Dear Friends and Family,
When I last spoke to you I was in the hostel in Barcelona ready to begin my spanish adventure. Already that seems like so long ago... Since then Em and I have joined our tour group which is full of really nice people and we've seen so much of the culture and beauty of Spain.
Barcelona was beautiful. I really enjoyed seeing the beautiful architecture of Antoni Gaudi; who was an Art Nauveau Architect working in the 1920s. His building are all about sculpture and colour and I'll put some pics on facebook for you to see. Poor Em spent the time in bed with a cold from getting wet feet in rainy London so I had the time to myself to sketch the amazing shapes of Gaudi's roof tops on Monday night and the cooky steps of the Gaudi's Park on Tuesday morning before our tour started in the afternoon.
The tour has been a lot of fun so far and everyone is really nice and friendly. Mostly girls in their early to mid 20s scatted with a few guys we have mostly Aussies and a few Kiwis, one Canadian and American too. Our tour leader Greg is a beefy Aussie bloke who confesses to wanting to find a Spanish Sheila so that he can live in settle in Spain, but as long as he helps us get from A to B and tells us a little bit about where we're going that's what counts. Tom our bus driver, is a 52 year old grandfather who was born in India, lived in the UK but now lives in Spain with his wife but everyone thinks he's Moroccan!
After Barca we were on the bus to Valencia. Which is a beautiful city with lovely Cathedrals and little laneways with balconies where residents hang their washing. We spent the day at the beach and in the evening there was a Festival where all the locals came down to the beach as well. Part of the ritual of the festival is that everyone can light bonfires , so you end up with hundreds of bonfires along this very long beach, later in the night the locals jump over the bonfires! As you can imagine our clothes were very smoky!
The next day we were on the bus to Granada in the South of Spain, we had a walking tour and a group dinner of Tortilla Espanol - a potato omelette which was very nice!
On Saturday we headed up to the Alhambra, a Palace which was the last Moorish strong hold in Europe before the Spanish beat them into retreat and began the Spanish Inquisition, with the Spanish royals taking over the Palace as their home. This was one of the highlights of the trip for me and I was not disappointed. The palace interior and the gardens themselves were beautiful even if the temperature that day was 45 degrees which made it hard to get through the 5 hours we spent there!
Sunday were on the bus again to catch the ferry from Terifa in Spain to Tangers in Morocco crossing the Mediterranean Sea. The ferry itself only took 35 mins which demonstrate how short the distance from Spain to North Africa really is! We arrive in Tangers with our dresses covering our knees and t-shirts covering our sholders to abide by the Muslim dress code for women and we began out time in a new country b a walking tour around the oldest part of the city which forms a labyrinth of lane ways where it is far too easy to get lost! Before we knew it the street opened up onto a beautiful clifftop over looking the Mediterranean - it was breathtaking!
So, I am currently sitting in the courtyard of the hotel in Fez with the sniffles and sore throat that seems to have been transported around the tour group through the air-conditioning system. But I feel like I'm on the road to recovery and tomorrow we'll be on the road from Fez back to Seville in Spain. But if you want to hear all about our Moroccan adventures you have to wait until the next email!!
Sa. xx
