Last few days in Zahora

Our last few days at our Zahora Beach rental have been relatively uneventful.

We saw a futball game in Conil one evening (futball is what they call soccer here).  Conil was playing Cadiz, and we spent the whole game thinking that Conil was Cadiz and visa versa - one team was yellow and blue and the other was blue an yellow, not to be too confusing.  So we thought Conil won (1-0) and we've spent the past 2 days telling everyone that, but I googled today and found out that in fact Cadiz won :-(  It was quite exciting, even though it was a small field (1500 seats according to the internet, and I estimate maybe 400-500 attendees).  There were the requisite amount of fake injuries, and a group of rowdies in the bleachers that sang and set off flares every time there was a goal.  (OK there was only one goal so towards the end they started getting bored and set off all their flares anyways.)

We did a day trip to Cadiz - it was a very pretty city, almost as much beach as we have in Zahora, and many more beach bums.

Last night we saw a flamenco show.  I'm surprised that it took us almost a week (!) in Spain to see flamenco, but we've been pretty busy.  It was a local troupe (we think, since they just do one show per week) in Conil, but it was very good!  ("Fabulous," according to one critic.)  It was in an open courtyard in between the church and city hall.  ("A marvelous setting," according to one critic.)

Our last day we hiked to the lighthouse just south of our local beach, about a 30 minute walk ...

This is our beach place, I don't think I've posted pics of it yet, other than the rooftop patio.

To the lighthouse!

At the lighthouse, with Zahora in the background.

Celebrating a successful hike!

... then had lunch, relaxed on the beach, and took another nap :-)  For dinner we went to La Triana, a local restaurant.  (There's a "~" over the "n", so it's "La Trian-ya", but I don't know how to type in the "~n".)

What else have we been eating?  To be honest, every time we sit down to eat, by the time I remember I'm supposed to be taking pictures and documenting our food, it's all been consumed :-(  (As you can see from the half-eaten meal above.)  In Cadiz we had a few tappas - the best was a plate with small, spicey sausages and french fries.  The fries were melt-in-your-mouth light and with the spicey sausage sauce very delicious.  Last night we BBQ-ed a couple of fish that we bought in a fish store in Conil.  They were delicious (if I do say so myself) even though the only spices we had to cook them with were lemon and pepper.

(Buying our dinner.)

Tomorrow we are up bright and early for a 10:30 check-out.  We're planning to drive to Ronda, by way of Grazalema.  These are two "while hill towns" in the south-west of Spain.  (Personally I think they are going to look very much like Vejez, which I've already posted pictures of.  We'll see.  Although Ronda has a stunning bridge across a 300 m chasm.)

骑马看花 in Africa

The Chinese have a saying that goes "骑马看花" ("qi ma kan hua"), literally "ride horse look flower", which describes our most recent adventure over here in Europe.  Or should I say, Africa, because we did a day trip to Morocco yesterday!  Despite the fact that our guide book described it as a "self imposed hostage situation", we decided to do the all-inclusive, lead-you-around-by-the-nose-like-a-pack-of-tourists, organized tour.  If you google "FRS Day Trip" on tripadvisor.com you can see that this tour gets mostly bad reviews (and fortunately for us we didn't read any of these reviews until after we bought out tickets, so it didn't discourage us from buying the tickets, but set our expectations nice and low), but for us everything worked out very well and we all had an excellent time.  (And it brings up to 4 the number of continents I've visited this year :-)).

Anyways the day started with us actually getting up early (for I think the second time on this trip) so we could drive to Tarifa (about  1 hour drive) to catch our ferry. 

(Tarifa is advertised as the "southernmost city on continental Europe.  I love it when things are over-qualified like this, like anything can be the "most of" if you qualify it enough.  I would call Tarifa "the southernmost city on continental Spain that sounds like the name of a desert.)

(Actually the adventure started the day before, when we first tried to do the trip, but when we got to Tarifa I realized I had forgot to bring my passport.  You see not only is Africa another continent, but Morocco is also a separate country from Spain.  A fact I unfortunately forgot :-()  Passports in hand we had another hitch passing through (either customs or immigration) (I always get these mixed up).  You see we never got a passport stamp when we arrived in Rome a few weeks ago.  Not sure why, but it caused a small delay when we were boarding our Ryan Air flight from Italy to Spain, and now the (customs or immigration) guy had to run off to check with his boss while we made all the other passengers wait.  They ended up letting us go, and we also learned that for a day trip we wouldn't even get an Africa (or Morocco?) stamp at the other end :-(

The ferry ride took about an hour (it was advertised as 35 minutes which I believe is impossible) and in Morocco we were herded (literally) onto a bus (they separated us onto English- and Spanish-speaking busses) and then we drove around for awhile looking at the sights of Tangiers, and I thought about that famous Chinese saying which refers to exactly this kind of tourism.  (Except a modern update would be "坐车旅游".)  We stopped at the Hercules Grotto (basically an underground mall in a cave) and a few other sights, and then went to the official FRS restaurant for lunch.  It was entirely tourist groups, but the lunch was delicious!  Afterwards we wandered around the market and went to the local museum.  Overall it was quite a lot of fun!

At the end of the day (we were in Africa for about 6 hours total) they herded us back onto the ferry for the trip "home".  There was some commotion, and we found later that another tour group, which had been denied entry onto the previous ferry, was now kicking up a fuss because we were being given priority boarding onto this ferry. (We chatted with a couple of the folks on the ferry, and they told us that FRS (the ferry company) didn't even want to let them on this ferry, but the Moroccan police basically forced them to!)

(Back to the issue of passport stamps.  When we arrived back in Spain they did another search through our passports for the elusive "stamp".  "No stamp," I said, and we explained again how when we arrived in Rome they didn't stamp our passports.  And Africa also didn't stamp our passports because it was just a day trip.  I guess they confused Canada for a country in Europe.  (Well we're practically European.)  So eventually they stamped our passports on our arrival back in Spain, but they when we checked our passports later the stamp only said "Tarifa".  It's anyone's guess what they're going to make of this when we arrive back in Canada.)

Before this trip we were noting that we hadn't met too many Americans so far.  (If fact we hadn't met too many other tourists at all.)  But on this trip we met several Americans and even a Canadian couple!  (One of them was from Montreal and she came in very handy providing us some French translations.  One of the main languages in Morocco is French and we've become very language-confused, having to deal with Italian and Spanish and now French as well (in addition Chinese for me, which still is creeping into my daily conversation).)

This was a nice change of pace from our usual itinerary here in Spain, which is: sleep in, get up and have breakfast, visit a nearby town (details to follow) including a second breakfast and possibly lunch, hang out on the beach, come back to our cottage and relax on our rooftop deck (with a snack), have a nap, and then cook a late dinner (we've been eating at "Spanish time", around 10 PM).  Sometimes we throw in a visit to a Gelatoria (or a Spanish Helatoria) for a change, but we also picked up some ice cream for the cottage "just in case".  This is an exhausting schedule so obviously we had to take a "day off".

PS  Here is the sunset from our balcony:

In the past few days we've visited the local towns of Conil (a beachside resort), Vejez (a white mountain town) and of course Tarifa.

Here are some pictures of Conil:

The beach here is similar to the beach near our cottage (which is 3 km long and 40 m wide) although much busier.  There was a tower so we climbed it.  We had lunch at a nice little restaurant slightly off the main drag, and Jack had an "Iberian burger" (which we found out later is a combination of pork or lamb (?), not beef).  We're trying to eat as much seafood as possible so we had squid and I can't remember what else.

One day (the day of our aborted visit to Africa) we visited both  Tarifa and Vejez - Tarifa because we were there anyways (that's the departure point for Africa) and Vejez because we made a wrong turn and wound up there!

Here are some pics of Tarifa:

We visited "Castle Guzmond", which I think is our first castle visit on this trip.  I also bought some sandals for the beach.  The shop guy was Chinese, and when I asked "How much?" he called out to his buddy in Chinese and then told me "5 euros" (in Spanish".  So I asked him "多少" (how much?) and he looked confused and held up 5 fingers.  I paid him and said "谢谢" (thanks) and he didn't react.  I'm not sure if my Chinese has gotten that bad that quickly, or if he was just in shock hearing a tall skinny white guy trying to speak Chinese.

Here are some pics of Vejez:

We had a map but we still got lost, if you can believe it.  All the streets looked basically the same.  We are planning to visit more of these "white hill towns" later in the trip, and I expect that later on the photos will be pretty much indistinguishable.

Today we're planning (other than our regular itinerary) to try to see a football game in Conil, and tomorrow to try to make it to a Flamenco performance.  We're also going to try out the laundry facilities in our Cottage, and I think that's about enough excitement for today!

PS here is my breakfast from this morning.  We bought some bread in Morocco.  We asked for 1 euro worth and he gave us abut 5 lbs!  We tried to give some away on the ferry home but our new friends were too polite and just took a taste.  However with some Nutella and heated up in the microwave it is very delicious!

A map of our trip

For those of you who like maps, some of the cities we visited on this trip:

From Calci, Italy to Zahora, Spain

We arrived yesterday at our beach rental in Zahora, Spain after a couple of days of adventures on the road.  There were a lot of moving parts (planes, trains and automobiles) and I predicted we'd have some problems along the way!

First off - dinner the night before our trip.  We planned to cook but got a bit lazy.

The day of our trip started with our taxi arriving 6 minutes late (!) at our home in Calci.  Not  big deal, since we didn't even have our train booked yet.  The plan was to just take the taxi to the train station and buy the first ticket available to Bologna.  We had carefully pre-weighed all our bags since Ryan Air has very strict size and weight requirements (as they'd been reminding me, 2 or 3 emails a day, for the past 2 weeks).

We arrived at the train station, bought our tickets, and then had an hour or so to kill before our departure, so we had a nice relaxing coffee and breakfast at a cafe at the station.

Our train departed on time, and the first leg (to Florence) took about an hour.  This left us about a half hour to find the platform for the next leg (Florence to Bologna), and we even had time to grab a snack and drink on the way.  The Bologna train was a newer, high-speed train and did the trip in about a half hour.  For some reason we were assigned tickets on 2 different cars - 2 adults on one car and a child on the other.  So I took the child ticket and sat in car 11 on my own :-(  There was a minor adventure when the conductor checked my ticket.  "Ragazzo?  You're no ragazzo!"  I explained that the ragazzo was on a different car with my adult ticket.  Luckily the conductor spoke a little English.  (However I had a backup plan!  The fellow sitting next to me was Chinese (I overheard him speaking Chinese on the phone) and could also speak Italian (I overheard him speaking Italian to one of the other passengers) so if the conductor gave me a hard time over my "ragazzo" ticket I planned to enlist him as a translator and explain the situation to him in Chinese.  "儿子有我的火车票。他跟他的妈妈坐在别的车。等等。。。"  Eventually the conductor would just get frustrated and walk away.  I'm slightly disappointed I never had to invoke my special backup plan!)

We arrived in Bologna on time, found our hotel with no difficulties, and were checked in and exploring the town by 3:10 PM.  This is about 3 hours earlier than I expected.  So far everything was running tickety-boo.

Our initial impressions of Bologna were not great.  We were in the university district and I assume the student ghetto.  There was a lot of graffiti on the walls!

We found a nice piazza, picked up some literature from the tourist information booth,  and sat down for a drink.

Afterwards we went for another wander around town, through some of the more tourist-oriented neighbourhoods this time.  Bologna has a very tall tower that I wanted to climb (498 steps, almost twice the height of the Leaning Tower) but it was closed.  Maybe next time (Our return trip also goes through Bologna but right now we're undecided as to whether to spend another night here, or try to make it back to Florence to overnight.)

"The two towers."

For dinner we tried a variety of Bolognese dishes.

Sonya has promised to guest-blog and explain what some of this food actually is!

We had an early 4 AM wake-up the next day to make our 6:30 flight to Seville.  We had booked a cab for 5 AM but it was 6 minutes late (!)  What is it with Italian cabs all being exactly 6 minutes late???  However he more than made up the time, arriving at the airport in a little over 10 minutes.  (The hotel guy predicted it would take 20-25 minutes, and it would have if I were driving.  Not saying the taxi guys was a crazy driver or anything ...)

At the airport, checking into our Ryan Air flight, we found that the immigration people in Rome had forgotten to stamp our passports!  "It's not your fault," the Ryan Air lady told us, but now what?  She was on the phone explaining the situation to someone in Italian and we were standing there fidgeting wondering what was to become of us.  Eventually she just gave us our passports back and sent us on our way.  Non problema ...

Our flight had no assigned seats.  They bussed us out to the plan and there was a stampede for the airplane!  (I'd like to see Ryan Air try to operate this way in China, they have similar stampedes for the airplane even with assigned seats!)  We arrived in Seville, collected our luggage, and picked up our rental car.  According to Google it was now an 18 minute drive to our hotel.  Actually it turned out to be an uneventful 18 minute drive to the vicinity of our hotel, and then a 35 minute drive around the narrow one-way and restricted access roads of downtown Seville trying to get onto our hotel's street pointing in the right direction to actually get to our hotel.  Eventually we gave up and parked in a nearby public lot.

We were a few hours early for check-in so we stopped for a snack, did a short walking tour of the old Jewish quarter, had another snack (yes this is a theme for this holiday) and then wandered over to our hotel to check in.

Seville is a very beautiful city!  It has an interesting mixture of old and new, and according to our guidebook everything new is mired in controversy - the tram that runs into the central plaza, the gigantic mushroom sculptures ...

The garbage cans here look like R2D2.  I think they have built-in compactors.

Classy Seville graffiti.

These religious mosaics are everywhere!

Personally I think the gigantic mushroom sculptures are kind of neat but I can't imagine what possessed someone to built these right in the middle of old Seville.  We had dinner (tappas) fashionable early at 10 PM.  The tappa bar we picked was crazy!  You had to order at the bar, and then somehow the tappa bartender would remember your order and call out to you when it was ready.

And somehow they remembered our full order when it was time to pay the bill and leave.  Crazy.

The next day we packed up and drive to Zahora.

Breakfast.  Lots of chocolate with a bit of pastry to hold it together.

Zahora is in the south of Spain, on the Portugal side of Gibraltar, about a 2 hour drive from Seville.  We managed to get from A to B without getting lost at all!  Of course this meant that we were many hours early for check-in, as we had built in lots of time into our schedule to get lost, drive around trying to find the correct route, etc.  But we managed to drop ff our luggage at the house, wander down to the beach (about a 50 M walk!) and found a nice beach cafe for a drink and a snack.  Later on we checked in and then drove into nearby Barbate to pick up some groceries.  (I won't say that the beach cafe was overpriced, but we picked up a weeks worth of groceries, including plenty of wine and beer, for about the same price as our beach snack.)

Our beach rental is quite spectacular!  On the ground level is a kitchen, dining room and living room.  Second floor (or first floor as they say here in Europe) has 2 bedrooms and a banyo.  There is a small patio outside the master bedroom with a walkup to a rooftop deck.

(I'll post more pics of our place here in Zahora, likely on a slow day when I don't have much else to post about.)

Pretty hard to take.  We are here for a week and plan to do lots of relaxing on the patio, relaxing on the beach, eating and drinking.  We are thinking of a day trip over to Tangier, Morocco, and there are a couple of other possible day trips in this area, but for the most part we are planning to relax and recover from our harrowing journey from Calci!