Cheers from Tunis- 17 days into our travels!

Yes, we’re still at this, have only come close to killing each other : ) usually those times happen when searching for a hotel in a huge city with no map! K will have quite the vocabulary built up soon. I’ve got a lot to recap about but hope to add a few photos soon too. It’s been great having an Internet connection at some of our hotels, made us feel a little more connected to the world. Guess we missed Obama’s big trip to Jordan so that was a bummer! Would have enjoyed being in that crowd. And a shout out to all the new babies born this month, it has been such a joy seeing their little faces in emails. I am so happy for you all!

We’ve spent the past three days in Tunis after leaving Morocco and Spain. What can I say about Tunis? For starters, I’d move here in a second! What a beautiful Mediterranean country. We have a great view of the Sea and we love all of the green and palm trees since we don’t see that often. Our friends here have been amazing hosts, we’ve shopped a lot (the best pottery and souvenirs are here), visited the American Cemetery from WW2, the Roman ruins of Carthage (a suburb of Tunis), and a little town called Sidi Bou Said, where all of the buildings are white with blue doors and windows. Couldn’t be more scenic, reminds me of a Greek island and the landscape is straight out of Hawaii. What I like about the Govt. here is that women have more rights and freedom in Tunisia than in any other Mid-Eastern Country. I even got to go “sleeveless” today, yippee!

Before arriving here, we had a whirlwind tour of Morocco and Southern Spain. We loved Spain but have to admit I was a little disappointed in Morocco. Maybe my expectations were too high I’m not sure. Nothing really stood out to me and it was the first place where we really got sick of the food- we hit McD’s 3x which was a first for us, we’ve only been one other time in the entire Mid East, but we were desperate for something that wasn’t cooked in a Tanjine Pot! (And now that I own seven pots I don’t want to use them, so much for my Moroccan themed dinner party plans, LOL) Let me digress a bit and for those of you with nothing better to do read on- otherwise wait for the photos : )

I think my last blog left off with us in Fez, Morocco ready to head over to Spain. We left Fez for Tangiers (Morocco) the port city to cross the Straight of Gibraltar. This was one of the longest days I’ve ever had, for some reason neither of us really looked at our map and we ended up taking the slowest road possible. It was a beautiful ride but after 6 hours (with a toddler!) in the car, we didn’t care anymore. I must have sang the Old McDonald 200x because we didn’t have any tapes for the car. Finally we made it to our hotel in Tangiers which had a lovely ocean view only it was the biggest party night ever (not sure why) and the horns and sirens were blaring into the wee hours. K woke us up at 2am saying “Beep-Beep” non-stop, that’s how bad it was.

We survived the rough night and boarded our ferry for Spain the next day. Since we were taking our car over, we figured it would be a real pain but it turned out to be easy and after 45 min., we were in Europe (hooray for Europe!). Our first stop was Gibraltar. We didn’t know what to expect from the big rock but it was bigger than we imagined. We had so much fun, since its part of the UK; they charged everything in British pounds, which made it a pricey afternoon, but worth it! We drove our SUV along the TINY roads towards the top of the rock (a feat in itself, Go J!) The coolest part was seeing the Monkeys. They have all of these wild monkeys that play around, when one jumped out of nowhere onto our car it scared the heck out of us! A lot of them were carrying their babies too. So cute. They also had a bunch of tunnels dug into the rock that you could explore.

After leaving Gibraltar, we had a long drive to Granada, Spain our first night’s stop. This would not have been such a terrible drive had it not been for one of the worst traffic standstills we’ve ever experienced. We ended up sitting in traffic on the Interstate (or Spain’s version of) for well over an hour, it was miserable. Cars were overheating everywhere and we had no idea what the problem was until finally we came to the accident (minor fender bender!) It wasn’t as bad as my 6+-hour traffic jam in DC but it felt pretty bad given that we had such long days- K wanted nothing to do with the car and we couldn’t blame her. We crashed at the hotel, finally arriving around 10 I think.

The next day was better; we spent the morning touring the Alhambra Palace, which was beautiful and very ornate with gorgeous gardens to walk around. A scary thing happened though as we were walking on one of the top floors which sat on a cliff. There was a fence around it but when J and I stopped to take a picture (no more than 15 sec.) I turned and saw K on the other side of the fence- I swear two more steps and she would have fallen! Wow- we could only thank the angels for that one! Just goes to show with a toddler you cannot turn your head for a mere second!

We spent the afternoon driving to Cordoba, which was beautiful; the tallest mountain range in Spain was in the background. We also experienced rain for the first time in months- it’s been so long since we’ve seen rain I couldn’t even tell you the last time. We arrived to find that our hotel was in the middle of the old town and all the roads around it were so narrow that even with the side mirrors pulled in we were practically scraping the walls! I held my breath the entire way, thankfully J is the most amazing navigator and found it without too much of a prob (which was pretty remarkable given there were no road signs). We stayed across the street from the former Mosque, now Cathedral. It was a great location for seeing the city (truly a walking city since the roads are too narrow to drive- that we learned the hard way!) The Cathedral was beautiful too. Cordoba is an awesome place to spend a few nights, if only we had more time!

The next day we left for Seville to spend two nights there. Another hotel that you couldn’t actually drive to- too narrow of streets so we had to pull our luggage thru the pedestrian paths to find it. It felt like quite an adventure at the time. We spent two days just walking around, shopping, eating (Tapas!) and drinking Sangria’s by the liter (hey- we couldn’t drive anywhere!) J and I daydreamt about visiting Spain without children or at least with older children. As much fun as K can be to travel with, dinner that starts at 10pm is just a little late for her, and she definitely forces us to travel at a much slower pace, stopping at every step for at least 5 min. so she can practice going up and down. At least the siestas fit in nicely with her nap times though. One night I got to attend a Flamingo show at our hotel (alone- a lovely feeling since none of us had really been alone in days). The Flamingo dancing was amazing- I’ll never forget it that’s for sure, and not something one should attempt at home.

There are so many things I love about Spain; the culture, the food, the natural beauty, the neatness of it all (I’m sure I only noticed that on this trip because I came from the Mid East!) etc… it’s got to be one of my favorite countries. We came up with our list of things we love about Spain: you can drink the water, get to wear shorts, Spanish is a lot easier than Arabic and my favorite of all, SANGRIAS! The only thing we didn’t love was the price! I just can’t believe how expensive Europe has gotten, esp. since this trip was on our dollar and not the governments (we went to Spain for our summer vacation). The Euro rate really stinks and it was good we only spent 4 nights there. The price of gas, water and just about everything else doubled what we were paying in Morocco.

We boarded the ferry back to Morocco quite bummed; it was so nice to be out an Islamic country for a few days. We arrived in Tangiers with enough time to walk around their Medina (dirty!) and have dinner (stray cats in the restaurant). The next morning we had a long drive south to Casablanca, we got lost trying to find our hotel and ended up at their mosque right as Friday prayers were let out. Suddenly about 25,000 men came rushing out of the Mosque and onto the streets, it was quite a sight! I couldn’t help but hope that they had just heard a “friendly” sermon that day (it’s the third largest Mosque in the world). Later we met some friends who had just moved to Morocco the week before so it was nice to catch up with them over dinner.

The next day we boarded a train and headed on a three ½-hour train ride to Marrakesh. It was a packed train and I was thankful that I made J splurge on the 1st class seats which we later learned were the only seats with air condition (just barely). Then we found our hotel, relaxed until evening because it was too hot to go outside and then headed for the town square. Marrakesh is famous for its Djemaa el Fna square and all of the crazy stuff that happens there.

Seeing the square was the sole reason for our little jaunt down there. It was pretty entertaining. Acrobats, snake handlers, storytellers, fortune readers, boxing matches, tattoo artists, etc. etc. all congregate in this one place (with thousands of other people). Surrounded by food vendors selling delicious things like goat head stew. See the photo on that one! The best thing is there are about 20 venders selling fresh squeezed OJ. That’s what I liked best about the whole country, fresh OJ was plentiful, cheap and delicious (although we did purchase our own plastic cups because they reuse their glass ones without washing them well). We walked around and later took a long carriage ride around the city. K was in awe of it all, the horses , monkeys, snakes, rooster shows etc. I’m sure it’s the most entertaining sight any of us will have for a long time. (BTW, her favorite word is camel- lucky kid could ride one everyday if she wanted, they’re everywhere here!)

The next day we decided to spend the morning crashed at the hotel pool before we took the train back up to Casablanca in the afternoon. K woke us up with what sounded like croup the night before so it had been a rough evening but thankfully, she was much better in the AM. Unfortunately, for us, this time the train’s AC did not work in 1st class and we spent the entire trip a sweaty mess. (Oh, did I forget to mention, the AC in our hotel room didn’t work either! Marrakesh is not far from the W. Sahara desert if that tells you how HOT it was there) When we finally made it to Casa and an AC room we spent the rest of the night relishing in it, I refused to leave. I didn’t end up seeing much of Casa but don’t feel like I missed much- despite the romantic sounding name the town did not live up to it.

We prepared to leave for Tunisia early the next morning. 2 weeks into our trip, we weren’t as exhausted as I expected us to be at this point but we were anxious to leave Morocco. Marrakesh and Fez were worth the trip but the other places didn’t match in flavor. Tunisia’s been great since we arrived, another French speaking country so we’re a little lost in translation but at least the food is better. For lunch, we had tuna and cheese crepes and strawberry juice, truly a first time for everything! We head out tomorrow for four days of sightseeing down south.

Overall, it’s been a great adventure but we’re getting a little tired and I’m finding myself opting to stay in the hotel and play with K while J sightsees. Mosques, Medinas, Mosaics… once you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all, LOL. Poor K, she’s probably stayed in more hotels on this trip than I did in my first 10 yrs of life! How she sleeps with all the changes is beyond me. And we are still mostly healthy at this point so I’m relieved (and J thanks his Cipro for that!) It will be great to get back home though, I might even enjoy cooking again- something very American!