Sunday, March 31, 2002 10:10
Weather: Blue skies, cool breezes, warm sun
Location: La Suiza patisserie

Paul and I made it up and out around 9am yesterday, had breakfast at La Suiza, and were at the Prado shortly after 10. At first, it looked like it was closed again, and I despaired. Then we saw the long lineups snaking towards the northern end of the building, where the entrance really was.

Inside, we took our separate paces and went through the 1st floor, where we´d entered. There was a lot of spectacular art, principally Spanish, but also including substantial areas of Flemish and Dutch art, with which I´m a little more familiar. Each piece was accompanied by a little plaque bearing explanatory detail, but these were exclusively in Spanish so I found them somewhat frustrating and slow to work through. As a result, I tended to skip through the galleries much faster than Paul, who lingered to read and appreciate each work.

We went down to the museum´s cafeteria for lunch, which featured gazpacho soup and an excellent paella mixta. By that time, I was getting tired of the 18th century art on the first floor.

We restarted in the roman sculpture gallery on the ground floor, which had some truly exceptional works. Having recently read another book set in Rome, and always being drawn by the sordid histories of its many and varied emperors, I especially enjoyed working through the art from their various eras. Paul helped me work through translating some of the descriptive texts, which also helped.

Finally, we worked quickly through the rest of the ground floor, both tiring at this point. I wished I´d started there: the earlier art was filled with much more detail and colour than the later works upstairs, and I wished for more time to appreciate them. Guess I´ll just have to come back!

We walked back towards the Plaza de Santa Ana, found a bar, and stopped in for a drink and to figure out the next step. This was pretty clear: laundry. The first laundromat was still closed (and shows every sign of being out of business) but the second was open and full of people. We loaded our clothes in and went to work on the Internet terminals. The place was expensive--€7 for a full load wash & dry--but I for one was in no position to quibble.

After a nap, we went out for a walk and dinner. We covered a lot of ground, and it was 11pm by the time we got back to our quartier. As usual, it was packed with people. We had excellent calamari and ham tapas with wine, then moved on, sampling a couple of other cerveseries [not sure this is the right term] before calling it a night at 1:30 and heading to bed.
posted by Tom at 5:24 AM | link | (0) comments

Saturday, March 30, 2002 08:30
Weather: Blue skies
Location: Hostal Delvi, Madrid

Paul finally showed up around midnight. I´d given up waiting inside and went down to see if he was lost in the square. There seemed to be a lot of police activity around.

Then, off to my left down the narrow Nuñez de Arce, I saw a police van approaching with 6 horsemen in full Guards regalia behind: prettily prancing (but little) horses, shining metal helmets with plumes, red jackets with epaulets and shiny gold buttons. It was a Good Friday procession, and it went right past the front of the hostal.

Immediately behind the horsement went the unluckiest members of the procession: 3 city street cleaners pushing a wheeled cart (for collection of said pretty horses´ excrement). Some distance after the advance guard came the bulk of the procession: a crossbearer; twelve servers in white cassocks, their heads covered with black felt hoods, holding long candles; the priest, in white, walking backwards half of the time, directing the movements of; the float, covered in red roses with a glass casket on top bearing the body of Jesus; then a 50-piece brass band in fancy black uniforms with dark trim, playing a funerial march; another float, this one bearing the Virgin Mary with a long flowing purple royal cloak; and finally, the parishioners, many of them carrying candles.

Paul and I watched them all go by (for he had arrived shortly after the horse guard) and then went for a drink.
posted by Tom at 8:48 AM | link | (0) comments

22:25
Back at the hostal.

A great day, full of memorable little moments, many of which I´ve already forgotten... such being my memory.

After breakfast at La Suiza, I went back up to my room and optimistically washed only a single day´s laundry in the home that the laundromat would reopen tomorrow. Then I set out on a Great Walking Tour of Madrid (caps obligatory).

First, I headed to the Prado, the best museum in Spain (according to the Lonely Planet), and only open until 2pm on holidays, except as it turns out not open at all on Good Friday.

Then, back to the centre of town. I found an Internet café open and stopped in for an hour an a half. Then I stopped at the Museo de Jamon -- literally, the Ham Museum -- a ham wholesaler (butcher) and popular lunchtime cafeteria, where I had an orange juice and a ham sandwich.

Finally, back to the Puerta del Sol, the start of the Lonely Planet´s suggested walking tour. Southwest through old streets to old churches. I briefly visited the Iglesia de San Ginés, took in the Plaza Major with a quick photo, walked past the ayuntamiento (town hall) and the Iglesia de San Pedró. Took another photo, of pigeons frolicking in a fountain in front of the Iglesia de San Andrés, then went in and sat and gawped in a semi-convincingly religious manner at the over-the-top cherubim and seraphim hanging from every point of the domed ceiling.

On my way from the Plaza de la Puerta de Moros to the Basilica de San Francisco El Grande (which, incidentally, has netting up inside to prevent the clergy from being injured by falling bits of ceiling), I was approached by some would-be scam artists:

First, a foreign-looking man with a subway map asked for help finding his way back to the Puerta del Sol. Then, as I was flipping to the map in the guide book, two men in leather jackets descended on us, quickly flipped badges, claimed to be tourist police, and asked to see our passports. After checking these (and handing them back) they asked to check our money, at which point I was pretty sure they were fake. The other guy handed over an empty-looking wallet, which one of the ¨policemen¨ made a great show of examining and sniffing for drugs.

I simply refused to show my money to the other one. And instead of insisting, he said ¨you have no money?¨ to which I said ¨no¨ and they just left. And so did I, looking as I did to see if there was a policeman nearby to report them to. I saw some policemen 10 minutes later, as I was crossing the Caffe de Bailen bridge, but by that point it was obviously pointless to do anything, so I let it go.

Back to the tour. The Palacio Real was open, but only for 20 more minutes, so I didn´t bother paying to go in. I sat in the sun in the Plaza de Oriente, read the Herald Tribune, and listened to some buskers playing ¨those were the days, my friend¨ on violins. I crossed the Plaza de España, and walked along the Grand Via. I found another preciousss bookstore selling preciousss English books, spent a happy hour perusing, and bought Stephen Fry´s autobiography ¨Moab is my Washpot¨.

I stopped at the fancy Gran Café de Gijón on Paseo de los Recoletos for a Ruso, vanilla ice cream in coffee. I passed the Muso Arqueologico Nacional, which had been open in the morning but was now closed.

I walked through the Parque del Buen Retiro, Madrid´s answer to New York´s Central Park (or is that the other way around?) which was inexplicably full of people thronging around the lake, currently drained for repairs and hidden from view behind a seven foot fence, along with Mickey Mice and quiet, polite black men who tried to sell me hashish. I got a couple of artistic photos of El Ángel Caído (The Fallen Angel) with a hole in the clouds above in the background.

Finally, I walked back to the Atocha roundabout where I´d bought lunch decades ago (March 16th) on the way to Seville. And home to the hostal.

After a few phone calls on the public phone outside, I went on a ramble looking for dinner, and found an open, self-service laundromat, and eventually a hot meal with an excellent red wine. Finally, back to the hostal to wait for Mr. P. Golding to arrive.
posted by Tom at 11:03 PM | link | (0) comments

Damn. Having trouble with the archives. There´re all still there, but the index page doesn´t show them. I´ll fix it... later.
posted by Tom at 6:46 AM | link | (0) comments

Friday, March 29, 2002 9:50
Weather: Cool and sunny
Location: La Suiza coffee shop, Plaza de Santa Ana, Madrid

I´m enjoying a distinctly un-Lenten pan chocolat, oozing with dark chocolate and covered with slivered almonds, with a fresh orange juice and cafe con leche on the side. La Suiza is basically right outside the hostal where we´ll be staying for the weekend, so I suspect I´ll be in here on a daily basis.

The train brought me to Atocha station on schedule at 9:05 last night. I had a blurry memory from the first time through Madrid that the Metro had been easy to use, and indeed it proved itself again: the automated ticket machines even speak English!

The Plaza de Santa Ana, where the hostal is situated, is at the centre of a trendy area, and there were crowds of people in the street. The hostal´s discrete signage was a bit hard to find, but it turned up tucked in the northwestern corner, next to the massive Hotel La Reina Victoria. The first impressions weren´t promising: the outside door led into a dimly lit corridor leading to a creaking old staircase with an extremely shabby carpet. Up a couple of flights the staircase wasn´t lit at all, and briefly walked up in pitch darkness until I worked out that the little glowing lights were on timer switches for the main lights.

The main who let me in looked a bit uncertain that there were in fact rooms, and I had a brief vision of trekking door to door through the many hostels of the neighbourhood, but a quick check with his wife and I was shown to a clean, but small single room next to the shared bathroom.

After a good night´s sleep, everything started looking up. I got up, had a hot shower (although at one point the water briefly cut out, leaving me with my hair full of shampoo) and prepared to set out.

First priority was making sure Paul, Patrick and Kelly have a place to stay. I wrote out arrival and departure days, and with many visual aids, a few words of Spanglish, and about 20 minutes, managed to communicate the details to my hosts. They were able to offer a double to add to the single I´m in, starting tonight, and another double on Monday, so we´re all set.

Second priority is laundry: today´s my last day in clean clothes otherwise. I found the local laundromat easily enough, but it, as with most of the other shops, is shut tight for Good Friday. I guess I´m back to washing my own clothes again.
posted by Tom at 6:25 AM | link | (0) comments

Thursday, March 28, 2002 16:58
Weather: Cool and overcast
Location: Train from Algeciras to Madrid

So: Holy Week is a Big Deal in Spain. Buses and trains run on reduced holiday schedules. At the same time, all the hostels seem to be full, with all these travellers getting around on fewer transport options. This is not helpful to the last minute traveller I´ve become.

When I got to the train station in Algeciras yesterday, I found that the only remaining train out that day was the overnight to Madrid, but that all the couchettes and sleeper beds were booked.

Plan B, made on the spot, was to reserve the train as far as Ronda, the first stop mentioned in the guide book, and resume the trip the following morning. This plan fell apart when one of the two hostels listed in the guide book turned out to be full, and the other was not willing to stay open for my arrival at 11:30pm.

Plan C was to go back to Tarifa, which had been cheap, warm and friendly the first time I´d passed through. Back at the bus station, I got a 6pm ticket. Then I went back to the train station (fortunately they were basically next door to each other) to reserve a spot on today´s 3pm train to Madrid.

In Tarifa, it was windy, cloudy, cold and damp. The Hostal Africa, where I had stayed before, was full. By this point I´d been travelling for 26 hours and badly needed to dump my stuff, have a bath, and get some food. I checked a map of the town posted outside the tourist office, and headed towards a couple of possible hotels.

The first one I came to had no single rooms, but my this point I wasn´t prepared to be fussy. The double was a bit over my budget at €49.50, but it was clean, comfortable, and had a modern bathroom, so I took it.

The next day, this morning, was dark, very windy, and gloomy. Light drizzle made it all the less pleasant. Since I wasn´t scheduled to get on the train until 3, I had some time, but also an important deadline: with a 9 pm arrival time in Madrid, I needed to book myself somewhere to stay before I left. The first couple of calls I made from the hotel room using Canada Direct, but the phone was set on pulse dialling (instead of tone) so I had to use the verbal recognition approach, which was slow and frustrating. I decided it would be faster to get a phone card and use the public phones.

I´ll spare you the gory details of my fumbling with the Spanish phone system, but it took much longer than it should have to find anywhere in Madrid with any rooms at all. Finally I managed to secure a single room for at least one night, with the possibility of another room (for Paul) tomorrow... Not perfect, but the best I could do. I left the phone booth to the two teenagers who´d been waiting outside for 15 minutes, picked up my bags, and went to line up for the bus.

It started to rain, quite hard. I huddled in a doorway, almost out of the rain, from 12:10 until 1:25, long past when I´d expected the bus to arrive, but then I didn´t realize at first that it was on a holiday schedule. It still should have arrived by 1:15, so at 1:30 I joined five other travellers and split a minivan taxi to Algeciras.

Shortly after getting to Algeciras, one of the other people who had been waiting at the bus stop, an American, came into the train station. Apparently the bus had shown up within a minute of us leaving in the taxi. I guess it was just one of those days.

Since then, the day´s been ok. The train left on time and nothing else has gone wrong. Still, I´ll be happy to get to Madrid and get the day over with. Maybe tomorrow I´ll have better luck again. At least tomorrow Paul will arrive and there´ll be someone to share bad travel days with! :-)
posted by Tom at 6:14 PM | link | (0) comments

12:37 (1:37 Spanish time)

Well, my travel plans for today have gone a bit ¨pear-shaped¨, to quote my English friends. That is to say, they´re messed up and I´ve got to figure out what to do next.

In retrospect, I should have gone straight to the port and headed for Spain. But I forgot about the one hour time change between the countries, and counted on getting a ferry without having to wait too long. Even as it ended up, it should have worked out, except the ferry was 1 1/2 hours late leaving.

I had spent a pleasant hour sitting in the café waiting for things to open. Eventually, I decided I should head down to the port to buy a ticket there, where offices would already be open, as by 8:20 am the Transmediterranea office downtown showed no signs of life. I made it to the port easily enough, but I had just missed the 8:30 ferry and was told the next one would be at 11.

Now I won´t arrive until 4pm local time... and my train will have left at 3:05! Maybe I can get to Granada tonight?
posted by Tom at 12:45 PM | link | (0) comments

Wednesday, March 27, 2002 07:35
Weather: Sunny and cool
Location: Salon de Thé Metropole, Tangier

Although there were apparently no places to be had in the couchette car (see previous post) my compartment (with 4 couchettes) only had two occupants: me and a Moroccan woman from Marrakesh who was going on holiday for a few days. It was stiflingly hot, with no air conditioning, but once we were underway with the window open it cooled to a comfortable temperature quite quickly.

The bedding for the night was a single sheet and a limp pillow. I took out the sheet sleeping bag that I had brought -- quite pleased that it had come in handy since I hadn´t needed it to this point -- and made myself comfortable.

I chetted with the Moroccan woman for about an hour. She had recently married a Canadian man (of Moroccan descent), but prior to their marriage had not been granted a visa to visit him in Montreal. The Canadian authorities took the application fee (Dr. 560, about $75) both times she applied, but in each case her passport came back with a new stamp: ¨Visa Denied¨. This sounded very harsh to me. She said she was able to travel for short periods to Europe, and had studied in Spain, which helped.

About an hour after departure, I decided it was time to get some sleep. I´d kept the blindfold and earplugs from my Lufthansa flight over, and I bid goodnight to the woman, pulled them on, and was soon asleep. I woke up a couple of times during the night, but generally slept very well.

We pulled into Tangier at 6 this morning. There were many petits taxi outside the station, their drivers pushing aggressively to take us, dazed, on roundabout routes to the port. I refused to be rushed, pulled out my guidebook, and planned my next steps. I then caught a taxi and negotiated a reasonable rate to go downtown, where I found a café near the offices of the Transmediterranea ferries and near an Internet café. I would like to be able to show up at the port ready to pass through the gauntlet of touts with ticket in hand.
posted by Tom at 7:55 AM | link | (0) comments

Tuesday, March 26, 2002 19:44
Weather: Cooler, high clouds
Location: Restaurant of Hotel Ibis, Marrakesh

I'm in the restaurant of the big hotel next to the train station. Coincidentally, it's the same hotel I came to Sunday afternoon with Robin, Chloe, Alison & Bob, to swim in their pool. Now, I'm going to eat a light dinner before my train, which leaves in an hour and a quarter. I'm not really hungry, but this is my last chance for a Moroccan dinner and I don't want to be hungry on the train.

The soundtrack on the restaurant's stereo is rather repetitive. That is to say, including the time I sat in the bar outside waiting for the the restaurant to open, I have now been listening to Phil Collins sing "Another Day in Paradise" for 45 minutes straight. This seems heavy-handed to me, but none of the other guests show any sign of having noticed the repetition, let alone the irony of the musical selection.

Essaouira was blanketed in a fog all day today. I had hoped to spend the morning on the beach, but it was much smaller with the tide in, and the water would have been quite cold without the sun. So instead, I bought, wrote and mailed some postcards, had a nice breakfast, packed my bags, and waited for the English foursome to wake up. They weren't up by 9:30, so I spent an hour on the Internet. Robin and Chloe came out at about 11:15, and I moved my bags into their room. Bob and Alison came down at noon. I had lunch as they had breakfast.

Disappointed by the fog, we went for a ramble around the medina. It was a slow walk, with frequent stops to visit the shops. After a little while, we left the tourist-oriented area (carpets, postcards, glazed pottery, woodwork) and got to the real medina (fresh fish, piles of spices, chains of figs, shoes, vegetables, mosques, hammams). On the way back we wandered down a dark alley and came out into a shop-lined atrium. The spice sellers here had sculpted their wares into precarious pyramids, a feast for the eyes and the nose.

We continued on and eventually came to the northern ramparts of the town, lined with cannons. The battlements and towers seemed very safe from attack from the sea beyond: waves crashed high over jagged rocks and spilled down sharp drain holes, surely fearsome enough to wreck any approaching boats. We sat and watched the waves relentlessly throw themselves against the shore.

Returning to the hotel, we passed through the square by the harbour one last time. I went up to change from my shorts into trousers for travel, and brought down my bags. Then I joined the others for a final couple of games of cards. Finally, I said goodbye and walked to the Supratours office to catch my bus.

Onboard the bus, I sat next to a French lady. We chatted the whole way back to Marrakesh. She had been in Morocco for a 10 day inter-parliamentary conference, and had taken a couple of days extra to visit Essaouira. She told me that fogs are quite common there, and indeed, the fog seemed to stop sharply at the city limits as we climbed a low hill inland. She listed with interest to my travel plans -- she will be retiring in August and plans to travel around the Mediterranean, and around the world. When we arrived in Marrakesh she gave me her business card and invited me to call on her the next time I passed through Paris.

The Supratours bus dropped us at their depot in Marrakesh, right next door to the train station. I went in and went to a ticket counter to reserve a couchette. Disaster: they were all spoken for, and I faced a night bumping along in the regular seats. As I walked out of the station, though, it occurred to me to see if I might downgrade to 2nd class and secure a couchette there, so I went back to the counter.

This time, the agent took pity on me. One couchette had been verbally reserved, but the man in question had gone away without actually paying for the reservation. I had my place, and it was time to go to the hotel next door for dinner.

Dinner is now finished, a lovely lamb brochette with fresh mint, rice and vegetables. Time for the train.
posted by Tom at 8:34 PM | link | (0) comments

23:01
Weather: Damp, but warm
Location: Hotel Beau Rivage, Essaouira, Morocco

The young man next to me on the bus to Essaouira was a Moroccan named Rashid. He was on his way from the desert, where he lives most of the time, to Essaouira, where his brother has a carpet shop that he can work at. On this trip, though, he had other hopes: a Belgian girl he'd met a year before had kept in tourch, and now she was back in Morocco. Rashid was hoping to see her again.

He showed me photos from the desert, the carpet shop, and a couple taken during the filming of a British war movie set in the colonial era -- Rashid had worked as an extra. I gave him one of my postcards of Toronto. He was a bit embarrassed by the hard sell tactics his countrymen used in Marrakesh, and said he only passes through the Imperial cities, never stopping there.

We chatted about the World Trade Center attacks, and he asked if I believed bin Laden was responsible. He'd heard that none of the Jews who worked in the World Trade Center had been at work that day. Since I had already heard that that rubbish misinformation had been spread in Arab newspapers, I was ready for it, and stated firmly that it wasn't true, that I thought the evidence of bin Laden's guilt was pretty clear, but that I didn't associate that action with the whole of Islam. We talked about extremists, about the Israeli-Palestinian mess, and about the hope for peace. It was a good discussion, though I'm not sure his views changed as a result.

When we got to Essaouira, Rashid offered to take us to the medina where we could rent an apartment inexpensively. As we picked up our packs, local women swarmed around, offering apartments as well. We brushed them off, jumped in taxis (with Rashid) and headed downtown.

Essaouira is positioned at the northern end of a long, wide, flat beach--10km long, in fact. The shoreline makes a curve, and at the north end is Essaouira's harbour, with a couple of picturesque islands just offshore. On the other side, the rocks get dramatic, and the surf sprays high. Young boys were stretching fishing nets in tidal pools, though it was not clear what they were trying to catch.

Just inland of the harbour, the medina opens into a square, with a short open avenue of cafés and hotels heading off parallel to the shore. Our taxis came up from the south, along the avenue which runs by the beach, and dropped us at the square, from where we could walk into the medina.

Robin, Bob and Alison had been looking in their guidebooks and had picked out a likely-looking hotel. We apologized to Rashid and went in to check it out. The rooms were large, with full bathrooms, though with bare shower heads over a drain in the floor rather than a tub. Each room also had a rather musty smell from the nearby sea and the damp mists. Still, they were relatively cheap--Dr. 120 for me and Dr. 160 for each of the others' shared doubles--and they seemed very pleasant. We signed in, and went down to the café for lunch with Rashid.

After lunch, Rashid went off to his brother's store and we went for a walk along the beach. A high-energy soccer game was taking place with some very skillful play. Further down the beach, horses and camels were standing waiting for tourists. After some distance, Robin, Bob & I decided to have a swim. We stripped down to shorts or boxers and plunged in. The water gradually went deeper at a very consistant pitch, with sand the whole way out, and the waves coming ashore crashed dramatically around us as we attempted to bodysurf. The water was cold, but with the warmth of the air and the sun it was very pleasant.

Afterwards, we got dressed again and I left the rest to go to the bus station. I was able to book a 4pm coach back to Marrakesh for tomorrow, with a connection on to the night train to Tangier. I will need to buy a couchette in Marrakesh, but I have at least a first class ticket. So I'm set for a nice morning tomorrow before my multi-day trek back to Spain begins.

I then wandered around the medina. The shops were oriented much more towards visitors and tourists than those in the medinas of Chefchaouen, Fès and Marrakesh. There were a large number of carpet shops, and wood craft shops, with prominently displayed carved tables and chessboards. I tracked down an Internet shop and did some email, as well as updating the Blog, and met the others back at the hotel shortly after 6:30.

We watched the sun go down from the rooftop of the hotel. Seagulls and other birds wheeled in the sky overhead. A mist was coming in, and the dying light was very dramatic over the offshore islands. It was very clear where the many painters who have made Essaouira their home found their inspiration.

Dinner was a delicious, but fiddly, meal of grilled prawns, french fries and beer on a patio. With the mist in, the air got very damp and much cooler. After dinner we ended up in the café outside playing cards and sipping cafés au lait, the end of a very pleasant day.

RULES OF SHITHEAD (3+ players)

Dealer deals 3 cards face down to each player, and places one card face up on top of each. These are the player's reserve hand. Dealer then deals a hand of 3 cards to each player. Remaining cards form the deck. At this point, before play, players may trade cards from their hands with those face up in their reserve, to (generally) improve the reserve.

Play begins in a clockwise manner. Each player may play 1-4 cards of the same value. The value must be equal to or greater than the previous player's card(s). If a player is unable to play, they must pick up the pile of played cards. A player may choose to pick up the pile rather than play. After each play, if a player has less than 3 cards remaining in their hand they draw from the deck sufficient cards to restore the minimum of 3. Once the deck is exhausted and a player's hand has been used up, players play from the face up cards in their reserve, and then, from face down cards picked up (randomly) one at a time into the hand. The objective is to run out of cards first.

Special cards:
2 - can be played any time (except after 8). Subsequent play picks up from 2, i.e., the 2 resets the escalating count.
3 - can be played any time (except after 8). An invisible card, it does not change the count, the next player must continue playing from the previous player's count. (e.g. Q, 3, next player must play Q, K or A.)
4 - shown and discarded, rather than played. Cannot be used after an 8. Next player must pick up the pile of played cards and lose their turn, unless they are able to play a 4 in turn, in which case the obligation to pick up the pile continues around to the following player.
7 - next card played must be less than or equal to 7.
8 - next card played must be greater than or equal to 8 (i.e. prevents play of 2, 3 or 4).
10 - the played pile is cleared and discarded. The player then plays again.
J - the next player misses their turn. (Variant: the play reverses direction, counter-clockwise instead of clockwise, etc.)
Q - player may then immediately play any other numbered card of the same suit.

If all four cards of a certain value are played next to each other, by one or more players in sequence, the last card acts as a 10, clearing the pile and allowing the player who played it to play again.

RULES OF ARSEHOLE (4+ players)

Dealer deals out the deck to all players. Player to the left of the dealer begins play, or the President in subsequent rounds. Play proceeds clockwise. Players may pass, or play 1-4 cards of a value greater than or equal to the previous player's play, but must play the same number of cards as the previous player. If all players pass, the last player to play may start afresh with 1-4 cards of whatever number they prefer.

The objective is to exhaust one's cards. The first player to do so becomes President. Play continues with the next player to the left, who may start play afresh with any value. Next player to exhaust their cards becomes Vice President. Final two players are Vice Arsehole and Arsehole.

Only the Arsehole may touch cards on the table (and must do so if asked to flip a card that has fallen upside down, etc.) If another player touches the cards, the Arsehole may choose to trade hands with that player, who then becomes the Arsehole.

After then end of play, the Arsehole deals the next hand. Arsehole gives his two highest-value cards to the President, and Vice Arsehole gives his single highest-value card to the Vice President. The President can then choose any two of his cards to give to the Arsehold, and the Vice President any one of his cards to give to the Vice Arsehole. President then begins play for the next round.
posted by Tom at 11:10 PM | link | (0) comments

Monday, March 25, 2002 10:52
Weather: Hot & sunny again
Location: Bus, on the way to Essaouira

I missed making a diary entry yesterday: I spent the day hanging out with my new English friends. After a late start in the morning, we walked south, hoping to stop in at the tourist office. Unhappily it was closed.

We continued on, going through a busy sook to the entrance of the Saardian tombs. There seemed to be a couple of tour buses' worth of people inside the tombs, so we waited a few minutes for them to clear. When they did, we had a look into the main chambers, beautifully decorated and, in the shade, about 10 degrees cooler than the outside air. Then we wound our way onwards through the medina, coming out at the end of a wide avenue leading back to the Koutoubia mosque, whose minaret towers over the medina.

At this point, the sun was once again getting very hot, and we decided to forgo further sightseeing for the day, in favour of an afternoon by a swimming pool. We took taxis to a luxury hotel in the Nouvelle Ville, paid 70 Dr. each to use the pool, and had a wonderful afternoon of relaxation, reading and playing cards.

As we did, we discussed our next steps. I was enjoying having company on the trips, and was at a bit of a loose end for how best to wrap up my visit to Morocco. The others had a plan to go out to the coast to see Essaouira and Agadir, two beach towns, and sit in the sun for a couple of days. This seemed like an ideal way for me to end up as well, so I planned the following changes to the itinerary:

Monday - bus to Essaouira
Tuesday - bus back to Marrakesh, connection with overnight train to Tangier
Wednesday - ferry to Algeciras, train to Cordoba
Thursday - train to Madrid

To our shock, clouds moved in around 3pm and the air got much cooler. We packed up some time later, and set off to buy tickets. Robin and Chloe went back to the hotel for a nap, and Bob, Alison and I went hunting for the bus station. We were initially tripped up, going to the CTM office where we'd arrived, but were directed towards the Gare Routiere, where all of the bus companies have offices. It turned out that the CTM only ran one bus per day to Essaouira, so we ended up getting 9:30 am tickets with another company, despite misgivings over the quality of the bus that might be used.

We returned to the hotel and picked up Robin. Alison had not managed to see the square the previous day, so we went around it again. If anything, it was more busy than on the Saturday. However, a few fat rain drops started falling as we completed our tour, so we went back to the hotel to regroup before dinner.

In the evening, we had dinner on a hotel terrace just down the street from us. The food was excellent, and we had a great view over the square and the Koutoubia minaret, lit up by spotlights. I enjoyed a terrine with sausages, which was much spicier than the couscous terrines I had had in Chefchaouen. After a stop in at a patisserie for ice cream, we called it a night. I was too tired to write my diary!
posted by Tom at 10:52 AM | link | (0) comments

Saturday, March 23, 2002 18:48
Weather: Hot & steamy, slight haze
Location: The atrium of the Hotel Gazelle, Marrakesh

My alarm clock woke me at a horribly early hour of the morning and I finished my packing and moved out. At 6am it was barely light out, and the streets were more or less empty. A lonely petit taxi waited outside the hotel and I was at the bus station in just a couple of minutes.

A healthy lineup demonstrated the popularity of the 6:30 bus. I got in line behind a quartet of young english travellers, and worked through the process of checking in my pack and taking my seat. The bus was full, with a 20-year old Moroccan as my neighbour.

By unanimous consent, the blinds were pulled and everyone dozed off. When I woke, the bus was winding its way up to a low mountain pass. The fields on either side of the road were a startling emerald green. We stopped at two moderately sized villages with very un-Moroccan architecture: detached houses with little gardens, steeply pitched roofs, and tree-lined avenues. At the second (apparently called "Fellah"--I started humming "Fellah from Fortune"), I took advantage of the brief stop to buy a small bottle of water and a couple of pieces of fresh corn bread.

The bus continued on. We wound our way down the other side of the pass, past small farmhouses and shephards with small flocks of sheep or herds of goats. We made several more unremarkable stops. Gradually, the land grew drier, the fields less green. Finally, the high snow-capped peaks of the Atlas mountains came into view, but by then we had descended into Marrakesh's wide valley.

As we arrived in Marrakesh it was clear that the desert was near. Bemused-looking dromedaries stood around dopily, and palm trees grew everywhere. The unirrigated land tended towards dry cactii, brushweeds, or simply bare dirt.

When we arrived in town, the English group invited me to join them in hunting for a hotel. We piled into two taxis and headed down to the medina. Unlike those of Fès and Chefchaouen, this one was clearly (unfortunately) accessible by car.

We ran into a problem there: hordes of tourists had filled most of the hotels. When we asked the taxi drivers to take us to a second, nearby hotel, they started off following their own agenda, driving us to an expensive 3-star back in the Nouvelle Ville. We rebelled when we saw its prices, and headed back to the medina again. There, we paid off the taxi drivers (who had clearly gouged us) and walked into the medina to find a hotel.

We quickly found one, labelled Hotel Gazelle in the guide book and on the signs outside, but Hotel Les Visiteurs Koutoubia inside and on their business cards. N'importe: they had rooms, so we checked in. Each floor has two shared bathrooms and a single (cold) shower, but it was cheap and central.

Next stop: checking out the central square. One of our party, Alison, had had serious motion sickness all day and was too drained to move. But Bob, Cloe, Rob and I wanted a drink after the long bus ride. We walked into the Djemaa el-Fna, the huge open central area of the medina. Cafés lined the eastern side, and we picked one with a roof terrace from where we could see some of the action. Sipping mint teas and soft drinks, we looked out over the medina of Marrakesh.

In the afternoon sun, the square was crammed with people. A central area was marked out for food stalls, each one ringed by a u-shape of benches and tables for its customers. Around, a horde of humanity resolved itself into dozens of individual crowds, attracted to particular street vendors or performers. While many of the crowd were foreigners, it was clear that most were Moroccans out for a good time.

Surrounding the square, the north and west sides were sooks and other shops. The sound end funnelled past an impromptu parking lot to a small manicured park, and to the main streets of Marrakesh. And to the southeast and eastern sides, the cafés on the edge gave way to pedestrian streets, with hotels, restaurants, banks and shops lining their sides.

After the refreshments had had a chance to soothe our nerves, we set off into the thick of the crowds. Here, salesmen, beggars and street performers all had their pitches, and all were quite persistant if they sensed the slightest interest. We stopped to watch a small group of musicians playing a dance for two veiled figures with finger cymbals. Though they were obviously talented, it seemed that at least one of these "women" was a man behind the veils.

Further on, snake charmers blew piercing ambulance warbles through their clarinets at dazed-looking cobras who appeared completely docile. A group of acrobats took turns tumbling, then formed a human pyramid. Story tellers were ringed by crowds of appreciative onlookers.

It seemed a bit hard to believe that all of this was not put on for the benefit of tourists, as indeed it was--but the tourists were Moroccans, as they always had been. We were wandering through the original Disneyland.
posted by Tom at 6:59 PM | link | (0) comments

Before I get started, I wanted to let you know that Blogger Pro now lets me send you my journal updates as a daily email. Let me know if you'd like me to set you up on this, in case you want to stay current but don't want to keep having to remember to visit.

Friday, March 22 20:04
Weather: Not a cloud in the sky. A scorcher.
Location: Cyber Café, Boul. Mohammed V, Fès.

I had a wonderful day getting to know Fès. I got up early again and wandered out for a coffee and a danish (yes, really) at a Patisserie on Avenue de France. Then back to the hotel where I met the guide.

Turned out that despite yesterday's misgivings, he did have the Ministry of Tourism accreditation as an official guide. It also turned out that he wasn't going to be guiding me after all: he turned me over to a colleague (also accredited), a young, smartly-dressed man with a fluent command of French (but no English), who turned out to be just great. We took a cab up to one of the 9 gates into the old medina (Fès el-Bali). A few steps inside, and we were in a cool narrow street of merchants, a Sook.

The medina is split into many, many little neighbourhoods. Some of these specialize in a single craft, such as tannery, metalwork, bulk sales of spices, woodwork, or textiles. These neighbourhoods are run by a master craftsman, who decides who gets to be an apprentice, and when they are ready to own their own shop; basically, the same as the guild system that used to dominate Europe.

The Sook neighbourhoods, by contrast, are the medieval Moroccan equivalent of supermarkets, with side-by-side booths selling vegetables, chickens, bread, etc.

The whole guild system is apparently under a lot of pressure, as upstart outsiders have moved in, set up shop in non-guild-controlled parts of the medina, and started making lower quality goods at lower prices. (Walmart has not yet made it here, however. Just as well...)

Each neighbourhood, the guide explained, has a set of essential services: a public bathhouse, or hammam; a mosque, with a school attached; a public fountain, now mostly non-functional as 90% of the houses have their own running water; a public oven for baking bread. Often, a neighbourhood will also have a caravanserail, basically a hotel for visiting caravans of merchants from other towns. These are square or rectangular, multi-story buildings, each centred around an open atrium. Rooms above open onto carved wooden balconies overlooking the atrium.

We wandered through the medina for most of the morning. The guide took a break and let me explore the Medensa el-Attarine, a caravanserail that has been restored and reopened as a Merinid museum under a UNESCO grant. (The whole of the old city has been designated a UN World Heritage Site, and money is flowing in to restore and maintain the outer walls and selected buildings inside.) We also stopped at several craft shops, whose owners showed off their goods and explained the manufacturing process. They were all trying to sell things, of course, but were gracious when I declined to buy; a far cry from the hardball sales pitches of Thailand!

Many of the stores were shut, as it is a Friday, the Muslim day of prayers, but I was actually pleased about that. It cut down on the swarms of people who might otherwise be expected to move through the narrow streets. Goods are still moved by donkey and hand cart, as cars could not possibly fit into the thin passageways. We passed several donkeys, and stepped over the evidence of many more.

We looked into the Kairaouine Mosque, although as a non-Muslim I can't enter it. Through the finely carved doorways, I could see prayer halls, elaborately carved and decorated archways, and fine tapestries and carpets. The Medersa Bou Inania, a mosque which is normally open for visitors, is currently under renovation.

At the end of the tour, we took a long taxi drive back towards the Ville Nouvelle, and stopped for a quick photo of the grand entrance to the Royal Palace (closed to visitors). My guide also pointed out the Borj Nord, the castle overlooking the medina from the north, which I resolved to return to in the afternoon.

After the tour ended, I had a few minutes before the lunchtime opening of many of the restaurants. I quickly found another 10 Dr./hr Internet café. One hour later, it was time for lunch. I walked back up the Boulevard Mohammed V to Restaurant Fish Friture, where I ordered (and highly enjoyed) a pigeon pie: they're called Pastilla, they're made from pigeon meat, eggs, almonds, cinnamon and sugar, encased in pastry, they're a specialty of Fès, and they're delicious. (I have a photo.)

After lunch, I went back to the bus station. I had originally planned to take the train to Marrakesh, but the tannery store owner and the guide talked me into taking the bus trip over the High Atlas mountains, instead of the train which goes out to the coast and down, avoiding the mountains altogether. So it's a 6:30 am, nine-hour bus trip for me tomorrow. Can't wait! (Bzuh.)

Following the bus station, I picked up a British newspaper and stopped at a café to drink mint tea, read the paper, and wait for the worst of the midday heat to pass. At about 3:30, I caught a taxi up to the Borj Nord. There, I toured the Arms Museum in the castle, wandered over to the cliff edge outside, and goggled at the fantastic view of the city. I took pictures, and gradually made my way back down to the medina as the sun began a slow descent over the hills. There was a large group waiting by the Bab Guissa (gate) for taxis, so when the bus came by I hopped onboard, paid Dr. 2.50, and rode back to the Ville Nouvelle for dinner.

After dinner, I wandered out onto the streets again. After sundown, the city comes alive: the heat has cooled to a pleasant temperature, people swarm the sidewalks nibbling ice cream cones, and most of the stores are doing their most sales of the day. Morocco is very young: 70% of the population is under the age of 35, according to my guide. I think they're all here, enjoying the evening.
posted by Tom at 3:28 PM | link | (0) comments

Thursday, March 21, 2002 21:17
Weather: Hot and sunny again!
Location: Grand Hotel Fès, Fès, Morocco

I stayed up last night and finished One Hit Wonder, which was a mistake: now I'm out of reading material, and Morocco has far fewer foreign language outlets than, say, Spain. (Not counting French. There are French newspapers everywhere... I guess I could use the practice...)

This morning I got up and packed everything. I went back into the medina for another lovely omelette breakfast with mit tea, then strolled down to the post office to drop off yesterday's post cards. When I told the lady behind the counter I was off to Fès, she suggested I take a grands taxi from there to see Moul ay Yaacoub, about 20 km away. I wasn't completely clear on what was there, but gather that it's ruins of some kind.

That duty done, I went back into the medina to visit the Kasbah's gardens and museum. Dr. 10 got me in the door. Behind the fortress walls, the garden was a little haven from the bustle of the square outside, whose noise was completely muffled. However, the garden itself was under maintenance, with a half-dozen men digging up some of the pathways and carting around various plants. I took refuge in the castle's main building, which housed the museum. This comprised of one room for local clothing (photos of young brides and grooms suggested that traditional marriages are between teenagers), one room for weapons (mainly turn-of-the-century long bore flintlock rifles with carved stocks) and various smaller examples of pottery and woodwork.

It didn't take long to finish in the museum, so I still had some time before my 1pm bus. I went back to the Internet café for another round of emails and Blogging, and then finally traipsed up to my hotel to pick up my bags and my passport, and to pay for my stay.

Last stop was lunch: I'd promised the young proprietor of the Al Kasbah restaurant that I would return for lunch today. He spoke excellent English and had been a great host yesterday for lunch, so I went back and enjoyed a lamb couscous before getting on the road. As I left, he gave me several of his business cards to pass on to any friends who might be coming to Chefchaouen!

With my heavy pack, I walked out of the medina and flagged a petit taxi to the bus station. I got there in plenty of time and sat in the shade until the bus arrived. I'd been worried that it might prove crowded--according to the Lonely Planet it can be difficult getting a spot on the Chefchaouen-Fès route--but there was actually plenty of room and I was able to spread out.

I dozed initially, but woke as we started coming to the middle of the Rif mountain range. The Rif mountains seemed to be mostly green, with small forests and farm plots everywhere. Given the heat of the sun, I can only guess that it must have rained very recently, as the vegetation was still thriving.

We made a couple of short stops on the way, but were in Fès by 5pm. As we left the Rif mountains and passed into the Middle Atlas area, the land got flatter and drier. Many of the farms had aqueducts set up to irrigate their fields, though none were in active use and some were in obvious disrepair.

Fès itself seemed to take up an awful amount of horizon, spread out across a wide, fairly flat valley. The bus pulled through the outskirts of town and turned in to stop at the CTM depot in the Nouvelle Ville. As I picked up my luggage, I was in turn picked up by a local tour guide, who walked me to the hotel and arranged to meet me tomorrow for a tour of the city. His price matched the one listed as standard in the Lonely Planet, so I'm guessing he's legit, though I'll ask to see his identification in the morning.

The Grand Hotel Fès was recommended to me by Molly. It's a large colonial-style 3-star hotel, with high ceilings, large western-style bathrooms, and old but solid furniture. It seemed very expensive after Chefchaouen, but Dr. 350 per night is still only C$50, so I suppose it's not too bad. It was verynice to have the space to do my laundry, which I did before dinner.

Dinner was an Andalucian pizza (topped with tuna, olives, hardboiled egg and green peppers) at a place around the corner. Very tasty.

Now for an early night. Lots of walking tomorrow!
posted by Tom at 9:44 PM | link | (0) comments

Wednesday, March 20, 2002 15:56
Weather: Hot and sunny
Location: Halfway up a Moroccan mountain above the town of Chefchaouen

I'm sitting in the shade of a tree, because the sun is extraordinarily hot. Just over a short rise the path goes down to a ruined mosque above the city of Chefchaouen. The call for evening prayers has started at the various functional mosques in the valley below, and from here it sounds like a distant wing of dive bombers, minus the bombs of course.

After a lazy wakeup and slow start to the day, the shock of yesterday's arrival in Morocco has somewhat worn off. I took a stroll into Chefchaouen's medina, and had an omelette at a café in the main square. Then I wandered off to an Internet café and settled in for the duration of the morning.

Stereotypes fell easily. The administrator for the computers was a young lady with excellent french, who clearly knew what she was doing, helping many of the customers with little problems. The woman next to me, dressed traditionally, seemed to be writing a love letter to "un homme sympa". (I didn't pry -- just caught a glance.) Once I'd worked out how to switch the keyboard layout from the french AZERTY to the english QWERTY I was set, and spent a happy 2 1/2 hours bringing the journal up to date, catching up on email, and checking train schedules. Afterwards, I brought myself up to date on my favorite cartoons (Doonesbury, Dilbert, Sherman's Lagoon) and inpassing.org, I paid up and left. The total was remarkably cheap: only Dr. 25, about C$4. (It was more than that for half an hour in Seville!)

Afterwards, I turned the corner and walked downhill towards the bus station. This was composed of a smallish building with a CTM (bus company) official in an office, a food counter, and a couple of dirty bathrooms; plus a small pavillion waiting area, and a parking lot, with three old-looking buses. I bought a ticket to Fes for Dr. 52 and a small bottle of water. Recalling that the CTM bus I'd seen yesterday had been a large, modern model, I hoped for a better bus than the three on display.

Having completed my ticket purchase, I trekked back up the steep hill towards the medina. I got a bit lost looking for the restaurant I'd chosen from the guide, so I picked another just of the main square, which sold me an excellent chicken kebab and a coke, with cookies and mint tea for desert. I started out on my own with a copy of the Economist, but when a young englishman came in I invited him to join me and we compared notes on our trips so far.

Following lunch, I wanted to go around the Kasbah's gardens and museum, but they were closed for the afternoon. So I walked up through the medina and out the far side of the town, winding my way uphill past several small farms and a cemetary, until I found a shady spot to sit, read my book, and write a postcard or two.

A little girl named Nadia joined me as I walked, asking me to take her photo. So I did, and gave her Dr. 5 for the privilege, though I turned down her brother's rather less coherent request to serve as a guide further along the path. Apparently, she's been studying her french more than him!
posted by Tom at 4:17 PM | link | (0) comments

Tuesday, March 19, 2002 18:50
Weather: Hot, and wall-to-wall blue skies
Location: Room 12, Hotel Marrakesh, Chefchaouen, Morocco

What a day! It's very hard to believe that I had lunch in Seville yesterday. I'm in a whole other world here...

I got up at 7:30 this morning, had a quick shower, and packed my bags for the big trip. I was out of the hotel around 8:25, and walked up to the bus stop just as the first Cadiz-Algeciras bus of the day was pulling up. I hurredly bought a ticket in the office as the other passengers boarded, then dumped my pack in the hold and climbed on board. I'm glad I hadn't stopped for breakfast! A note for next time, though: Tarifa seems geared for early risers, and there were several cafés I could have stopped at.

Before long, the bus was pulling into the station at Algeciras. After asking for directions to the tourist office (my Spanish vocab having improved somewhat by now) I set off towards the docks. I made a short detour to a supermarket that the tourist office had highlighted on a map for me, and picked up a small bottle of water and a packet of biscuits. Opposite the supermarket, a modern-looking café served me café con leche and a passable croissant, using up the rest of my Euro change.

Down at the docks there seemed to be dozens of disreputable looking places selling tickets to the ferries. I'm not sure what their angle is--surely they can't charge more when the ferry company offices directly opposite are selling the same thing? Anyway, I went to the main Trasmeditteranean Ferries office and got a one-way to Ceuta for just over €20.

I took a seat on the upper deck and before long we were off. The trip took just under an hour, and provided a great view of what I assume was Gibraltar on the left-hand side. The strait was fairly calm and the voyage smooth.

Ceuta is a Spanish free port on the coast of Morocco. It's actually part of Spain, so you don't go through customs at the port, but rather, when leaving the town. This turned out not to be an advantage.

I located the tourist office near the port, got straightforward directions to the bus stop, and caught the #7 to the "frontera". It wound through narrow Ceuta streets and made several side stops en route, but eventually I got off and made the short walk to the border crossing.

This border is not like any I've been through before, though I guess that's understandable as I've never gone overland from a 1st world country to a 3rd world country before. Friendly, but well-armed Spanish border guards waved me through their side of the border, into a long corridor of mesh fence, enclosed on top as well as the sides. The equivalent fence going in the other direction on the other side of the road was packed full of people trying to enter Ceuta, at least a couple of hundred, and it didn't look like it was moving very fast.

The corridor then opened into the moderate chaos of no-man's land. After passing under a large arched gate, I was waved by a Moroccan agent into a foreign nationals area. There, it was not at all clear what one did next. A man waving bits of paper on the left called out to me, but he did not look at all like an official so I assumed he was trying to sell me something and moved on. After pausing to reorder my bags, I went over to a guard and politely asked where I needed to go to pass through customs. He waved over the other man, gave me the declaration form he'd been trying to offer me, and pointed me to a customs counter.

There were agents inside, but they were working their way through a stack of passports belonging to a Czech Rafting team that was crossing the border in two cars. I got ready for a long wait, and was soon joined by a Frenchman, an Italian, and a trio of rasta-haired twenty-somethings (whose nationality I didn't work out). Soon after, a large tour group of Germans showed up, and just as the agents were finishing with the Czechs the Germans somehow jumped the queue and the rest of us were left to fume quietly. In the grand scheme, it wasn't a major wait--I was through in a little over an hour, by about 12:30--so I took it in stride and moved on.

Next step was to get onboard a "grands taxi" to Tetouan, the first city, which I wanted to pass through on the way to Chefchaouen. There was no problem locating the grands taxis--there were probably 150 of them lined up--but it seemed suspiciously like I was the only person wanting to go to Tetouan. The economics of the grands taxis are that they seat six plus the driver, and without other passengers the group of drivers who'd cornered me wanted me to pay the full amount of the trip, about Dr. 120. This is about C$16, so it wasn't exhorbitant, but it was certainly more than the going rate for one person! I stuck in my heels, but after about 45 minutes of waiting we simultaneously ran out of patience and I was driven off, negotiating a token Dr. 5 discount as we went.

We passed along a gorgous coastline, with sandy beaches and the occasional hotel on the left, and green fields and pastures on the right. The mountains rose up in the distance, bare brown with a thin white icing on the highest peaks. I chatted with the driver in French about his family in Tetouan, the mountains, and his brothers in Belgium and France. As we pulled into downtown Tetouan about half an hour later, he tried to convince me to continue with him to Chefchaouen for "only" Dr. 215 more. I politely declined, ignored the fact that he hadn't offered me my Dr. 5 change on Dr. 120, and set off to find the bus station.

I was swiftly intercepted by another grands taxi man, who offered a trip to Chefchaouen split with other people. Since the cost of this would be much more reasonable, I followed him up to the grands taxi lines where, in fact, there were no other people and I was to take on faith that they would be picked up en route, to bring down my cost, of Dr. 200!

Not being born yesterday, I decided that two of these extravagant solo trips in a single day would be stupid, and went back to the bus station. Sure enough, a bus was leaving within the hour for Chefchaouen (I'd been assured by the grands taxi man the next bus wasn't until 7pm) and the ticket cost... Dr. 15. Much better! I paid up and had a seat to wait for the bus.

The bus station is used by several bus companies, more than 10, each of which having their own ticket agents, prices, and schedules. These are in no way made easy to decipher, so freelance agents pick up foreigners like me at the door, take them to an appropriate (one hopes) ticket window, and hope to take a cut and a tip as their compensation. I was the only obvious foreigner in the place, so I made it about 2 feet in the door before one of these guys got me. But in fact, he was quite helpful and I'm not at all sure I would have found the bus without him. His other client was a young lady dressed western-style, travelling to Meknès on the same bus. The bus was a bit late pulling in, and I was pessimistically thinking I'd been ripped off again, but shortly afterwards our agent came and navigated us down to it.

The lower level of the bus station was dark and chaotic. Ten or more buses were parked in the different bays, with no form of identification of their destination or company. Travellers mixed with salesmen and -boys of all sorts, and there was a constant clamour of the bus engines and the stink of exhaust.

The bus was dark and crowded. Most of the seats were already taken with passengers who had arrived from a prior stop. A steady stream of the salesmen passed up the aisle, selling biscuits, pies, watches, running shoes, rings, necklaces, pistachios, and chocolate. I put up with the heat for about 10 minutes before giving up and getting off the bus to wait in the relative cool outside.

After about a half hour stop, we set off. The seat I ended up in had little legroom, as someone's packages were jammed under the seat in front, and I had a last-minute neighbour, so it was quite cramped. With my daypack on my knees (my clothes pack being (hopefully) safe below) I scanned the countryside as we drove towards the mountains.

We passed several would-be passengers en route, but they were clearly out of luck: the bus was full. I opened my biscuits and gave a few to the guy next to me, who spoke a little french. After a while I flipped to the Moroccan Arabic section of the guidebook and tried a few phrases out on him. He seemed amused and pleased, and helpfully corrected my frequent pronunciation problems. His name was Rashid, and he was on his way to Chefchaouen for work.

Finally, after about an hour and a half, we were in Chefchaouen. I had identified a hotel that sounded good in the Lonely Planet guide, so after a quick orientation (and zipping my day bag back onto the clothes pack which had, indeed, survived the trip) I set off for it. I had a couple of offers of help to find a hotel (or some drugs!) on the way, but I was in the home stretch and took no heed. I splurged: Dr. 120 for a large room with an adjoining private shower and my own hole-in-the-ground toilet.

I then took one and a half hours to write up this diary entry, which covered only 8 1/2 hours of travel... Clearly a very full day! After stopping for a quick dinner in the Medina, I crashed.
posted by Tom at 8:52 PM | link | (0) comments

Monday, March 18, 2002 18:32
Location: Playa de los Lances (beach), Tarifa, Spain
Weather: Warm and sunny, finally! Windy...

Today was a total triumph. I finally feel as though I'm beginning to understand and appreciate Spain. There's a certain rhythm: a quick breakfast around 8:30, busy morning, lunch from 12:30 to 2:00, slow afternoon of work until 5:00, 2-3 hours of serious people watching from a café, leisurely dinner, then party from 11 to 2am. (Well, Fridays and Saturdays, anyway.) I could get used to that schedule!

I had a number of things to do this morning, but knew nothing would open before 8 at the earliest, so that's when I checked out of the hostal. The weather had warmed up somewhat, but was still very humid. With all my belongings, I trekked through the narrow alleys for the umpteenth time, down to the cathedral and the post office. I was one of the first through the doors when the post office opened at 8:30. Then, back up to the Barrio for breakfast next door to the hostal (I suppose I could have left my bags there to save the weight), followed by walking downtown again (only 5-10 minutes each way, b.t.w., not an excessive distance) to find the laundromat and drop off my dirty clothes as well as the heavier pack.

Now lightly laden, I set off on my secondary tasks. I went back to a foreign language bookstore I'd passed earlier that morning, and was pleased to find in the English section a new novel by Lisa Jewell, exactly the kind of lightweight book to read while travelling. (See the book reviews section for reviews of other books by her.)

Then, the first check of the day: I had hoped to go see the Alcázar, but it turned out that it was closed on Mondays. (This is normal for museums in Spain.) However, the Lonely Planet assured me that there were interesting tours to be had at the bullfighting arena, so I walked down there.

I'd always had a pretty naive romantic view of bullfighting, and the tour was presented to support such a view, with museum exhibits highlighting paintings of famous bullfighters of the past and trophies. However, I was disturbed to learn (and yes, maybe I have been hiding under a rock all these years) that the bulls hardly ever survive their encounters with the Torreadores. Apparently, only the president of the bullfighters association--who has a reserved box next to the royal box in the arena--may decide to grant leniency to a bull which has fought particularly well. This happens less than 1% of the time... and bad luck to any bulls that may fight without the president in attendance. Fox hunting in England is one thing--at least there's a good chance the fox will escape, and foxes do pose a legitimate threat to henhouses--but bullfighting seems like an obviously outdated blood sport that should at least be reformed to a non-lethal state. Guess I'm joining the animal rights activists on this one.

After leaving the arena I had about half an hour to kill before I should pick up my laundry. I stopped in at another Internet café and dumped yet more through Blogger to my web page. On the way, I also managed to pick up a copy of the Herald Tribune, assuring myself yet more precious reading time.

My laundry was neatly folded and bagged when I got to the laundromat, so I paid, shouldered my combined pack again, and started up towards the train station. I passed a store selling the current issue of the Economist. Truly it was a wonderous threefold literary day for me.

The train down to Cadiz was one of Spanish Rail's Talgo 200 trains, in the luxury class with the AVE (alta velocidade--TGV) trains through not as fast. I had booked a seat in 1st class, and the reservation alone cost €16.50. I found out why: there was a constant airline-styled service, a light lunch, wine, coffee and soft drinks. So I passed a very pleasant 100 minutes down to Cadiz.

There, I finally found sunshine and almost gave up my plan to press on to Tarifa. But knowing that I wanted to be at Algeciras as early as possible tomorrow to get a good start into Morocco, I dragged myself over to the bus station and bought a ticket. What a pleasant surprise: the bus was only €6.56!

As we drove along I watched the landscape change. The flat coastline around Cadiz became hilly, the low scrubland picked up trees, horses and cows, and the wind rose. At one point, we passed a very strange sight: an open mine pit on the left (inland) side of the road was apparently being used as a graveyard for small fishing boats. Further on, the hills grew steeper and rockier as we approached Tarifa, the southernmost town in Europe. The tops of the hills were covered in windmills, spinning furiously.

Tarifa at last, and I had finally found the Mediterranean. Warm, sunny, and above all, laid back. The town is quite ancient, but I wasn't here to sightsee but to rest and prepare for Morocco, only 14km away, clearly visible on the other side of the strait. I checked into a lovely Pensão (Hostal Africa) for a mere €13, and headed down to the beach.
posted by Tom at 6:32 PM | link | (0) comments

19:45

Apparently getting up at 6:30 am on a Sunday in Seville puts you in a pretty exclusive club. When I set out at 7:30 to try and do some laundry, get some breakfast, and see some sights, everything was closed. I did see a few cars, but very few pedestrians, and almost no open stores. And closed stores in Seville are very closed: steel shutters and heavy locks everywhere. After wandering for a while I somehow managed to find the Museo de Bellas Artes and arrived moments after it opened at 9 am. It's a beautiful building with several open courtyards and a phenominal chapel, and its collection was also excellent, though I confess to be getting a bit tired of 17th c. Iberian paintings of the Annunciation.

Once I´d finished at the Museo, I wandered back to the train station. I had had a few different ideas about where to go next from Seville, the main options being Cordoba (an important city and destination itself, as well as on the recommended train route to Algeciras), Algeciras )an ugly industrial city but the jumping-off point for ferries to Morocco) and Tarifa (near Algeciras at Europe's southernmost point, a nice seaside town but without a railway station). At the Seville train station, I deliberated for a few minutes and decided to try for Tarifa. To allow myself time to complete my laundry before departure (the laundromat being naturally closed on Sundays, and the hostal hostile to the idea of using their sinks as laundry basins,) I booked a spot on the 1:19 train to Cadiz, from where I am assured there is a frequent bus service to Tarifa. I´m not going to book my accomodation there yet because I´m not sure where I´m arriving, but hopefully I´ll be able to call ahead from Cadiz.

After the train station, I went back to the hostal and made a lunch from the leftovers of the last couple of days´ picnics. (There were a lot of leftovers--I was stuffed!) I set out again at 3pm to return to the Internet café and go see the Alcázar, a royal palace originally built in AD 913 as a muslim palace. When I got there at 4:30, I was disappointed to find that the Lonely Planet had got the wrong hours listed and in fact the Alcázar was closed for the afternoon. I´m hoping to stop in tomorrow before leaving Seville.

Since there wasn´t much else to do, I joined the throng of tourists heading into the cathedral. The interior of this, one of the largest churches in Europe, did not disappoint. It had dozens of richly decorated chapels and statues and devotional artwork everywhere, but the place was packed with clamoring hordes, most following guides with raised umbrellas, and taking flash photos (ignoring the posted rules to the contrary). I joined the queue heading up an interior ramp in the Giralda, formerly the minaret of the 12th c. mosque that was used as the starting point for the construction of the cathedral. After climbing up about 150´, we were rewarded with excellent views in all directions. Still, the crowd behind continued to press forwards, so after taking a couple of photos I made room for them and headed back down to street level.

After yet another experience of getting lost in the Barrio de Santa Cruz I made it back to the hostal for a nap before dinner. Time to go get it now...
posted by Tom at 7:59 PM | link | (0) comments

Sunday, March 17, 2002. 07:00.

Location: Hostal Bienvenido, room 19, Seville.
Weather: Cold, scattered cloud.

I´m sitting in a solidly-constructed but unheated room on the rooftop of the Hostal Bienvenido, a low-budget guest house in the Barrio de Santa Cruz district of Seville. I realized as I was going to bed last night that I hadn´t done a journal entry all day, so I have to go back to Evora to catch up. That was Friday afternoon.

I poked around a couple more narrow streets and tried (unsuccessfully) to find my way into the Capela dos Ossos of the Igreja de São Francisco. Eventually I gave up and headed back to the train station.

My route to Seville was suggested by the inter-rail.org web site´s computer. I´m not sure if it would have occurred to a human agent. It involved a short train ride back to Casa Branca, then a train heading north towards Porto, which I left at Santarem, there to intercept the Lisbon-Madrid night train. This convoluted trip meant that I avoided having to get from on Lisbon train station to another, which was a good thing. It proceeded very smoothly, so around 10:45 I was being shown to my bunk in the train.

The room was pitch black. The other three beds had been occupied by travellers at previous stops, all attempting to get some sleep, none especially enthused about me blundering in (and even less enthused about the loud woman on her cellphone outside in the corridor). I quickly stowed my bags, stripped down to underwear, and switched off the tiny overhead light in the bunk.

I expected to have some trouble sleeping, but four nights in Lisbon with the streetcars outside my window had inured me to the sounds of the rails. I shortly dozed off for one of my best night of sleep so far.

We were awakened about half an hour before arrival by the guard pounding on the door. He moved off down the corridor and we blearily collected our things. One of the other residents of my compartment was an American from New Hampshire, Lee. As he and I turned out to both be headed for Seville, we set out together across Madrid to the correct station.

The subway proved to be easy to navigate, extensive, and reasonably priced. We had to go 15 stops, but were soon at Madrid Atocha. Here we lined up for reservations on the high speed AVE trains to Seville. We weren´t able to get onto the 10am train, and had to settle for the smoking section on the 11am train. This gave us some time to grab some breakfast, pick up picnic supplies for lunch, and sit in Atocha´s lovely indoor park.

Lee turned out to be a retired Wall Street investment banker in his early 40´s, who´s spending a year living in Frankfurt and travelling all over Europe, before deciding what to do with the rest of his life. He´s thinking of becoming a botanist.

We found our way onto the train. They had a metal detector set up for baggage, but none for the passengers, which seemed a bit pointless. Our train was actually comprised of two of the AVE trains joined head-to-head, so it was very long, and our car (naturally) was right at the far end.

Onboard, service was well above normal: in-seat audio, and ¨Mission Impossible 2¨ (in Spanish) on the monitors. We whisked away to Seville with a brief stop in Cordoba.

Seville greeted us with glorious sunshine. [Don´t get excited, it´s cloudy again now.] We picked up tourist maps and headed into town. After a few minutes, we were in the Barrio de Santa Cruz, a neighbourhood of old stately homes with complex little atria set right next to each other on either side of narrow alleyways. When we went up to our rooms in the Hostal Bienvenudo, a british T.V. crew were completing a travel spot on the hostal, with a camera sweep over the rooftops from the patio outside our doors, the blonde announcer chirping something about charming views and repeat visitors, and omitting to mention the lack of central heating. Lee and I arranged to meet for dinner at 8, and he headed out to see the town while I had a badly-needed hot shower.

Afterwards, I made my way outside and quickly found and internet café [where I´m writing this]. Actually, it was right around the corner from the hostal. I put in half an hour catching up on email and trying to catch up of the journal, but my time ran out so I moved on to exploring more of the city.

In comparison to Lisbon and Evora, Seville seems full of tourists. They filled up the sidewalk cafés, eating dinner at un-Spanish early hours (i.e. before 9pm), and were in such numbers around the cathedral that I moved straight through at top speed and didn´t even try to get a photograph. I wandered down to the river, looked out over the city, and wandered back again, stopping for a small pastry en route. Orange trees grew in the many parks and planters, and moorish influences could be seen in much of the architectural details.

Lee and I managed to get lost several times on the way to a restaurant, but eventually tracked down the Pizzeria San Marco, an impressively beautiful establishment with ochre-coloured walls, tiled floors and blue- and white-painted woodwork on the railings and staircases. The food was unfortunately not as good.

Lee, who is off to Grenada today, was not able to get a train reservation later than 7am, so with the prospect of a cold night ahead and an early morning, we headed back to the hostal and wished each other bon voyage. In fact, the warm blankets made the cold night quite bearable, though I´m still considering cancelling my second night and moving on. For now, though, it´s time for breakfast. I think I´ll start with an orange.
posted by Tom at 7:23 AM | link | (0) comments

2:30 pm.

After a cold wet morning poking around the main sights of Evora, I´m lingering over lunch. This is partially because I´ve been somewhat taken advantage of by the owner of the nice restaurant where I chose to stop: he asked me what I wanted to drink, chose to interpret ¨fruit juice¨as ¨red wine¨, brought me a bottle, and put the whole thing on my bill. It´s not even that cheap a bottle! So I feel obliged to do some damage to it before leaving. Plus, I have the nasty suspicion that there´s not much left for me to see in Evora and I have three hours to kill.

When I left the guesthouse this morning I wandered into the main square, Praça do Giraldo, and found a sympathetic coffee shop for breakfast (see the previous post). Afterwards I went up the narrow Rua 5 de Outobro (actually, all the streets in Evora are narrow,) to the high point in the town, which is occupied by the Temple of Diana, the Museu de Evora, and the Sé (cathedral).

The temple is just a few columns on top of a raised base, so after a photo I went into the museum. The building housing Evora´s collection used to be the palace of the archbishop, and the whole thing is located on top of an extensive set of Roman ruins. The centre courtyard, and as many of the ground level rooms as structure stability would allow, have been opened up for acheological excavation and there is an interesting set of tombstones, statuary and other stonework on display. However, the real stars of the museum´s collection are upstairs on the second floor: a stunning and extensive set of Flemish and Portugese paintings, mostly on wood rather than canvas, including various artists´ versions of the life of the Virgin Mary, and a few key scenes in the life of Christ, mostly dating from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. These were fascinating, unprotected by glass so the brushwork and details could be easily examined. Figures were presented in the dress of the artists´ time, resulting in some obvious anachronisms. A church in the background of a picture of Christ bore stone crosses, for example. I noticed that the mens´ footwear was principally thin boots slipped into heavy wood-soled sandals, a detail I hadn´t heard of before. Anyway, it was an impressive collection for such a small town, and it took me quite a while to finish going through it.

In the second-to-last room, a helpful staffer offered supplemental information. His English was excellent, but easily explained since he turned out to have spent several years living in Toronto!

After the museum, I went through the Sé, next door. The main church was only typically impressive fore a European church of its size, and the cloister next door was worthy of a photograph for its lemon trees but otherwise unremarkable. The cathedral also had a museum of its own in its attic, and this boasted many more fine examples of religious art from the 17th to 19th centuries.

When I left the cathedral it was almost noon, and I headed towards the Taberna Typica Quarto-Feira for lunch. Actually, it was raining at the time so I was in a hurry and got lost in the medieval side streets, but a helpful local set me straight (with French as our common language).

After a brief delay (the restaurant only opens for lunch at 12:30, apparently typical for Portugal,) I enjoyed a wonderful meal of pork chops flavoured with sea salt and garlic, grilled, and served with creamed spinach, rice and french fries, and the aforementioned vinho tinto. Which I´ve probably had about enough of, come to think of it... Time to head out.
posted by Tom at 3:05 PM | link | (0) comments

Friday, March 15, 2002, 09:20 am
Weather: high clouds, sprinkling rain
Location: Evora town square coffee shop

I have a bit of a sore throat this morning, as if I´m coming down with something, and I know exactly why. After doing some shopping and walking around downtown Lisbon yesterday I was ready to leave, so I picked up my pack and headed over to Barreiro. I got there a good two hours before my train was scheduled to depart, and sat for most of that time on a bench by the side of track 3 with a cold wind blowing off the water all around me. I guess I should have put up with the secondhand smoke in the waiting room after all.

The trip to Evora was fast and comfortable, with a quick change of trains at Casa Branca onto a local, just one car behind an engine, for the last half hour of the trip. Then I had the pleasure of tussling with the railway agent for the privilege of a reservation on the train back, which I´ll take at the end of the day on my way to Madrid.

I walked up a slight grade into Evora, past a national guard base, and arrived in cool wet weather at about 5:30. After checking into the guest house, a nap, and a quick but excellent dinner at a local restaurant, I called it a day.

This morning I again woke early, but in the interests of nursing my cold took my time to get up and move out. As a result I have the pleasure to be sharing the coffee shop with a group of about 15 with their faces painted blue, red and orange. I can only guess that these are probably party hacks drumming up support for the Portugese election on Sunday. (Interestingly, I read yesterday that the election is being watched carefully across Europe as Portugal may be a bellweather for elections in other countries. The incumbent left-of-centre parties are under pressure from the right, which may shift the E.U.´s policy direction over time.)

Well, it´s pouring rain outside again now, so I´ll linger over my coffee a few more minutes before heading to the town´s museum and the Temple of Diana, a roman ruin still preserved in the middle of the town. Don´t want to catch a cold out in that rain...
posted by Tom at 9:20 AM | link | (0) comments

Thursday, March 14, 2002, 08.00 am
Weather: rain, sun, who knows? Wait 5 minutes...
Location: coffee shop next to Pensão Prata

I can´t believe how much I´ve lived and experienced in the last four days! Last Saturday seems an eternity ago. And it seemed that way last night when I walked up the hill to the restaurant where I ate on Sunday. Everything looked familiar, but fresh, as though I were returning to a town where I used to live and was seeing old haunts again. A very strange feeling indeed.

This time I arrived at 7:30, ahead of the dinner crowds, and was immediately recognized and seated at the same table as though I´d been a regular there for years. Now, I had the basic vocabulary to choose between the fish and meat specials, and understand that the fish was grilled and came with a mixed salad and potatoes. I´d also been here long enough to know that the tempting bread rolls would add an extra €1.50 to the bill, and to patiently sip my vinho branco while I waited for my meal. Which was delicious, though the fish came on the bone so it took some time to eat.

As I was enjoying a coffee to ensure that I wouldn´t fall asleep at the ballet, a young englishman came in and apologetically asked for a table for one, in English. The owner clearly (to my ears, anyway) indicated in Portugese that his establishment only had one table for one, and that I was sitting at it but would likely be leaving in 5 minutes. All the English guy heard was the rejection of the tone, and he left like a scalded cat, clearly distressed. I felt sorry for him, but also somewhat superior in my newfound ability to communicate in Portugese. (Plus, even on Sunday I would have tried a "hello" in Portugese before asking if we could speak English!)

After dinner, I returned to the Gulbenkian Centre for the ballet. The hall was quite similar to the Hummingbird Centre in Toronto, though its acoustics were at least clear from where I was sitting, about halfway back. I was seated next to an American student and her family, over from North Carolina for a week. We passed the time until the show started, and during the intermission, discussing our trips, where else we´d been, the ballet, cell phones in Europe (don´t recall how that topic started) and the weather. We both concluded that it had been upwards of a decade since the last time we´d seen a ballet. In my case, the last dance troup I remember seeing was La La La Human Steps from Montreal, and that was in 1992.

The ballet Gulbenkian presented two modern works, both excellent. The first was an exploration of the solitude of night, title "Lunar, o dia fragmentado", with an interesting score by Koen Brandt. The second featured a quartet of singers from Naples who sang traditional Neapolitan songs, to which the choreographer had set a modern interpretation of traditional dances and more stylized solo and subgroup sets. This was titled "Cantata". The ballet company was excellent, though their energy and fluid grace was more consistant than their timing. I must go to the ballet more often. I wonder if it´s a function of age that my appreciation of the energy and youthfulness of dance has increased?

This morning I packed my bags and prepared to check out of the Pensão Prata. My train to Evora isn´t until 2:40pm, so I´ve dumped my main pack for the morning and will have a nice quiet stroll (rain permitting) in search of a couple of small gaps in my equipment list, chief among them a "one size fits all" sink plug for laundry days. I´m feeling good about how much of Lisbon I´ve been able to enjoy in my short stay here, and think I´ve earned a break from museums!
posted by Tom at 8:02 AM | link | (0) comments

To new visitors, please sign my guest book! And to returning visitors, feel free to provide some commentary to this new and more verbose form of my web site...
posted by Tom at 5:06 AM | link | (0) comments

Wednesday, March 13, 2002. 17.10 GMT
Weather: rained all day on and off -- now sunny
Location: coffee show outside Baixa-Chiado station

I got another early start today, making it down to the Praça do Comércio by 8:40, which gave me twenty minutes to kill before the tourist office with its precious net terminals was open. I spent the time sitting in the sun writing postcards, but by the time I was ready to jump into the post office and mail them the clouds were already rolling in. I´m getting used to their tactics now: a bright early morning to confuse the tourists, followed by sharp downpours and grey skies for the rest of the day.

Postcards posted, I hit the net and again spent longer than planned catching up with the rest of the world. My well-laid plans to be in the museum district of Bélem by the time the doors opened at 10am was therefore thoroughly sabotaged, and with a stop for picnic supplies en route I wasn´t at the Monastery of the Jeronimos much before 11:30.

The Monastery building appears massive from the outside, but the tourable areas are limited to the wonderful cloister, magnificent church, and a few banal secondary rooms, stripped of furniture but with elaborate wall treatments. Much of the rest of the Monastery complex is taken up with the Museum of Archaeology, which has two very small exhibits open at the moment. I wouldn´t have stopped except that the skies chose that time to open and it seemed like a reasonable way to stay dry. I ended up standing in the entranceway next to a small group of French tourists, commiserating about the miserable weather and watching the rain bounce higher and higher off the road outside as the wind picked up.

Eventually it slowed to a steady downpour and as it looked like it might keep it up for a while I sprinted across the road and 100m down to the Bélem Cultural Centre, where I found a large sheltered area to sit and eat my lunch. As I did, the rain stopped.

I made my way through the complex and crossed over the highway to the riverside park, aiming for the Tower of Bélem, one of Lisbon´s most famous sights. This tower is actually positioned in the estuary, connected to the land by a metal pedestrian bridge. The tower has a commanding view of the entrance to the harbour, and wonderfully craggy Manueline architecture. At this point it was almost 2pm, and I was falling further behind schedule, so I set off back to the tram.

I almost missed it as I went by, but I jumped off the tram at the next stop and walked back to the pastry shop where the Patries de Bélem--little custard tarts, very tasty--were invented in 1837. Once this important detour was complete, I set off again by bus and subway up to São Sebastião station, next to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation complex. This is the site of the modern art museum and the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, housing the massive and impressive collection donated to Lisbon by the oil tycoon.

After a quick stop in the box office to pick up a ticket for the ballet, I started around the museum. Itºs housed in an elegant low profile building, with two courtyards in the middle containing deceptively natural-looking trees and plants. Most of the rooms have large windows looking into the courtyard or out to the park surrounding the building, screened with dark sheer panels to temper the light and protect the collection.

I skppped quickly through the Roman, Greek, Middle and Far Eastern collections, but lingered with the paintings, statuary and antique furniture in the European art wing, some truly exquisite works. Though I was initially concerned with running out of time, I ended up finishing at about 5pm, which was just as well as my feet were starting to feel very tired.

I headed back to the subway and "home" to the Pensão for a rest before dinner, stopping only for a coffee and a diary update.
posted by Tom at 5:10 PM | link | (0) comments

You may note I´m having difficulty getting Blogger to show the correct post time... I´m working on it, but I´m not sure if it can be solved from here.

Tuesday, 12 March 2002. 17.03 GMT
Location: Commuter train from Sintra back to Lisbon
Weather: Cloudy, but it stopped raining

Wow, what a hike! The three km from Sintra to the castle is steeply uphill, but well worth it for the believable views from the top. However, to get into the castle and see the views I needed a ticket, and a sign halfway up the path from Sintra announced taht the tickets were sold back in the village. Gambling that this meant that the castle would be unmanned, I decided to press on. Bad news: a neatly uniformed guard was posted at the castle gate and firmly turned me back. Good news: he pointed me towards the car park, much closer than the return to the village would have been.

Once inside the castle, I spent a quality half hour in complete solitude wandering through the grounds and taking pictures of the amazing views. The castle´s battlements are almost entirely open to visitors, which, given the lack of supervision and more importantly safety railings, means that visitors can quite easily slip to their deaths, especially on rain wet stones.

I survived the experience, and continued my walk uphill (again) to the Paláçio da Pena, a wonderfully over-the-top royal palace on the next hill. It was built in the nineteenth century as is a wonderfully chaotic mix of architectural and interior design styles from around the world.

After touring the palace, it was noon and I had been walking for 2 1/2 hours. I was hungry, and the wind had picked up outside, with dark clouds scattering occasional showers. I was sorely tempted by the restaurant in the palace, but it was very expensive. So I pressed on. I decided not to skip the gardens, despite the temptation to storm back to the village for lunch. They were indeed impressive, with a mix of plants from all over the world artfully deployed into natural-looking miniature wildernesses, dotted with decorative little lakes.

At least from there most of my remaining walking was downhill! I finally returned to Sintra shortly after 1pm, where I found an excellent and inexpensive restaurant and sated my hunger with mixed salad and pork chops. Two glasses of cold beer quenched my thirst, and by 2pm I was ready to set out again.

This time, I stayed in the village and went around a large toy museum, full of model cars, boats and airplanes, legions of model soldiers, dolls and games. It was worth the visit, but by the time I finished I was thoroughly exhausted and decided to call it a day and head back to Lisbon.
posted by Tom at 8:03 PM | link | (0) comments

Tuesday, 12 March 2002. 09.10 GMT
Location: Tourist office, Sintra
Weather: Sunshine? Hah! More rain.

I returned to the Pensão for a nap. All that walking is tiring! When I emerged, I planned to go out for a leisurely dinner before the concert. However, I was intercepted by the guest house keeper, Fernando. We conversed with some difficulty, having no common language, but I communicated that I was 32, from Canada, and travelling across Europe on my own for two months. I showed him one of the Toronto postcards I had brought, and at his request wrote my name and address on it and gave it to him. I guess I made a friend! He invited me to share his meal, which I was slightly embarrassed but pleased to do, a filling cod stew soaked up with bread, full of flavour.

After the meal, we had a very strange conversation, with even more misunderstandings. If I understood correctly, he was concerned for my sex life and wanted to assure me that it was ok to have a lady visitor in the guest house overnight. (He vigourously mimed this when I showed my confusion at this strange message.) Not feeling fully comfortable with this conversation (I wasn´t fully sure that he didn´t have other objectives) I took my leave to go to the concert.

As it turned out, this made me very early. I arrived just before 8, when I had been told the doors would open, but in fact we were not let into the hall until 8:30. The Coliseu is a large, round concert hall with a stage at one side, two levels of box seats, several rows of stands, and a large slightly tilted open central standing area covered in taped-down black cloth. The concert was not full, although people continued to arrive for the next hour. Weezer was schedule to start at 9pm, but the first signs of movement were their stage hands bringing out guitars to check at 10:15, and finally the show got started at 10:25.

It was pretty good, though the vocals were totally indistinct. (Very poor diction, and the mikes weren´t great.) As I only knew a couple of the songs this made things a bit frustrating. Still, the audience was into it, and sang along with some of their favorites. I ducked out early into their second set in order to get back to the Pensão by 11:30. (Guests aren´t given a front door key, so arriving back late means keeping one of the owners up.)

This morning dawned clear and sunny, at last! I headed out quickly and hopped on a commuter train to Sintra, about 40 minutes west of Lisbon. Sintra is a small medaeval town with several palaces and a ruined Moorish castle. Shortly after I arrived at the information centre it started pouring rain, so I decided to catch up on the diary while waiting for it to stop.

Which it seems to have done! Time to explore...
posted by Tom at 12:34 PM | link | (0) comments

It´s now 2:40 and I´ve had a busy day! Shortly after my previous post, I gave up on the ticket office and decided the whole thing would be easier from the correct train station, Barreiro. This however is across the river from Lisbon, so I walked down to the port and hopped on a ferry. After a surprisingly long trip (it´s a wide river, and Barreiro is not straight across) I got to Barreiro and managed to get the timetable for the trip to Evora. I also had no trouble reserving a spot on the train: €2. However, the information office there was unequivocal about getting from Evora to Seville, which I have planned for Saturday: can´t be done!

I returned to Lisbon, picking up a small picnic lunch on the way, and walked up through the Alfama streets to the castle. Alfama is renowned for its thin, twisty cobblestone streets and stairs, and it took me no time to lose my bearings. Fortunately, since the castle is at the top of my hill it´s pretty easy to find: just keep going up. It had an impressive view and made a good place to eat my picnic.

I walked down past the Largo das Portas do Sol, a terraced area that was originally one of the entranceways to Lisbon when it was run by the moors. It had a spectacular view over the Alfama rooftops. At this point, the clouds, which had been darkening ominously, decided to start dumping a light rain, which lasted just long enough to slick down the cobbles and make the journey back down to ground level treacherous. I had visions of slipping in front of a tram, but made it ok.

Returning up towards Rossio, I stopped at the Coliseu and bought a ticket for the Weezer concert tonight. I hope I can stay awake! Then I turned back to the train station, and finally found the ticket office to which I had been directed in the morning. (Turned out I´d been looking at the wrong one.) They also confirmed that Evora to Seville is basically not doable, except via Lisbon and Madrid. I resolved to check this out for myself, and headed down to the tourist office to hit the web. They were right. Doh!
posted by Tom at 5:50 PM | link | (0) comments

Location: Rossio station coffee shop
Weather: high cloud with tiny sunny holes

After the coffee yesterday evening I returned to the restaurant I´d seen earlier. Now, it didn´t seem like such a draw: while its sign promised Fado (the local mournful singing that is apparently the window to Portugal´s soul but is more likely now a sappy tourist entrapment), there was no music in evidence, nor any other guests, which I took to be a worrying sign. Fortunately, I was right across the street from a tiny restaurant, whose closed door had failed to catch my eye earlier in the day. Now, the door was wide open and the room inside packed with people. Two more, obviously locals in the know, where waiting outside for their chance at a table. I joined the queue.

What I ended up with, after a forty minute wait, was a delicious pork loin in herbed butter, with tasty french fries, some fresh lettuce and tomato, fresh rolls with butter, and a small personal pitcher of "vino tinto" - red wine. This feast (for the portions were massive and the wine generous and very tasty) put me back €12.75, or about C$18. Not at all bad!

By the end of my meal I was falling over with fatigue. I walked back to the Pensão, and was very shortly in bed, where I fell fast asleep for about three hours. I woke to a rumbling streetcar and the Pensão´s doorbell down the hall. It was 12:30. I slept fitfully for the rest of the night. When my alarm went off this morning (6:30) my body was finally ready for a deep sleep again, but in the interests of beating jet lag I forced myself up, into the shower, and out the door. Breakfast turned out to be right next door, a little café that served me an almond croissant and café com leite which got me on my way.

Stop number 2 was the Rossio train station. It took some hunting: it´s on the side of the hill above an ornate but poorly labelled entrance. The trains are quite out of sight from the street level, and I went past the building twice before deciding I´d found the right place. Once I located the ticket office I ran into a further difficulty: the only office open is for local trains out of this station only, and the other office to which I was directed is firmly shut.

Since I´m in no particular hurry, I decided this was a good time for another coffee and a pause to fill in the diary.
posted by Tom at 12:38 PM | link | (0) comments

I´m sitting in an outdoor café in Baixa, in hillside neighbourhood overlooking the downtown area where I´m staying. I´m shivering slightly as it has cooled off with the sun set. There´s a restaurant around the corner where I want to go for dinner, but it doesnºt open until 8pm. Apparently Lisbon runs late! To kill some time, I took a walk down to the river and along back to the Praça do Comérçio, the main square at the port, which despite the name has little in the way of active commerce, although it does have a lot in the way of impressive old architecture and statuary. It also has a huge victory arch (although I´m not clear on what victory is celebrated) and a tourist office (with internet terminals, yay!).

This last sold me a two day Lisboa Pass, good for free access to the metro and buses, as well as free or discounted access to most museums and sights.

I also picked up a "What´s On" guide, which had a couple of things I might check out: the American band Weezer is playing tomorrow night, and the ballet is on Wednesday.

In short: so far, so good...
posted by Tom at 7:25 PM | link | (0) comments

Location: Pensão Prata, Lisbon
Weather: cool, grey, overcast

I just finished unpacking and I´m sitting on the bed looking out at a tiled rooftop of the building next to me. The Pensão Prata is a small guest house in the heart of Lisbon, and the traffic noises coming through the open window make me wonder how much sleep I´m going to get tonight. Immediately below the window is a trolleycar line, which fills the air with hissing, clanking and scraping, familiar noises to anyone who´s lived near Toronto´s streetcars.

My gear all made it through the trip intact, except the wash kit which suffered from an open-capped shampoo bottle. Classic mistake. It didn´t make it out to the clothes, but the goop seems very difficult to expunge from the wash kit itself. Dousing it with water just produced an endless supply of bubbles. I suppose this is hardly a crisis, although it does seem silly that after all the travelling I´ve done I can still make this kind of basic error.

Tomorrow I´m going to check out the city. Apparently many of the museums are closed on Mondays, but I´ll sort out the transit system, get a sense of the layout, maybe book my next stop (Evora), and take a look around a sight or two. It´s supposed to rain later in the week so I want to have my bearings and my plans in place to minimize drenchings.
posted by Tom at 4:23 PM | link | (0) comments

It's Saturday evening and I'm at the airport, looking out at the rain on the dark runways and typing away on an Internet terminal in the lounge. I've made it this far without thinking of anything serious I've forgotten. This is much better than the time a couple of years ago when I realized, while being driven up the 427 in the back of a limo, that my wallet with my money, bank card and credit cards was back at the house. (I missed that flight.)

I'm flying to Frankfurt overnight, and will be connecting there to a flight to Lisbon tomorrow afternoon. With any luck, I'll get a few hours of decent sleep tonight and be suitably tired to sleep tomorrow night in Lisbon. I only hope that my room at the Pensao Prata is indeed reserved for me; the conversation I had a couple of days ago with the proprietress was convoluted and confusing for me (being in Portugese), and I think we both gave up on trying to communicate some of the more difficult concepts. (Example: she gave up on getting my last name spelt properly and has me down as simply 'Tom' arriving on Sunday some time in the afternoon.) I may yet end up at the youth hostel.

The web tells me that the weather in Lisbon is warmer than Toronto (no surprise) with a high of 15 degrees C expected for tomorrow. It's supposed to rain later on in the week. Hopefully I will have oriented myself to the public transit options by then and will be able to get around the town without getting soaked.

Actually, I'm still having trouble believing I'm finally embarking on this trip. I'll be more coherent in a couple of days when the reality sinks in.
posted by Tom at 11:16 PM | link | (0) comments

""If you disagree with someone, you should always walk a mile in her shoes. Then, if you still disagree, she'll be barefoot and you'll have a one mile lead."
--Written on the wall of the women's restroom in Tolman Hall "
from inpassing.org
posted by Tom at 2:32 AM | link | (0) comments

I'm back from Vancouver! I had a great day on Thursday driving into the city from Kelowna, a long drive but with very dramatic scenery. I arrived chez les Fords at about 4pm and met Carolyn, who is extremely cute. She looks just like Catherine, and in fact is a spitting image of Catherine's own baby photos.

Uneventful trip home on Friday, and nice to be back in my own bed (for a little while, at least)!

I have the photos from the ski trip up. You can find them here.
posted by Tom at 1:51 PM | link | (0) comments