green area, but the rain is rarely that heavy.  This was really, really heavy.

Eventually the guide reached the riad and they sent our driver over who got us right at the tannery.  The rain was way too hard to try to get home in on foot.

The drive back was pretty exciting.  So much rain.  The city was freaking out.  You could see tons of roads underwater.  The driver said that many ways through the city were already impassable.  It is nothing like Texas is getting right now but Texas is a lot more used to heavy rains than Fes is.  So we were really getting a show this evening.

It was late, probably around seven, when we got back to the riad.  By the time that we had gotten in and had tea it was too late for dinner.  We were unsure if we even wanted dinner because we had eaten lunch so late and it was a large meal.  But eventually Rachel and Shawn were hungry so we tried to figure something out.

We spent quite some time having tea and just relaxing in the courtyard.  Our friend from reception came and hung out with us for quite some time too.

We had asked the riad to find us wine and they actually went someone out to the supermarket to find Moroccan wine for us!  That was really awesome.  Then we asked if there was any way to get food.  They were originally going to find take out for us but failed to find any and ended up making us a full dinner late at night!

We ended up having a really nice, quiet evening at the riad.  Everyone had a good time except for Liesl who was completely distraught after Luciana had put on her authentic Moroccan outfit to show it off because when Liesl went to put on hers she realized that it was not the one that she thought that it was going to be and was inconsolably upset over having gotten the wrong outfit.  She is so emotional.  This is one that she loved when she tried it on and we had been super clear and careful when we bought it to make sure that she picked out the one that she wanted.  But in her mind, after having done so, she had switched them and to her this was a tragic loss of the outfit that she had loved.  Dominica was so upset over having spent an hour or more and a lot of money on the outfit just to have Liesl be so upset that the entire evening was lost for her.

After dinner, Dominica the girls down to bed.  Rachel, Shawn and I stayed up later finishing two bottles of Moroccan wine made in the region and in a city that we had come through on the train so we actually knew where it was.  The wine was quite good and we were really happy that we had an opportunity to have real Moroccan wine while in Morocco.  We would have been quite disappointed had we not been able to try that while there.

Tomorrow morning we have to be up and leave rather early so that we can catch the early train and head back to Spain.  We will be traveling nearly all day.

While things did not go as planned and we spent way more money that we had intended to spend we did have a very good day and we really did get an authentic “Moroccan Experience” which is good.  Everyone is glad that we did it and we did get some awesome outfits for the girls (hopefully Liesl will be happy with hers once she gets to show it off back in the States) and we did get a very cool rug that we look forward to being able to display.

There was almost no sleep for us last night.  I got maybe two hours, but more likely only one.  Dominica was the first to get out of bed.  Shawn and I had showered just before leaving Cáñar last night, knowing ahead of time that logistically it would not be feasible to shower this morning.  Dominica and Rachel had to be there so long before us that they planned to shower in Tarifa before leaving the hostel.  So Dominica was up around seven and I was up at seven thirty.

Dominica was not all pleased to find that there was no hot, nor even warm, water for showers at the hostel.  It is bad enough having to share just a few bathrooms but no hot water at all?  Not thrilled.

It was nearly eight when we left the hostel.  Dominica had no idea where the port was and, of course, was planning to rely on a GPS that was not working and never looked at a map so almost sent us out onto the highway to go to a port that was two blocks away and nearly visible.  I was driving and very confused but pulled over and looked at a map to confirm that I was not crazy and drove us right to the port.  We spent more time going the wrong way that it would have likely have taken to have walked to the port from the hostel!

We had been led to believe that there was free parking for the fast ferry from Tarifa to Tanger.  There was not.  In fact, the only parking in the area was eighteen Euros per day!  We were not happy about that.  We have two cars.  So our free parking suddenly shut up to well over a hundred Euros!  We might have planned quite differently had we had this fact when making our “let’s just rent another car” decision.  So now, between this and the rental problems, the car rental decision has been more than three hundred Euros more expensive than planned and it was far from free for the planned about (the base rental and gas to drive across Spain.)  This just keeps getting better and better.

Getting booked and onto the ferry itself was very easy and straightforward.  There was a surprising amount of security but it is easy to forget that this isn’t just a ferry crossing nor just a change between two European countries or even a move between the UK and the Schengen, this is moving between the EU and a non-allied (but very friendly) African Arabic Kingdom.  This is, we realized as we went to make the trip, the most dramatic international and intercontinental crossing that we have ever done.  This is a true “moving between countries” in a way that is unlike anything we have ever done. Unlike going between the US and Canada which are tight allies and were sister colonies, or between the US and the UK or the US and Spain which are both colony, imperial relationships or between EU nations, which is roughly like moving between US states, this is moving between two old world, unaligned powers.  And two old world powers with about fifteen hundred years of hostility, traditionally.  While they are good “friends” today and ever since the establishments of both current governments, it is still a move between foreign powers that really have no direct association other than the physical distance between them being small.  They even have ongoing, though minor, territorial disputes.

On top of all of that, it was just last week that someone was caught at a nearby crossing point for the other ferry (one town to the east) attempting human trafficking of a child in a suitcase (smuggling a child from the Morocco side to the Spain side) and was caught by the xray scanners at the crossing point.  So security is on their toes too.  (It was not a scary case of humans intended for slavery or anything like that, it was someone attempting to get a child to their father in the Canary Islands, we are told, so the smuggling was for a “good reason.”)

We were among the first to board the ferry and found a nice little spot on the right hand side with some tables and space so that we could plop down all of our luggage and relax in an open area with just the six of us.  That was very easy.

Dominica has been very worried about this ferry trip, even though it is only thirty five minutes on the fast catamaran, because both she and Luciana get motion sickness so easily, something that they inherited from Dominica’s father.

Once the ship got underway, Dominica and Luciana were, indeed, in rough shape even with having taken a bit of medicine and sitting still in the seats.  It was all that Dominica could do the make the trip.  The water was pretty rough as we cross right at the point where the Mediterranean Sea meets the open Atlantic Ocean.  The Straights of Gibraltar are quite windy as there is a spot where there is nothing obstructing the wind from something like Virginia to Italy.  There is a reason why this region of Spain is one of the world’s hotspots for wind turbines.

I tried to get Dominica to go out on deck but she did not want to.  I went out on the right hand deck and enjoyed the crossing very much.  It was cool and plenty of wind.  The inside was rather warm.  To me being inside made me a little bit woozy but being outside was completely comfortable.  I ended up making friends with Mike, a Florida restauranteur who lives in the British West Indies now and is taking some time to tour Spain and was just spending the day in Tanger to see it.  We had a nice time chatting on the deck.

The trip was quick and nice.  Dominica survived but was not too happy.

Once we were off of the ferry it was pretty easy dealing with Tanger.  I was impressed as we came down the ramp that I noticed Moroccan security notice Liesl walking without being carried and casually looked at her, looked at the traffic control people and immediately stopped all traffic coming from the ferry as she was only six and they could not be sure that she would not dart into traffic.  It was actually a little hard to notice the traffic coming from the ferry.  As soon as she was behind a protective barrier security allowed the cars to continue again.  I thought it was pretty awesome that they were so conscientious of the kids coming off of the ferry.  Luciana was being carried so they were not worried about her.  It was a nice introduction to Morocco.  They had not said anything and I was the only one that noticed security see her and signal the traffic to stop.

Once into the ferry terminal on the Moroccan side we were harassed a bit by tour guides trying to get us to hire them, as we had been warned.  We did our best to ignore everyone and get to a money exchange to turn our Euros into Moroccan Dirham.  We almost forgot that the time zone changed too.  Morocco and Spain are so close and Morocco is directly south of Spain that you would never expect the time zone to change, but this is confusing mostly because Spain, wanting to be more closely tied with its European counterparts, uses European time even though they are in line with the UK and Morocco.  So time in Spain and Portugal is shifted by an hour (which is why the days go so late here) from what it “should be.”  Morocco and the UK are on “real time” for where they are.  So the daylight here feels a lot more normal than in Spain where the afternoon still feels like morning and the sun does not set until crazy late at night.

We exchanged our cash at a little place by the port and on the way back grabbed a Grand Taxi to take us to the train station for one hundred dirham (about ten dollars.)  You have to know that the main train station in Tanger is closed and only the small, secondary train station is currently operational.  This is because Morocco is involved in a massive infrastructure upgrade and the big Tanger train station is the first terminal in the new Moroccan high speed train network that is being built.  So they need it completely upgraded before they can open the terminal again.  This is very excited for Morocco and for guests of Morocco as getting around the country is going to be so much faster and comfortable and modern.  I think that this is really great for Morocco and for train travel in general.  And especially as Morocco is a long, narrow nation having a high speed spine will make a huge difference for them.  Now if only they can get a tunnel under the straights and connect to Spain’s massive high speed rail network they could become an extension of Europe’s train network and really boost transportation!

Getting to the station was pretty easy and we got to see a bit of Tanger as the secondary station is not very close to the ferry terminal.  (The secondary station is truly a station, not a terminal, except for right at the moment as the main terminal is closed.)  The station was much smaller than we had anticipated but once we learned that it was actually a station and not a second terminal it made more sense.  We had about forty minutes before our train so after we got our tickets we went to the little cafe and got coffee and a light breakfast.  Breakfast here was very close to Spanish or French and you could not tell that you were not eating in Europe at all.  And so many people speaking French (the second language of Morocco) that it felt like a small French city inside the cafe.  Outside of the care there is little denying that you are in Morocco, the look of everything is dramatically different than in Europe.

We had decided to opt for first class seats on this train rather than the normal second class seats.  I had guessed correctly that the cost difference was going to be trivial and I was right.  For the six of us, a first class cabin (which seats six) was only 808 dirham which was just under $80 USD.  Sure we could have saved money going to second class, but not that much and we would not have had a dedicated cabin to ourselves and assigned seats.  This was way, way better.  It made us feel a lot more comfortable doing train travel for the first time in Morocco and, honestly, for the price different and since we were exactly six travelers, I would have done this in the US or Europe too.  It was just perfect.

Figuring out which train to get on to go to Fes was a little confusing as two different trains, neither of which was labeled as going to Fes, were departing at the exact same time.  Fes is in the middle of the country and while a major station, it is just a station and not a terminal and you have to know that the terminal that will be listed for you when going to Fes is actually Oujda which is a city very far away out near the Algerian border (which is closed and has been for decades.)  Fes is less than halfway along the trip that this particular train makes.

The first class cabin turned out to be absolutely perfect.  There was only one first class car so finding our space was super easy and the police who patrol the trains knew instantly that we were tourists and they specifically watch out for tourists and try to make sure that con men, fake tour guides and other scammers are not harassing us.  Morocco has passed some new laws recently to stop this scamming and harassment problem which they had become so well known for and there are hefty fines (like equal to two months average income in Morocco!) for getting caught doing this to tourists.  Morocco has lost so much revenue from tourism because of these people that the government takes this incredibly seriously as Morocco has the potential to be a top travel destination from Europe due to its proximity and great weather and massive ocean front potential – hence why the new, high speed trains are being installed.  The first class cabin was refurbished and comfortable with working air conditioning and a closing door so that we could “lock” ourselves in so that it was just us in our cabin.  Very comfortable and easy.  We could open our window and get up to look at the window or do whatever we wanted as it was all ours.  For six people it could not be more ideal.

The ONCF train also had a refreshments cart that would come by from time to time.  So we were able to get Magdalenas, water, some soft drinks (I managed to score a Pom which is a Coke-made apple drink that is awesome and very hard to find even in Europe and impossible to find in the US, it is basically soda water and apple juice and very tasty) and whatnot.  Have some cash ready and it is not expensive.  Great for a long journey.

The train from Tanger to Fes was about four and a half hours and we really appreciated the chance to relax.   This was perfect.  Shawn and Rachel managed to sleep for nearly the entire journey, which they needed.  They are young and easily need twice as much sleep as Dominica and me.  As we were alone in the cabin the girls were able to take out their toys and set up and play which made them very happy.

It was very exciting getting to see Morocco from the train.  We had gotten a little look at Tanger from the taxi which was interesting but nothing that we did not already know from pictures and from looking across the Straight.  Tanger is a semi-modern city with lots of tall buildings, a nice waterfront, tons of people trying to make a quick buck off of the tourists coming from Europe and mostly smells pretty badly.  This is a lot of why the big train terminal needs to be completed soon because it allows Morocco to funnel tourists away from the rough parts of Tanger and keep them in the nice, modern and touristy parts of it and get them off to other cities quickly.  Going to the second station, the one for the locals, gave us a very different view of the city.  It was not bad, but it was a lot more poor than you would normally see and you have to take a less than polished taxi through traffic and industrial areas that you normally would keep tourists away from.

The view from the train was so interesting.  Morocco shares much of its look with Spain and the portion along this route is heavily agricultural with nearly everything that we saw from the windows being rolling farmland and small villages.  Moroccan architecture is what really makes it look different than Europe.  The way that villages and houses are built is very different and you cannot mistake where you are because of that.  But the farmland could be Spain, for sure, and it was mostly very picturesque.  One thing that is very interesting is that anywhere in Europe or North America these little towns would have church spires in the middle and instead there are the minarets of mosques here.  A somewhat subtle but interesting change in the look.

One key thing that, I believe, is a cultural difference between Europe and the Arab world, including Morocco, is that Europe strives very hard to make the outside of buildings and of villages attractive with the focus being the common, shared spaces and letting the inside spaces be more of a mess and getting less attention.  In the Arab world the opposite is true.   The outside is of less concern and is totally utilitarian and the focus is on making the inside beautiful.  So all of the houses tend to look like unadorned blocks and often look unfinished to the European eye.  You see some of this in Spain because so much of southern Spain was built under Moorish rule.  But in Spain the European influence is there and there are things like house painting standards (entire villages have to be uniformly white) and big efforts put into tree placement, the decorations of plazas, etc.  While in Morocco the streets are mostly just dust and the houses are not painted at all.  Often with rebar poking out of the top in case they want to build on more floors some year down the road when the family increases in size.

Another major difference was the amount of “life” out in the fields.  The Moroccan countryside was not just alive with wheat and corn but the fields all had people and donkeys in them.  People everywhere.  People on little remote paths and out in fields.  So many more than I have ever seen before.  My explanation for this is because there were essentially no tractors or other forms of agricultural automation of any kind that it took, many, many more people to do the same work that in the US or Spain would be done by a single tractor and, in many cases today, a computer driven tractor.  So ten people might be working a field that in Spain would require no one.  And instead of one tractor, there were several donkeys pulling wagons or plows.  It was so interesting and makes for the most beautiful countryside full of life and activity.  But, obviously, makes for a necessarily non-mobile agrarian society that struggles to increase the economy as the number of people required to work the fields is so high.

We arrived in Fes and stepped out into an attractive, modern train station in the middle of the new part of the city.  Modern and nice.  Today was a great day to arrive in Morocco, the weather is excellent.  It is cool, even by Moroccan standards, which is very cool compared to most of the United States.  Fes is one of the warmer cities in Morocco, but mostly in the middle.  It tends to be warm, as it is far in the interior, but it is located in the Middle Atlas Mountains so the altitude helps to keep it cooler than it would be at sea level.  We have now seen both the Rif and the Atlas Mountains.  So awesome.

We had a bit of an adventure trying to call the riad at which we are staying this weekend in order for them to send a taxi to get us because we have no working phone service here in Morocco.  Our TMobile free international plan does not cover Morocco so we have been without communications since arriving.  Once in Fes we decided to turn on the calling plan but the phone number for the riad was not working.  Dominica, thankfully being a Booking Genius, gets concierge support from Booking.com who called the riad for us and arranged the car to come and get us at the train station.

While we were waiting we want to a gelatoria in the Gare Fes (train station) and got some awesome ice cream.  They had someone who spoke a little English come out to explain the flavours to us as they were not just not labeled in French or Arabic but not labeled whatsoever!  What was funny was when he explained one of the flavours, the one that I wanted, and said, “You know, a flavour for kids.”  Dominica laughed and I asked if it was okay if I got it because that is my favourite flavour.  The Moroccans thought that I was pretty funny.

We did not have time to even begin to eat our ice cream before our taxi driver found us.  He led us out to his SUV, a high end Sssngyong.  This is the first that I have gotten to ride in one of these new Korean SUVs.  I have seen a handful of them around Europe and while not something that I would ever likely buy myself (although Dominica has mentioned that she would like to get one) I have been very interested to see how they are and from what we saw, they drive really well.  This was, of course, a manual transmission SUV so very different from what you would see in the States.  Ssangyong (meaning Double Dragon) is the fourth largest car maker in South Korea.  The SUV was very, very nice and slick.  It seemed nicer than any BMW SUV that I have been in.  Maybe we will consider one.

The ride to the riad was fast.  We zipped out of the new town and onto a ring road that took us around to the medina on the far side.  Fes has the largest medina (old town) in all of North Africa and it is truly enormous.  Hundreds of thousands of people, I believe, still live and work in this very, very ancient city center which was primarily built by refugees of Cordoba when the Spanish siege of the ancient capital began eight hundred years ago.  The Andalusian Square is a key portion of the city, so named as it is where the Cordobians settled when arriving in what was, at the time, a very small city but quickly swelled to replace Cordoba as the capital of the western Arab world.  The great library at Cordoba was relocated to Fes to protect it and Fes took Cordoba’s place as the religious center of western Islam.  For the first few hundred years Granada continued to reign in the north as a great imperial center as well, but after 1492, Fes essentially stood alone.

It was interesting to get a good look around Fes, a city of roughly one million people deep in the interior of Morocco.  This is the first large city we have seen other than Tanger and Tanger’s focus on the coast and traffic from Spain makes it not very indicative of Moroccan culture.  Driving into the medina was crazy.  The streets are tiny, unmarked and ancient and, at least to use, every building looks the same.  And nearly everything appears to be abandoned.  We could not tell where we were at all.

When we pulled into a tiny little alley where the SUV barely fit and parked in front of another vehicle that was blocking the alley we were pretty confused but we were shuffled in to a little, unassuming door and into an unexpected riad.  Now this is not what we were expecting at all.  We really did not know what to expect and we were a little more in the dark that Dominica as she had done all of the booking and we were just trusting that she had done a good job as she is the travel master and we knew that she had found a classic riad, which we understood to be a classic Moroccan elegant “mansion” home, but that we would be deep in the medina and on a dark, unassuming back street and going into what was basically an unmarked side door was all quite a surprise.  And then what it was like inside was even more surprising.

We were instantly brought into the middle of the Riad Khouloud, into what used to be an outdoor courtyard but what is now skylight lit indoor “living room” space covered in gorgeous tiles where we were served Moroccan tea as if we were family and the riad dealt with our check in off in another area while we enjoyed the tea and relaxed after our long journey.  Our reception host, Nabile Nizar, sat with us and told us about the riad and Fes and told us about the tour guide that would be taking us around the city tomorrow.

Once we were done with our tea, Nourdine the manager came out and made sure that we were all set and made a grand presentation of showing us our rooms.  This was very impressive.  The “courtyard” that we were in, we never learned the appropriate name for that type of a room in the middle of a riad, had been simply amazing and we were sitting there probably for close to an hour marveling at the ancient tile work, old wood inlaid doors and everything – it was all just so beautiful.  When it was time to show us our rooms, for Dominica and I they unlocked a set of two hundred year old wooden doors that opened right on the courtyard and opened it up to reveal this amazing room that had these two huge doors and two more windows that opened right onto the courtyard as if it was an outside space, which indeed, it used to be.  The room was incredible.   Then they took Rachel and Shawn upstairs to show them their room, which I did not get to see until the next day as I was busy dealing with logistics, but which was right above our room and had windows on the second floor that opened to look down on the courtyard space as well!

When Nourdine returned he also showed us the room across the courtyard through the other set of doors and asked which we would prefer as we were the first guests there and they wanted us to have the best room for us.  Liesl decided that she liked the second room better, and I agreed that I felt that the layout was slightly better for the girls to be able to sleep well in it so we moved to that room which, from its door, could see up to the windows of Rachel and Shawn’s room when they opened them which was handy as we could talk to each other when needed.

We ordered dinner to eat in the riad around six and took two hours to relax.  Nearly everyone took showers and attempted to nap.  Dominica set the girls up with some television in our room which ended up being some American movie subtitled in Arabic that the girls really enjoyed but now I have no idea what it was as I never knew the name at the time and have no idea how we would ever find again.

At eight we were all gathered together and led up the stairs up very, very high, above the ceiling of the courtyard, which we had no idea was not the top of the building and up to a terrace which was not only at the level of the courtyard roof but an entire floor above that, above the kitchen which was at the same level as the courtyard.  The terrace was enclosed but very high and offered views out over the entire city.  It was amazing.  We could see the mountains, and out over the medina.

We were barely in the terrace before the call to prayer was called which was really amazing.  We all went to the windows as this was our first time hearing the call in an Islamic country and it was so cool to hear.  There was a mosque just three blocks or so away from our riad and we could see it very clearly and there was no doubt that that was where the call was coming from.  But you could also hear the call echoing from other mosques all over the city at the same time.  So neat.  Shawn and Rachel had no idea what was happening so I explained what it was to them, which was funny, because moments later Nabile appeared and asked them if they knew what it was and they were able to answer immediately, as if they had always know.  They got pretty lucky on that one.

Dinner on the terrace was really, really amazing and Liesl declared it one of her favourite meals of all time.  We started with a huge selection of cold salads and vegetables.  Liesl just loved it and ate and ate.  Luciana was over tired and throwing a tempter tantrum and had to be placed on a couch in another part of the terrace and she skipped her dinner.  Nabile kept trying to cheer her up but it did not help.  It is just part of being four.  We were very thankful that there were no other guests eating up in the terrace tonight or it would not have been okay for Luciana to have been up there at all.

For the main meal we had a vegetable tagine dish that was amazing and Liesl could not get over how much she loved that too.  And all of the food was fresh and very healthy.  It was great.  We were very happy that we had decided to spend the entire day in the riad.  This was a great experience.

After dinner we did not stay up late.  We were all very tired after getting very little sleep last night and traveling all day today and we have to be up in the morning for breakfast up here in the terrace again at nine thirty and from breakfast we will be being taken by a tour guide at ten to tour around the medina.  So we have a very busy day tomorrow and want to have enough sleep so that all of us can actually enjoy it.

I would guess that it was about eleven when we finally got into bed.  We put the same movie, it was playing again on television, back on for the girls who were sleeping in L shaped couches made into beds by the riad when it was bedtime.  The girls liked that a lot and it was very comfortable for them.  The room was very large and Dominica and I had a large, comfortable bed at the other end of it.  The room was very, very awesome and comfortable.  We love the whole layout of the place.  Very classic and inviting and unique.  Totally unlike anyplace we have every stayed in before.  Dominica definitely picked the right place for us.

Really looking forward to tomorrow.  We have very little idea what to expect.

Rachel, Shawn and I had to be up early this morning.  We have to drive up to Granada, past Granada actually through Santa Fe, to the airport so that we can pick up their rental car.  The pickup is scheduled for two o’clock but it takes over an hour to get there so we have to leave at half past noon which means getting up and getting moving much earlier than we normally would.

Getting up to Granada was no big deal.  Rachel was a bit stressed as she watched me navigate mountain roads, driving a manual (which she learned how to drive on but has not driven in years) and finding my way through Spain as she does not know the towns and directions which will make it a bit more challenging for them to get around.

Getting to the Granada airport was no problem.  We did not miss a single turn nor use any GPS.  Highway signs are generally pretty good in Spain.  The big challenge is that they are all by landmark not by direction.  So knowing east or west does not help you, but knowing that you need to go towards Sevilla, Malaga or the Alhambra does.  So you have to know the geography of Spain even to make the correct turns for the local market.

It was about an hour and a half drive.  Granada airport is absolutely tiny, smaller, I think, that Westchester County airport.  Probably similar to Elmira or Ithaca airports.  Parking was a bit confusing because we did not want to fly, only pick up a rental car but the rental car directions sent you to the wrong place.  You have to just park normally and walk into the airport terminal to do anything, which is not really surprising at all but is not what is exactly indicated by the signs.  But this is a small airport and easy to deal with.  I mean, we were the only car going around the airport circle the two times that we did it!  It is that small.

The line for Gold Car was crazy when we got inside.  I mean really crazy.  More than an hour long.  We arrived in time to rent the car, just barely, but with more than an hour wait to get to the clerk it was after three when we finally got a chance to talk to someone.  When we finally did we got the awful news that Gold Car does not rent cars to Americans who do not have an International Driver’s License in Spain.  This came as quite a surprise because we have rented a car here already (with Firefly) without needing one and on the Internet people report not needing one regularly.  We have yet to have seen any report of someone needing one when renting a car.  Rachel, of course, does not have one as she had never heard of such a thing until today and when leaving the United States had had no intention or means of driving in Europe so would not have looked into it at all anyway.  So this is a pretty big problem.  I do not have one either so we are unable to switch the rental to my name and add her as a driver to my car from Firefly.  So we were stuck and had to give up that rental car.

Now what to do.  We are already out of time and now we don’t have a rental car.  Dominica called in to DoYouSpain who had handled the rental to get our money back while we tried to figure out how to rent another car from either Avis or Europcar who were the only two other car rental companies at the airport.

We managed to get a car from Avis, a Volkswagon Polo, for five times the price that we were going to get it from Gold Car (yes, really five times the price!)  But Dominica called us back and said that DoYouSpain refused to refund us our money because we had not attempted to cancel until after the pick up time (we weren’t cancelling, they didn’t honour the deal and we were there on time, they were just not ready to rent us the car!!!!) so we would have to cancel the car with Avis and get DoYouSpain to book the car with Avis or else we would have to pay for both cars.  Oh wait a day this is turning out to be.

This turned into at least half an hour of phone calls and texts with Dominica attempting to book the car but getting disconnected and us needing Rachel to be on the phone to deal with authenticating the transaction and Rachel not having phone or email service so all of the emails that she needed to see or respond to were unavailable.  What a mess.

Eventually we got things figured out.  We cancelled the first Avis car, dealt with several calls to get the reservation put through remotely, waited for it to show up in the system, and sometime after four, after more than two hours in the airport, we had keys, had spent five times the intended amount of money and were out in the parking lot getting Rachel into her nice, red, Volkswagon Polo five speed.

This led us to our next adventure, getting me out of the parking lot.  Once I got them into their car, I walked back to the caja (place where you pay for things, literally means a “box” but is often used to refer to banks and anyplace where you pay for things) and found that it did not accept modern Euros, only some form of cash that I had never seen (an older Euro that I have no access to.)  I did not have enough change on me or in the car to pay for the parking.

I ran back to where Rachel and Shawn were in the Polo, having not left yet, and Shawn had exactly the four Euros that I needed to pay for the parking.  So I ran back and tried to pay with the change.  During the time I had run to and from their car, though, the price of the parking had gone up by ten cents and I, again, did not have enough change to pay for the parking.

So I ran back to their car again hoping that they had more change but this time Rachel had pulled away and did not see me as I chased her on foot through the parking lot, to the parking gate and down the airport driveway until they were out of sight.  This day just gets better and better.

So I went into the airport to ask the Avis manager what I should do since I was trapped inside the parking lot and things were just getting worse and worse.  I had plenty of cash on me but nothing that the automated machines would accept.  Thankfully he walked me outside and showed me, way at the other end of the airport, a caja that was manned.

I walked really far out in the head which was much worse in the parking lot but at first only found automated machines again.  These not only did not accept my cash but did not accept any cash.  They were happy to tell me that I now owed fifteen cents more than I owed the last time I attempted to pay, though.  Grrrr.

Finally I found the caja with the person working in it.  He took my cash and charged me a fifty cent premium for having it done in person!  Argh.  Not happy with Granada Airport at all at this point.  That is just ridiculous.

A long walk back to the car and a confusing time getting out of the parking lot since all of the signs pointed you into closed off construction areas but once I was out it was easy to find Rachel and Shawn waiting on the side of the road and they followed me to the local gas station so that we could get coffee.

Sadly, the local gas station had no coffee.  They also were not sure how to charge us and it took forever as we first paid with a credit card, but a bottle of water was missed and we had to pay cash.  And then a long ordeal as people had to get itemized receipts printed out for us as they have to do that in Spain.  It was way more effort and took way too long.  Shawn commented on how badly this was all going that even paying at a gas station wasn’t working for us today.

At this point, we were finally in good shape and able to return to La Alpujarra.  Finally.

The drive back went fine, which was pretty surprising at this point as so much else had gone wrong.

We had to stop in Órgiva to stock up on cash for the trip as we plan to deal in cash and avoid using the credit cards as card skimmers are rampant in Morocco and we want to be as safe as possible.  We also wanted to pick up lunch to take back for Dominica and the girls.  We hit the Moroccan place to get lunch and…. it was closed again (second week in a row that we did not think about the fact that it was a Friday and that it would be closed on Fridays – one week until we figured this one out.)  We went to the telebanco (ATM) and Rachel was able to get cash but I was not, for some reason the ATM failed on me.  This is not good.

Rachel and Shawn wanted to go visit the bar that they had discovered a week ago but I reminded them that Rachel, Dominica and the girls were already late leaving for Tarifa and that our buffer time was already used up dealing with the car.  If felt like the middle of the day but it was already crunch time or the hostel was going to lock up and we were going to be unable to get in!

So we returned to the house without cash and without food, hours late and having spent hundreds of dollars that we had not intended to have spent.

Back up on the mountain I got right to work as I cannot work super late tonight.  Shawn had the afternoon to just play Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic on his Kindle Fire and relax while I worked.  Rachel and Dominica got the girls packed up, the car packed and on the road as soon as they could orchestrate it.  Between us getting there late and them taking time to get ready it was probably after six when they actually hit the road.  Cutting it very close indeed.

Their drive ended up going fine and they were able to stop for food along the way and avoided the toll highway, the AP7, most of the way saving some money.  They got to Tarifa fifteen minutes before the hostel locked up for the night!

Once moved into the hostel and parked they went across the street for wine and snacks before retiring to the hostel to wait for Shawn and me to arrive which would not be for many hours.

It was around one in the morning when Shawn and I were able to get in the car and leave Cáñar.  What a long day.  It was long and it was stressful and now there was this all night drive down to Tarifa.

I avoided the toll roads the entire way, which was probably foolish as the last leg of non-tolls, the part that the girls had skipped, was 40kph the entire way and just one roundabout after another.  We easily added an hour to the total drive.

It was after four in the morning when we got into Tarifa.  We had managed to stop at a gas station along the way and get sandwiches and coffee for the car, but that was all.

Dominica was still awake, waiting for us to arrive and let us in the locked door.  We had found their car parked on the street and were able to park right in front of them which made things easy.  The spot had a notice on it that cars would be towed from there at eight in the morning, but Dominica said we had to be gone by eight in the morning anyway so it was fine to park there.  This is going to be a very short night.

Dominica and my room was three twin beds.  Dominica had one, I had the middle one and the girls shared one by the window.  There were not enough power outlets in the room so we were only able to charge one phone during the night and have my CPAP plugged in.  But it was a very cheap room and the beds were not bad.  The bathrooms were way down the hall and several of them did not work which was frustrating.

It was no earlier than five before I fell asleep.  Going to be really exhausted tomorrow.

I slept in late again today.  Feeling a little bit better but still have a bit of bronchitis.  Luciana came to get me up but climbed into bed and insisted on snuggling for twenty minutes before letting me get up.

It is cold again today.  We even saw light sprinkles, but no real rain.  Nothing like yesterday.  This meant the second day of the girls’ friends not coming to see them.  It is really sad that Liesl passed up a day with them as our time in Spain is getting to be very short at this point.

Today we realized that we have a three day weekend coming up and this was our last chance to possibly go to Morocco.  So we rapidly made plans to see if we could work it all out.  It took a lot of planning since we do not have enough car space for everyone to fit.  So we had to book a rental car from Granada for Rachel and Shawn and book a hotel in Tarifa, figure out the ferry, figure out the train from Tanger to Fes, book a hotel in Fes, etc.  A lot of work.

We are pretty excited, though.  None of the six of us have every been to Morocco or Africa at all and Rachel and Shawn have never even seen it as we have.  So today was really a crazy day and Dominica did so much work getting everything lined up for us.  She has the car rental all set.  She has the ferry figured out.  She found us a hostel in Tarifa so that we can head down there tomorrow night instead of trying to make it on Saturday morning.  She booked a riad (traditional Moroccan mansion) right in the Fes medina (old town.)  She has even worked out how the train and everything works.  So much work she put into this today.  It is just crazy.

But after everything, we are now going to get to actually see Morocco which had been our plan all along but after Rachel and Shawn were coming to stay with us for nearly a month we had figured that we would not be able to pull it all off and had kind of given up on trying to do it still.  But this really worked out perfectly (we hope) and we are super excited to be able to head down there tomorrow night.  How awesome.  This was the one, last, big thing that we really felt that it would be a shame to have not been able to do while living in Andalucia.  I would have felt like we had really missed an opportunity if we had not done it now, while we could.

So today, after work, we all tried to get some rest as Shawn, Rachel and I have to leave the house at just a little after noon tomorrow to get up to the Granada Airport where we are picking up the rental car.  Tomorrow is going to be a very long day with a lot of logistics to be handled.  And then, before the day is over, we have to drive two cars all of the way to Tarifa which is nearly a four hour drive!  Rachel will drive one and I will drive the other, later one.  Rachel, Dominica and the girls are going to drive down to Tarifa early in the day so that they can get there and get into the hostel and have everything taken care of before the hostel locks up for the night. Shawn and I will drive down very, very late at night after I am done working for the week so that we can make it.  Exhausting, but it was the affordable way to make it all work.

So excited!