Scenes from the pueblo

Monochrome Sevilla

  

Credits for our Sevilla trip go to:

Cat, the most famous (former) auxiliar in the land - we missed seeing her in town but she sent us some awesome suggestions for places to eat (Cuban food in Sevilla? yes please.) and general info about town. Thanks chica!

Thanks to the anonymous commenter on this post who told us about a cool flamenco spot. We went, drank some agua de Sevilla, and said "ole!" a lot. It was a great night. Out yourself and I will give you a proper thank you!

Thanks to tobyo also, who gave us all sorts of helpful suggestions!

And of course thanks to The Mister and his sister for being bitchin' travel companions and for pausing so frequently while I stopped to take pictures. Between you and me though, I think I make up for it by leaving all the chocolate for them when we eat churros.

Carnival ride

Taken in London.

February 26, 2012.

Taken right after I saw Eddie Izzard running barefoot on a dirty London sidewalk.

Which still confuses me, to be honest.

Snow games in Jordan

The week before last, when we were snowed in in Jordan, we were in an empty, unheated apartment and we were hungry. (Yeah, I said unheated. In parts of the world where it doesn't snow often, people rely on space heaters and mild winters to keep themselves warm. Which they don't. But that's another post.)

So, we were hungry because we hadn't anticipated the weather and all we had was a half-eaten box of Honey Nut Cheerios. We saw them on a quick trip to the market and made an immediate decision to buy them, because we don't have anything like that in Málaga. For the record, the run-of-the-mill Jordanian grocery store had Betty Crocker baking mixes, peanut butter, Frosted Flakes, and Nutri-Grain bars. And that's all I saw before The Mister dragged me away from the food and towards the electronics section.

So: Jordan, me and The Mister, no heat, box of Cheerios. We were cold and hungry and the roads were impassable. There was no choice: we had to go out. We lined our (very un-waterproof) shoes with plastic bags in an attempt to keep dry, put on all our clothes at the same time to stay as warm as possible (I looked like the younger brother in A Christmas Story) and ventured forth. 

We walked for ten minutes and got absolutely soaked. The watery slush in the road came up to our ankles at some points and stepping right in it was the only option. My toes were numb.

Finally we came upon a little food counter. Saved! The menu was only in Arabic, and the people at the place only spoke Arabic. Our Arabic is limited to knowing how to say "I'm sorry, I don't speak Arabic" so it didn't come in that handy. Luckily, there was a huge photo on the wall of a cheeseburger. The Mister smiled, pointed to the cheeseburger, and held up two fingers. It worked. Two hot cheeseburgers (with fries!) later, we trudged back in the snow.

On the way back, groups of young guys had staked out the road, ready to pelt passing cars with blizzards of snowballs. They were also cheerfully lobbing snowballs at anyone that passed, and we fit that bill.

They saw my blonde hair, took in our unmistakable foreignness, and a gleam came into their eyes.

They laughed. "Welcome to Jordan!" they cried, and hurled snowballs right in our faces.

We looked at each other and smiled. Our "dry" clothes were ruined anyway. We couldn't really get any colder.

Why not?

So we scooped up snow as fast as we could and slammed 'em right back.

A friendship story

After our time in London, we went to Amman, Jordan to visit some friends. You might rightly wonder how in the world we have friends in Jordan, and we wonder that sometimes too. But it's because a few years ago in Phoenix a group of very smart, very engaged people put their heads together and thought, how can we make the world just a little bit better? And they thought that one thing the world could use right now is some mutual understanding between the Arab and Western worlds.

So, being industrious people, they decided to have a little impromptu gathering of young people: a few from the Middle East and a couple Americans (they threw in a Brit or two for the fun of it) and to toss everyone together for a week and see what happens. The Mister and I were invited to this week-long gathering, in which the Jordanians flew to Arizona and stayed in our homes, and we spent a week sitting in living rooms, sharing meals together, and having conversations about religion, politics, culture and the Black Eyed Peas.

And in that week, what do you know, we became friends. Good friends. We had deep conversations and sang Hey Jude together at the top of our lungs and learned about each other, our cultures and countries and religions. It was easily one of the most educational and eye-opening weeks of my life.

So last week we headed to Jordan to visit these friends, although the weather had other plans. There was snow/hail/sleet/ice/general winter mayhem for practically the whole time we were there, and a lot of our meetings with friends and almost all of our sightseeing was cancelled. A disappointment, definitely, but we still got a chance to see nearly everybody and have some great conversations and smoke some hookah (lemon mint flavor, yum) and eat some really fabulous hummus.

London, a street view

Monochrome London, Part II

 

Well we are back in Málaga, and it has been an eventful week folks! We got completely buried in snow in Amman and had a few really warm sunny days in London, so go figure. 

It's late and I'm still tired from our long travel day yesterday so I'll just post a few black and whites from London:

Visit:

Monochrome London, Part I

Monochrome Valencia

Valencia and Barcelona

After our few days in Morocco, we rested at home for a day and then headed out on a road trip to northern Spain and southern France. The cast of characters included our friends Fran (as in Francisco) and Belén (as in Bethlehem, yes, her name means Bethlehem). 

We lucked out with great weather, except for one rainy day in France, and having a rainy morning in France isn't exactly the worst thing that can happen to you. We were limited to a few old CDs (a perilous situation on a road trip), but  of the CDs happened to be the Forrest Gump soundtrack, which is more or less the best CD I can think of to have on repeat on a car trip.

So there we were, rolling down French highways with Spanish friends, singing about California dreamin'. We stopped in Valencia and Barcelona, both of which were pretty great. Valencia is very modern and looked prosperous to us, as we're accustomed to the poorer south. I kept looking around at all the clean, neat apartment buildings and wondering where everyone put their laundry. In Málaga laundry is hanging everywhere outside windows, which seemed odd to me at first, but I suppose now I'm so adjusted to it that the city felt a bit sterile without it.

Fran and The Mister 

Belén and I, quite well-lit.

Then, it was on to Barcelona, which is one of my favorite cities in Spain. I know this is going to be a controversial statement, but I'm gonna throw it out there - I really prefer it hands-down to Madrid. It's got quirky architecture lots of parks and huge avenues that are vaguely reminiscent of Paris. Also, there is a camera store near the Plaza de España that has a floor tailor-made for moonwalking. I know this because we stopped in and The Mister and I had an impromptu moonwalk contest (he won, naturally) because life is too short to pass up such perfect opportunities to attempt a moonwalk in public.

Also, the sunrise over the sea was my walk to work yesterday morning. It's titled "Why I'll be sad to leave Spain: Exhibit A."

The Tannery

So I was honest about my rocky relationship with Morocco, and I was interested to see that in the comments, some of you reported similar experiences both in Morocco and in other countries. Maybe we just all belong to the wussie traveler club and we should toughen up, or maybe it isn't us. But I'm not all negative, because today I'll share two cool things about our trip there: 2.) the food is really good. Couscous and dried apricots and dates and tagines and camel burgers. And sweet mint tea. We were well fed. And 2.) The tannery.

We were in the city of Fez, which has one of the oldest continually operating tanneries in the world. We went, and then almost dropped dead from the smell. But we powered through and captured the snippets below. The guidebooks all swear that you can't get down on the tannery floor and can only view it from a balcony, but we lucked out with a "tour guide" (special price for you my friend!) who apparently held the keys to the whole establishment. We got right down in the mess, dodging pack donkeys and stray chickens, past animal carcasses and men up to their waists in huge ancient vats of what we were assured are very carcinogenic dye chemicals. It was noisy and colorful and so very, very pungent. It was fascinating.

See: