Our hotel in Granada (grah-NAH-dah ... the word means "pomegranate") was the Mariola. While I hope never to stay there again, it was certainly a fascinating place. Granada is one of Spain's main university towns, and during the school year the place is apparently used as apartments for college students. In summer they rent out those apartments as if they were hotel suites. The suites are certainly spacious. Paul and I had a large bedroom with dorm room sized twin beds (as opposed to the extra-small twins we had in many of the hotels), a large living room, a dining area, an entrance alcove with two closets, and a bathroom. (There was also a kitchen, but it was closed up.) You knew this was a collegiate apartment, though. The furniture was old and sagging, the décor was in several different styles that fought with one another, and every surface of the place seemed to be covered with graffiti. I read about the romantic escapades of generations of young Spaniards, not to mention learning their political views.
I took a long walk in the late afternoon, and after a comprehensive exploration of the city I can honestly tell you that Granada is one of the dullest places on earth-at least on a Sunday afternoon. Lots of people were out, but I have no idea where they might have been going. I went straight through the downtown area, past a suburban-style shopping mall, and down a number of commercial streets. Except for a few gas stations and an occasional ice cream shop, nothing was open. The streets are broad and the apartments look pleasant, but there's certainly not much to draw a tourist to central Granada.
I took Paul to an ATM I had passed during my walk. It was interesting that while virtually every ATM I have ever used (in Europe or America) gave crisp, new currency, this one gave Paul a badly damaged €20 note. The bill had obviously been mangled, and it was being held together with Scotch tape. Lots of shopkeepers looked at bills closely before accepting them. At Corte Inglés in Madrid they even had bill acceptors at the check-outs that presumably looked for some hidden feature to verify authenticity. I wasn't sure Paul's bill would pass muster. You can't return money at an ATM, though, so he was stuck with it.
Dinner tonight consisted of pasta, chicken with French fries, and yogurt. Two groups of American students made up the bulk of people at dinner (and presumably the bulk of guests at the hotel). There was also a group of Arab tourists who were fascinating to watch at dinner. The men and women seated themselves at separate tables. The men were in casual but conservative western dress, while the women all had their heads covered in traditional Moslem clothes. A couple of the men photographed absolutely everything. It was almost like watching a group of east Asian tourists seeing them catch everything on film.
After dinner we went to a flamenco show. Many of the girls changed into nice clothes for this occasion. I really don't know why. It's not like they were on a date, nor as if "theatre clothes" are expected at what is basically a glorified bar. The girls seemed to use any excuse to dress, though. It amazed me how many clothes they brought. I could excuse their dress for the flamenco (since many of them were wearing clothes they had brought on the trip), but an amazing number of them had packed dress shoes in their luggage and hauled them out tonight.
If the girls thought they were putting on a show with their outfits, they needn't have bothered. We were almost literally the only people at the flamenco club. (I think the handful of Spaniards who were there were relatives of the cast.) The show was held in a cavernous room, and it was really strange to be right up by the stage with hundreds of empty seats behind us. I guess Sunday night must not be a big party time in Granada.
The only other time I saw a flamenco show was in Sevilla. There the club was right downtown in a tile-fronted building that inside looked a bit like a dinner theatre. In Granada we were at a suburban club, located right off the ring road in a neighborhood of warehouses. Inside it was set up like those Vegas showrooms you see on TV, sort of like an enormous cocktail lounge with scores of tiny tables, each surrounded by too many chairs. At the front was a tiny stage that was little more than a big wood box with a few lights above it. The cast alternated leading the dances, with a bit of singing and instrumental music thrown in for good measure.
The dance show was interesting, but the cast really just seemed to be going through the motions. Afterwards Paul and I both commented on their guitarist, who appeared to be stoned out of his mind. I don't know what he may have been using, but he was certainly on a different plane of reality than I was. None of the others was quite so obvious, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were "feeling no pain" either.
The show lasted just over an hour, and we were back to the hotel around 11:30. Shortly after that the management cut off the air conditioning (a fairly common occurrence in European budget hotels-after all, why would you need air conditioning while you're sleeping?), so we sweltered through the night on rather uncomfortable beds.
We were up at 7:00 and had a nondescript breakfast. Most noteworthy was the orange juice, which came out of a dispensing machine and was hot. Indeed it was almost as warm as the coffee-hardly the refreshing fruit drink I expected.
I picked up one of my more interesting souvenirs in the lobby at the Mariola. They had books on Andalucia in many languages. I decided to see if I had learned anything tutoring Chris Kohlhaas for the past three years, so I picked up their Russian edition. It's basically a picture book, but I am pleased to say that I have learned enough Russian that I could figure out most of the captions.
We took the bus to Granada's one real tourist attraction, the Alhambra (unlike its namesake suburb in California, it's pronounced "ah-LAHM-bra" here). Granada was the capital of Moorish Spain, and it was the last Moorish stronghold during the Christian re-conquest. It was here that Ferdinand and Isabella united to conquer the Moors. The Alhambra (literally "red castle" in Arabic) is a collection of palaces that stand high on a mountain overlooking the city and preserve the history of the area.
We had a guided tour of the Alhambra, and the guide-a college-aged boy named Paco-was definitely a highlight. He was knowledgeable, and he spoke clear and understandable English (though he insisted French was his best foreign language). Back in 1985 our guide basically told us "isn't it pretty"; today I felt I actually learned something.
Among other things, the guide pointed out the striking contrast between the Moorish palaces and the Renaissance palace of Carlos V, which is built on the same site. European architecture tends to focus attention to the outside of a building, with ornate entryways and lots of exterior highlights. We had seen this in France and also at the Royal Palace in Madrid. Here as in those places the interiors could be nice, but they really didn't live up to the outside impression. The Moslems favor almost the opposite architecture. Their outside walls are bare and fortress-like, with little or no ornamentation. Inside, though, calling the place a "palace" almost damns it with faint praise.
We began at the Carlos V palace. It fascinated me to see that this 500-year-old building is now used as a very modern concert hall. There's a grand circular courtyard in the middle of the palace. It was filled with hard plastic chairs, and electrical wires were strung all over the place. Apparently it has outstanding acoustics, and it certainly would make an interesting place to hear a concert.
Renaissance palaces are all but a dime a dozen in Europe, and absolutely no one would visit the Alhambra for the sake of seeing the palace of Carlos V. The Moorish palaces are just slightly older, but they are far more interesting. Inside their stark walls are gorgeous formal patios lined with intricately carved archways. Each individual detail is striking, and the overall effect is magnificent.
The walls and ceilings of almost every room are carved with Arabic script. I assumed this was the famous passage from the Koran that translates "there is no god but the one God (Allah), and Mohammed is his prophet." I still suspect that is essentially what most of the text says; it looked like the script on the Saudi flag, which I know says that. Our guide, however, pointed out a phrase and said it translated to "God is the winner". I would probably phrase that more as "in God is our victory", and the way he pronounced his English made it sound even worse. Using Spanish vowel sounds, what he said came out as "God is the wiener"-and that sent all kinds of sacrilegious thoughts running through my mind.
I was also amused by the guide when we paused as a group of Asian tourists took photos of one another. Someone made a light-hearted joke about Japanese tourists, and the guide immediately corrected "No, they're KOREAN". He said "Korean" with utter disgust and rolled his eyes. It was a bit like hearing President say "Iraqi" or hearing the phrase "evil empire" back in the Reagan years. Korea was, after all, the country that defeated Spain in the World Cup.
It amazed me how much progress they had made on restoring the Alhambra. When I was here before many parts of it were closed, and much of what was open was in disrepair. They've obviously been working hard in the intervening years. Not only have they stabilized what was crumbling; they've begun restoring the coloration of the walls and ceilings, so the place looks much as it did in Moorish times. Several artists were at work while we toured the place. It would be interesting to come back in another ten years or so to see it all completed.
The Alhambra, by the way, is the single most visited place in Spain. It's a national monument, completely maintained by the central government in Madrid. That's actually rather unusual, since most things these days are administered at the "autonomous community" level.
We hiked through a forest area and ended up in the Generalife Gardens. We had tons of time to kill there, but I just took a quick walk through them. Formal gardens really aren't my thing, and these excited me no more than any others. The most interesting thing at the Generalife was a stray cat that was wandering around the place. I have a photo of one of Paul's students down on his knees, nose to nose with that cat.
We were given time to browse a gift shop near the Alhambra. Most of their souvenirs were overpriced, and all I bought was junk food. Among my purchases were "Chipi-Cao" (rather tasteless chocolate chip cookies), Lays Mediterranean-style potato chips (with truly disgusting olive oil and tomato flavoring), an ice cream coronet, and a can of Fanta limón.
Coming back from the Alhambra we followed signs that looked like a big target. I suppose they were implying "city center", but it's a place where words seem to communicate more than pictures. We made it past downtown, out to the suburbs, and then past the same accident we had seen yesterday. They were still cleaning things up today. One lane was still blocked off, and we could still see the burnt-out shell of a truck off in the ditch. I can't imagine that the driver survived that, but I certainly hope he did.
José gave us a number of informative tidbits as we drove along. We learned, for instance, that the Sierra Nevada mountains near Granada are the highest in Spain. They run from 3,500 to 4,000 meters in height (11,000 - 13,000 feet). They really don't look that tall to me, but I suppose the surrounding area must be fairly high to begin with. He also told us that olives were harvested in January, a time of year no one around here would think of harvesting anything.
We had lunch at a truck stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere west of Granada. At the cafeteria I selected a salad that looked good under plastic but turned out to be mostly seafood. I also had what they called "macaronis" (long, tube-shaped pasta) with the same flavorless tomato sauce we had "enjoyed" in France, a cup of pre-packaged flan, and a can of Tab(r) diet soda. Honestly, most of my lunch ended up being the junk food I had purchased at the Alhambra.
They had a change machine at the truck stop. It was intended to give you change to play slot machines that were conveniently located right next to it. I took advantage of it to get €20 in change, though. At this point a €20 note was all the money I had left. I didn't intend to purchase anything large, and €20 is a lot of money with which to make a small purchase. The coins (an assortment of €2 and €1 coins) was ideal, though.
As we made our way south to the coast, the girls on the bus got progressively more annoying. They started singing songs from the '60s and '70s, loudly and badly. I was annoyed by them personally and embarrassed that José had to put up with them.
It was a bit of a shock to get to Málaga, the coastal city where we stayed back in 1985. While even then it was the largest city in the area, a Baedeker travel guide I still have from that trip described it as "a sleepy town nestled around the port". Today the Michelin guide to Spain describes Málaga as "a vast, white, sprawling city at the mouth of the Guadalmedina". Oddly enough, both descriptions are accurate for their time. Málaga has grown immensely. Its suburbs now stretch not just along the ocean, but for miles up into the hills. The city proper has over half a million people, and five times that many live in the immediate area. There's certainly nothing sleepy or little about Málaga today.
We were staying not in Málaga nor in the posh resort of Torremolinos, but rather west of there near the town of Benalmádena (bane-awl-MAH-dane-ah). While both Cristina and José seemed to know almost every place in Spain quite well, neither of them had ever heard of the place we were staying tonight. It didn't help that the address was "Urbanización Torrealmádena S/N". "S/N" in Spanish stands for "sin número"-meaning that it had no street number; its only address was the development in which it was located. We drove around for quite a while (though not nearly so long as when we were lost in France), but eventually we did locate the place.
The Hotel Velazquez is part of Complejo los Pintores (the Painters' Complex), a group of hotels that are all named after famous Spanish artists. (There's also a Hotel Goya and a Hotel El Greco.) The place was almost brand new, but built as cheaply as could be. We would not be allowed to check into our rooms until later, but when we did we would find paper thin walls, beds that were barely more than cots (with thin aluminum legs holding up foam rubber mattresses that sagged badly when we laid down on them), and a folding plastic accordion door on the bathroom. One thing on the plus side, though: the air conditioning worked, and we got to leave it on all night.
It was around 4pm when we arrived at the Velazquez, but for some reason our rooms were still not ready. We gathered up all the luggage and managed to cram it into a janitor's closet that the manager assured us was secure. Then the kids went to the beach, most of the adults sat on the deck, and I went out exploring.
Benalmádena is a well-developed resort, but virtually everything was closed today. As it turned out, this was the town's fiesta, the feast day of the local patron saint. Nothing ever really did say who that patron was, but I checked a calendar of saints and the only important one assigned to June 24 was John the Baptist. At any rate all the businesses that catered to the locals (and a surprisingly large number of tourist-oriented shops) were closed for the local holiday.
I walked along a promenade above the beach for quite a long while. The beach here is really far too developed. I'll take something secluded any day. It's pretty, though-if not exactly spectacular-a lot like the Florida coast.
The one place I stopped was at a place whose sign said "AMERICAN DRUGSTORE". While they did have health and beauty aids, the place was really more of a small supermarket; perhaps the people who named it were thinking of the grocery section of Walgreen's. Paul had wanted some Nutella, the chocolate and nut spread that is popular in Europe, and he had given me his badly damaged €20 note to pay for a bunch of it. They didn't have that here, but they did have its competitor Nocilla. I also picked up some coffee (which at €1.38 for the equivalent of a pound was dirt cheap, and given the strength you use only about half as much as you would with American coffee), two one-liter boxes of citrus juice (Kasfruit(r), in grapefruit and mixed citrus flavors), and yet another souvenir for my Pepsi collection. The girl at the counter didn't want to accept the taped-up twenty, but I acted as if it were the only money I had (I could have used those coins, of course), and she eventually took it.
I went back to the hotel, and we checked in. Our rooms were done, but the maids were still cleaning many other rooms and trash was piled high in the halls. I don't know if they were understaffed or if check-out time is unusually late or what. After resting a bit, I set out walking again.
I had gone eastward along the beach before, so this time I walked west. The most prominent thing to the west is Casino Benalmádena-and in Spain "casino" means exactly what you think it should mean. The place was not exactly friendly from the street. They had guards with machine guns standing out front. It made me wonder if the European leaders had made their way down to the beach.
Near the casino is a string of condominiums, most of which appear to cater to wealthy British subjects. There were British and Canadian banks nearby, and the grocery stores advertised typically British foods. There were even English names (like Adela Beach) on some of the developments. Prices of the condos are all over the place, largely depending on how close they are to the water. Cheap ones will sell for around €90,000 (or rent as time-shares for €650 a month) and prices range up to €1,500,000. By contrast apartments intended for the locals in Benalmádena go for just over €100 a month.
West of the casino is Benalmádena pueblo, the town where the people who work in the resort actually live. It's frankly a dumpy town, not unlike the city of Cancun-as opposed to the beachfront resort of the same name. Like all of Spain, it's apartments, but these looked to be about as well-built and homey as our hotel.
I stopped to get another Burger King salad on my way back to the hotel. It shouldn't, but it really does amaze me that the clientele at foreign fast food places is invariably foreign-that is people who live in the place the restaurant is located. Burger King was not particularly busy, but there was a steady stream of Spanish teenagers. The "Auto King" (competing with the "McAuto" drive through down the street) was also quite busy, mostly with young married couples.
I was glad I stopped for the salad, because dinner tonight was less than appetizing. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet, but honestly there wasn't much I wanted to eat. Hopefully Margaret and Paul will pardon me for saying that Spanish cuisine has to be one of my least favorite types of food-and the more authentically Spanish something is, the less likely I am to like it. The Spaniards who made up the bulk of our hotel's guests seemed to really go for the buffet, but I found it mysterious and often disgusting. I made a salad of olives and corn, and I had a few of their cooked vegetables. All the main courses looked awful to my eyes, so I basically passed on them. I did, however, enjoy a large portion of flan for dessert.
Back in the room I watched President Bush's speech on establishing a Palestinian homeland, which was carried live on European TV. To me it appeared that Bush said absolutely nothing in his carefully worded address, but the British commentator noted that it was the first time he had ever acknowledged the possibility that a Palestinian homeland could conceivably exist.
One of the girls in the group had bragged about meeting a cute Spanish man in the afternoon, and while she hadn't actually invited him to her room, she had apparently told him the hotel and floor where she was staying. Paul sat in the stairwell until late at night to make sure no unexpected visitors arrived. Fortunately, none did.
We were just about asleep when we were awakened by the loud boom of fireworks. In the same manner that we'd finish off the Fourth of July, Benalmádena was ending their fiesta literally with a bang. As it turned out one of the best places to view the fireworks was from our room. We were on an upper floor, and the fireworks were being set off in a ravine not far away. I never bothered putting on my glasses, but even so I got a nice view of a very nice pyrotechnic show. Then things settled down and we were able to get to sleep.
It was a short night. We were scheduled to leave at 6:00 this morning, so we were up around five. They had breakfast set up on the buffet, but no one was there to attend it, so we didn't know if we were supposed to take it or not. The meal was included in our price, though, so we decided to dig in. The choices were rather minimal (though at least not so repulsive as dinner), but at least we got something in our stomachs.
A few of the kids had overslept, so it was more like 6:30 than 6:00 when we left the hotel. Even so, it was still definitely night. Whether it's the time zone or the latitude, the sun comes up much later here than it does at home. It was after 7:00 when the sun finally came up.
We drove about fifteen minutes on city streets to make it to the Autopista del Sol, the tollway that runs a couple miles in from the coast. We paid two tolls on our way west; one was €7.99, and the second €6.42. There were some interesting signs along the tollway. One indicated "rest area" and I think was intended to show a picnic table. It really looked more like a man sitting on the toilet-perfectly appropriate for the meaning, but not quite what they intended. Another sign indicated that helmets (cascos) were required. It showed an odd shape that might have looked vaguely like an old aviator's helmet. Really it looked more like an amoeba, or perhaps an ink blot in a psychological test.
The whole Costa del Sol (Sun Coast) of Spain is developed. Again it reminded me of Florida, where there's basically a wall of hotels and condos the length of the state. It's too bad that they didn't make some of this area a national park or something. Instead, they're really spoiling the beauty with so much development.
At some point in the future the Autopista del Sol will travel the whole way from Málaga to Cadiz. Today, though, there's a major gap at its center. We exited onto the "vía vieja", which amounted to little more than a city street. Making things worse, the old road was under construction. That and rush hour traffic made me pity José as he negotiated his way through a maze of traffic circles and construction cones. Most of the time the speed limit was 50 km/h (about 30mph), but my bet is we never actually made it up to that speed.
It intrigued me to notice that road workers in Spain were much less protected they were in Spain. Spain seems to enforce about the same level of safety that we would at home. The workers wear reflective clothing (ugly green, rather than orange), but there's not much more than a few cones separating them from traffic. In France, by contrast they often put cement barriers around the workers. When they don't there's always a heavy truck behind them with flashing arrows urging traffic over.
It was also interesting that there was much more heavy machinery used in construction than I had seen seventeen years ago. In '85 they still did a lot of road work in Spain by hand. You'd literally see men with picks and shovels fixing the roads. Today the equipment is comparable to what you see in construction areas at home.
Eventually the road work ended and we made our way back to the expressway. We passed a row of refineries at La Linea, the gateway city to Gibraltar that I had visited back in '85. Then we went past a mess of suburban sprawl (with things like Toys ? Us that would have been unheard of seventeen years ago) to the big port at Algeciras.
Algeciras (ahl-hay-SEER-ahss) is the gateway to Africa. We waited outside the port building while Cristina bought tickets. She then presented us with tickets and stickers to identify us as a group, and we made our way down a long series of ramps to the docks. Just before the docks we had to pass through exit customs. This was routine, but since we were running a bit late, every delay was a bit of a concern. We did make it to the boat on time, though, and before long we were on our way across the Strait of Gibraltar.
The boat ride from Algeciras to Tangier was not a pleasant experience-at least not for me. I was tired to begin with, and the combination of the boat's motion and a hint of smoke from the boilers made me nauseous. It was almost unfortunate that it never got so bad that I actually threw up; instead I just sat around with my head down, feeling horrible.
I remember passing docks that looked remarkably like the rail yards in Los Angeles, with stacks of cargo containers ready to be shipped. Next we saw the Rock of Gibraltar (which looks much nicer from the water than it does up close), and then it was just a long, jerky ride as the Atlas Mountains in Africa gradually grew larger.
Once we landed, getting into Morocco was a joke. Cristina (who was much more sick than I was on the boat) had taken everybody's passport and gone to a customs office on one of the lower levels of the ferry. The official had placed both entry and exit stamps in the passports, which Cristina gave back to us on the boat. When we reached Morocco an official on the dock checked to make sure that we had the stamps. He didn't even look at the pictures in the passports, though. Absolutely anyone could have used any of those passports, and no one would have known.
While Tangier is less than 20 miles from Algeciras, they truly are in different worlds. Algeciras is a very modern, very European city, while Tangier stands at the edge of the Third World. Just beyond the docks there's a line of street vendors who are barely more than beggars, the sort of thing you see at the pyramids in Mexico. Much of the city attempts to look European, but there's a seediness around the edges that would make a French industrial park look beautiful. We also traded the sleek new bus we had in Spain for a glorified school bus in Morocco that spewed exhaust and coughed its way up every hill.
I could tell I wasn't in Europe anymore (or Kansas, for that matter) when I saw billboards that were only in Arabic. French and Spanish are both widely spoken in Morocco, but Arabic is the official and the most common language. The most prominent billboards seemed to be for things that would be extreme luxuries in the Third World; I kept trying to imagine, for instance, why people who can barely afford bread would spend their money on Tang or at McDonalds.
Our local guide was named Abdul. He was informative, but about every fourth word of his spiel was punctuated by "y'know", which got rather annoying to listen to after a while. among other things he told us was that there were there were three animals that were traditionally necessary for survival in the desert: a camel, an iguana, and a monkey. Apparently the camel was used for transportation, the iguana killed off snakes, and the monkey had an inner sense that helped it to find water. What all that had to do with a modern city in a region that is only semi-arid I really don't know, but it was interesting.
Abdul also told us that the population of Tangier had doubled in the past eighteen years. Having been here seventeen years ago, I could certainly confirm that. The place was not a small city then, but it is much larger now. A lot of the area looks like the suburbs of Mexico City, with cement block slums crawling up the hills.
We made our way down the Avenue d'Espagne, which runs right along the beach. I was intrigued to see the Rif Hotel, where our tour group had stayed in 1985. Abdul said this was one of the finest beaches in the world, similar to the Riviera in Nice or Monte Carlo. If that's true, I won't be rushing to the Riviera any time soon. The beach at Tangier is badly littered, and construction projects mar the view in many places. I've no doubt that before both places were settled the beaches were similar, but I have a feeling the French developed things better.
We drove right through the downtown area of Tangier. If I ever return here, I'd love to get out and spend time there. There were a lot of stores that were rather European in appearance, but with Arabic signs and unusual merchandise. We just passed by everything without any comment; I guess this wasn't the part of Tangier we were supposed to notice.
We went through the so-called European quarter of the city (they called it the French quarter when I was here before). Behind high walls here are the vacation and retirement homes of assorted wealthy globetrotters. Abdul dropped the name of Malcolm Forbes more than once, as well as a number of other businessmen and celebrities. There's really not much to see here. It's kind of like Beverly Hills, where everything is hidden behind walls. Our main purpose for going there seemed to be stopping at a street vendor (who was probably Abdul's cousin) to buy postcards and picture books. The vendor didn't have one of the picture books in English, but he said he'd make arrangements so people in our group who wanted it could get it at another stop.
We stopped by an empty lot where they give camel rides. Unfortunately three other tour buses had beat us there, so there would be quite a wait if we wanted to do that. Abdul decided to pass on the camels for now, and the bus kept going.
We got off the bus and then had a walking tour of the casbah and medina, the ancient commercial and residential sections of Tangier. I had done virtually this same tour in '85, and the place really hasn't changed much. It looks much like the Jewish quarters of the southern Spanish cities. The difference is that instead of being mostly a tourist trap (or perhaps in addition to being that), it's home for hundreds of thousands of people.
I couldn't help but notice as we wound our way through the old city that we were in essence getting a guided tour of a slum. While it's old, there's really nothing particularly historic in Tangier, and it is truly a poverty-stricken place. I kept picturing a foreign tourist taking a guided tour of South Central L.A. or Spanish Harlem or that neighborhood east of Drake in Des Moines (which is probably the best comparison, since no one would ever call Tangier a "world class" city). It's fascinating that we find slums "colorful" in other countries, but disgusting at home.
We had lunch at a restaurant that I'd bet caters exclusively to tourists. They served us what was supposedly a traditional Moroccan menu: a dark cream soup flavored with cinnamon (really quite tasty), an all-meat grilled kabob, couscous with chicken and cabbage, and honey cakes (similar to baklava). They also sold soft drinks with Arabic print on the bottles. While we dined, assorted musicians and dancers prowled the place looking for tips.
... Which brings up another point. The official currency of Morocco is the dirham, but you'd hardly know it. From a tourist's point of view, the local currency might as well be the euro. Everywhere we went prices were given in euros, and European coins and bills were both freely accepted. The only place I saw dirham prices was in grocery stores, and even at some of those they also had equivalent prices in euros. I got the feeling that even if I'd had any dirhams, the entertainers at the restaurant wouldn't have wanted them.
We next made the obligatory visit to a rug factory. We did the same thing seventeen years ago (it may well have been the exact same place), and then I succumbed to buying a Moroccan rug. While that rug has held up extremely well (it's under my chair as I type this), I certainly didn't need another-especially when their asking prices were up to €1,000. It amazed me that some of the kids actually did buy stuff. They obviously have more money than I ever did in high school.
Something we hadn't done in '85 was to visit a "traditional" Moroccan pharmacy. I'd really bet that this place also existed mainly for the benefit of tourists, but it was interesting to see. The proprietor explained all his exotic herbal concoctions with the zeal of an old-time medicine show. I'm sure most of this stuff is illegal in the States (and probably in Europe for that matter), and I certainly wasn't going to chance taking any of it through customs. It was interesting to see the show, though.
We also visited a crafts emporium, where we could buy all the traditional Moroccan handicrafts under one roof. Everything had a price written on it, but the expectation was that buyers would bargain. That bothered me, and it likely cost them a sale. I'd be perfectly willing to pay two-thirds of the posted price (which is quite a bit more than many people bargained things down to) if that were a fixed price. I hate bargaining-everything about it. I bought my last car on the internet, and a major incentive of that was avoiding the whole bargaining process. It may be part of the local culture, but it's not part of my culture. I think the Moroccans would do well to set up a fixed-price store where the tourists can easily buy handicrafts.
Our last stop in Tangier was at another camel ride place. I passed on the opportunity to ride the humped monsters seventeen years ago, and I passed again today. The kids seemed to enjoy the experience, though, so I guess it was a productive stop.
We made our way past the gauntlet of vendors at the docks and were easily waved through exit customs and onto the ferry. The boat back to Spain was much better than the one we had come over on. It was larger, and it seemed to go more smoothly.
Announcements on the boat were made in Arabic, French, Spanish, and English. It was fascinating to hear Arabic spoken. Having studied Spanish, I know that it derives from Arabic as well as Latin. Spoken Arabic sounds a lot like Spanish-it just sounds like a lot of Spanish words I don't understand. It was also interesting to compare the relative speed of the languages. Both Arabic and Spanish are spoken very quickly, English is sort of in the middle, and French goes "lentement"--i.e., slowly.
In an effort to avoid repeating the seasickness that got to me on the way over, I spent much of the ride back on the outside deck. It was cool and windy, and really quite a pleasant crossing. I had three 1 cent euro coins left, and while I was out on deck I decided I would toss them overboard into the biggest fountain in the world and make three wishes. Of course I won't tempt fate and say here what those wishes were, but two of them have pretty much already come true.
Once we landed in Algeciras it seemed to take forever to get off the boat. When we did exit, there was another long wait at immigration. The immigration facility in Algeciras is now set up with two lines, one for "EU Countries" and the other for "Non EU-Countries". There was no line at all at the EU window, and whenever someone did come up there, they were pretty much waved on without any problem. The non-EU line, though, included a lot of people who were presumably immigrating to Europe, so the formalities were more complicated and took some time. Eventually we made it up to the front, and most of us were waved on about as quickly as were the EU citizens. The officer looked at our passports, but mostly that was it. Only two people had any real problem. One was Margaret's co-worker Michelle, whose passport was well-worn. They scanned it in a machine that somehow verifies validity, and then everything was okay. The other problem was with one of the women from Missouri. Virtually all U.S. passports issued since 1976 have been blue, but for some reason hers was green. The officer was very suspicious of that (although I'd think if you were making a forgery of a passport, you'd be smart enough to know the right color), but eventually he let her pass too.
There is a customs area after immigration in Algeciras, but we were waved through it. Officers were standing near the exits, and they did stop most of the Moroccans. They literally stepped back from the doors and waved us on as our group came by, though.
José had been waiting all day at the port in Algeciras. I would think that would be one of the duller places to wait, but he didn't seem to mind it. We boarded the bus, and right at 8pm we were on our way back to the hotel.
Then at 8:20 we hit the worst traffic jam I have ever seen. José also remarked that he had never been in so bad a jam. You'll recall the construction I described on the trip over this morning. Coming from the west, they feed two different four-lane highways onto a traffic circle with just a two-lane outlet. Beyond there was nasty construction, and it ended up meaning that most of the time nobody moved. We were behind a woman in a compact car who managed to change her shoes and read an entire newspaper while we waited. It took until 8:45 to move maybe one mile up to the traffic circle. We then crawled along, but then stopped dead again at 8:52. We didn't move at all until 9:02, when we started to crawl along ago. We made another dead stop just three minutes later, then at 9:12 we crawled along to a maze of cones where the construction was. It was intriguing that while we were stopped dead in traffic, all the local people were out "de paseo" strolling along the side of the road. We stopped again at about 9:20, and during that stop a police car zoomed by. There was virtually no westbound traffic, so he was able to pass the whole line of cars without any problem. A number of motorcycles also zipped by, weaving in an out of the stopped traffic. There was lightning, and in fact it started to rain while we waited. Finally we sped up slightly-reaching all of 70 km/h (about 40mph), and at 9:46pm (an hour and a half after we started), we reached the Autopista del Sol. I checked the map, and the whole jam was 22 km (131/2 miles) long. It took us an hour and a half to go that far, and I assume things were still backed up when we got out of the mess.
We arrived at the hotel at 11pm. I went to the desk to ask for the key, but there was none. The manager thought I had lost it, but I knew I had turned it in at the desk in the morning. After arguing a bit, he gave me a pass card that I'd bet would open every room on the floor. It did open ours, and I found out the maid had left our key card (which had to be inserted in a receptacle to turn the lights on) in our room.
Tonight's dinner was also supposed to be included in the price of the trip. Since we were late, it would be a cold dinner like we had the first night in Madrid. They had it laid out, and I all but threw up looking at it. The centerpiece was those same "San Jacobe" fried sandwiches we had eaten earlier, but cold with congealed grease on them. The rest of the meal looked similarly unappetizing to me. I took a small container of ice cream, went back to the room, and proceeded to eat the ice cream with a ballpoint pen. Then I packed up and was in bed by 11:30.
It was another very short night. We were up around 4:15am so we could depart for the airport. I had a bit of a panic this morning when I thought I had lost my passport. I searched and searched, finally finding it inside an envelope with a bunch of postcards I had bought in Morocco. I have no recollection of putting it there, but at least I found it.
The restaurant wasn't even close to being open, but they had prepared bag breakfasts for us. While most of the stuff (like a can of paté) was not exactly appetizing to me, it did include some nice fruit that I ate. We all grabbed the breakfasts and placed our suitcases in the bottom of the bus one last time. There was a bit of a delay in leaving because another bus had blocked ours in the parking lot. José managed to rouse the other driver, and around 5am we were on our way to the Málaga airport.
Although we would be changing planes in Madrid, Margaret and Paul had instructions from the tour company to check our luggage through from Málaga to the U.S.A. Unfortunately the officials at the airport told us this was impossible. The reason they gave was that we had e-tickets for the trans-Atlantic portion of the flight rather than paper tickets. Apparently Spanair (the airline we were flying on in Spain) doesn't use e-tickets, and they only check luggage for onward flights if you present a traditional paper ticket. We ended up just checking things to Madrid.
While the e-ticket was a problem here, it was a good thing once we got to Madrid. One of Paul's students had misplaced his e-ticket receipt. Had this been an actual ticket, he would have had a serious problem and probably would have been out hundreds of dollars. The e-ticket printout is just a receipt, though. The computer record is the actual "ticket", and with proper identification there was no problem at all.
Cristina said goodbye to the group and presented us with "Linguatour" pins showing the logo of her company. We made it through security and then had about an hour to wait in the departure lounge. I spent some of my last €3 to buy coffee and a pastry at a bar in the airport. I read through the local paper, where the big news was the end of a garbage strike that had buried Málaga in trash for the past week.
Around 7:15 they announced our flight's departure. We had to take a bus out to the tarmac, and then we walked up steps in the back of the plane. It surprised me a bit that we took off to the south, directly over the Mediterranean. That certainly makes sense given that there are steep mountains just north of Málaga, and it also gave us a lovely view of the coastline as we departed.
Spanair appears to cater primarily to business travelers, and that made this a very pleasant flight. The plane was an MD-80, with leather seats spaced widely apart to provide far more than the typical legroom. Paul and I were seated over the wing in an emergency exit row, so we had even more room. We were served a continental breakfast of magdalenas (a Twinky-like packaged cake), orange juice, and coffee, and we were given free newspapers and magazines and assorted hard candies. The flight was smooth, and we had a very smooth landing in Madrid.
Our luggage came quickly, but Margaret found that her bag had been damaged in transit. We walked virtually the length of the airport to the check-in counters for our flight. Among those waiting in line with us was a group of Methodists from Oklahoma who had toured Spain playing hand bells in churches around the country. The line crawled along, but eventually we got to the front.
Security was extremely tight at Barajas Airport in Madrid. I was waiting in line next to Jacob from Cresco, and as I was checking in a uniformed woman approached and asked if we were together. She then said that after I checked in we should follow her to a separate area for a luggage inspection. Eventually six members of our group were selected for similar searches.
We waited for quite some time at the "Prosegur" station for inspections of other passengers to be completed. One of these was an elderly woman whose daughter was watching things from outside the inspection area. The older woman didn't speak Spanish, and she was understandably confused and upset. Her daughter was absolutely irate, and she told off the security guards in no uncertain terms in both Spanish and English. I think that probably just made them search the mother more slowly and thoroughly, but it did provide entertainment for me as I waited.
Once inside the inspection station, they first X-rayed my checked luggage (they didn't seem to care at all about the hand luggage). They put the bag back and forth through the X-ray machine several times, but eventually they let it pass. Then I had to go to a small table surrounded by curtains, rather like an oversized voting booth. The inspector asked me which bag was to be checked, and I told her. I placed my hand luggage on the ground, and she then made me take every single item out of the checked suitcase. I couldn't place anything back in until everything had been removed. Much of the stuff was inside shopping bags, and I even had some dirty clothes that were inside a trash bag. I had to take everything out of those bags and turn them inside out to prove I had emptied them. She even shook out some of the clothes to make sure nothing was hidden inside of them.
The background music on this page is the Queen song "Seaside Rendezvous".