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I am holding off on creating entries on Worldisround for pictures from my trip until the future status of that site is determined.

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Highlights

On My Way

Thursday April 17 -

This trip began a lot like my last two trips to Europe.  Same nine-hour overnight flight from Seattle to Copenhagen.  SAS Airlines has a nice Economy Extra class.  Extra legroom and nice amenities without all the fuss of First Class, so once again I chose it for my ocean-crossing flights.  And it departs in the evening, so I got a full day of work in before leaving, saving a vacation day for later use.  

Nothing unusual to report.  I did my best to rest, but the only time I got dozy enough that I thought I might actually fall asleep, a trio of nearby passengers decided to ignore the fact that lights were out and everyone around them was trying to sleep and had a rather loud conversation.  I don't get how clueless some people can be.

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Friday April 18 -

Unlike my last two trips to Europe, this was mostly a full travel day.  Well, at least of sorts.  Last year my layover in Copenhagen was so short that my suitcase missed the flight to Berlin.  This year I had a scheduled seven-hour layover in Copenhagen waiting for my flight to Madrid.  Given some posted departures with other airlines, and I think my travel agent may have kept me on a SAS partner for this leg of the flight when I perhaps could have taken another airlines with a shorter layover.  

Early in the evening, a delay of more than an hour was posted for my flight.  As a result, I didn't get into Madrid until just about 1AM.

Taxi to the hotel.  Check in.  I was supposed to be able to pick up some tour information especially regarding tomorrow morning's scheduled departure times at the front desk.  Alas, nothing was waiting for me, and the folks at the front desk didn't have any information.  Up to my room.

I repacked some stuff for tomorrow and then headed for bed at 2AM.  The best information I had suggested that I needed to get up by 7AM, and after all the travel and lack of sleep, I was dead tired.

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Spain - Toledo, Salamanca

Saturday April 19 -

For the first half of my trip, I hooked up with Insight Vacations' "Treasures of Spain, Portugal and Morocco" tour.  It is listed as an 18-day tour starting with Thursday's U.S. departure, so technically today was already Day #3, even though it is the first formal day of our sightseeing.  I have very mixed opinions of guided tours, given my past experiences, but I wanted a guided tour for my Morocco visit on this trip, and this tour covers a number of sites in southern Spain that I wanted to see - and would have had to make a mix of travel arrangements to accommodate - so it seemed like a reasonable choice.  And because it ends in Madrid and skips Barcelona altogether, I figured I could get my desired time in both of those cities on my own.

After a somewhat confused start to the day - I brought my suitcase down to the bus at the designated time only to find out that they pick them up from outside the room - things settled in and our group of 38 plus guide plus driver hit the road.  We worked our way through Madrid's city center, so I got my first look at the area where I'll be touring in a couple weeks.  We finally hit the highway and passed through the countryside south of Madrid.  The "La Mancha" area, where Don Quixote tilted at windmills.  No sign of the windmills today, but we'd see them on our way back into Madrid at the end of the trip.  The countryside along this part of our route was mostly a greenish plain dotted by small towns and compact cities.

Toledo was immediately recognizable - at least from the description of it, since I'd never actually seen it before.  The area gets more rugged as we approached the city, which is located on top of a large outcropping of rock.  Strategically located for its views in every direction and surrounded by the Tagus River on three sides, the hilltop city includes the large Alcázar and some large steeples in its skyline.

We stopped across the Tagus River from the city to get a good postcard view of Toledo.  I even spotted a Roman ruins site near the river.  Then we headed into the city.

Once the capital of Visigothic Spain, at various times it was home to Romans, Visigoths, Arabs, Jews and Christians.  It thrived under Moorish rule as a center of both art and science.  Christian, Jew and Moslem co-existed in the city reasonably well for centuries, until Ferdinand and Isabella expelled the Jews in 1492; the Moslems were expelled a decade later.  

Among its claims to fame are Toledo's production of decorated swords and other bladed weapons, and for its damasquinado (damascene work), where fine threads of gold, silver or other metals are inlaid against a black steel background in elaborate patterns.  Our first stop was at an artisan shop where we watched a man doing damascene work.

I rarely buy souvenirs this early in the trip, but I decided on a sample of damasquinado.  About the same size as the petit-point souvenir I bought in Austria last year, it highlights a local custom.  With the strong association with Toledo, it met my usual criteria for non-Xmas ornament souvenirs - local, representative, small.

Our bus then took us into the heart of the city, where we were dropped off at Plaza Mayor.  It had been raining off and on during our drive down to Toledo, but the skies were merely overcast at this point.  However, the steep cobblestone streets were wet and slick.  I don't walk well on slick roads; one of the older members of the group slipped and fell.  That made for somewhat slow going as we explored the city for awhile on foot.

We took a kind of roundabout route to the cathedral.  Catedral de Toledo is considered to be one of the greatest gothic cathedrals.  Built between 1226 and 1493, a number of historical events took place here, and my guidebook lists a number of things inside that are worth seeing.  Except after we stood in front of the cathedral for several minutes listening to our local guide tell us about them, we found out that our tour did not include actually going in to see any of it.  

We then worked our way over to Iglesia de Santo Tomé, a 14th-century church in the old Jewish quarter famous primarily as home to the El Greco painting The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, which I thought was a quite fascinating painting.  El Greco had lived in Toledo, and there is a museum there about him, and some of his other works are found elsewhere in town, including some paintings inside the cathedral.

We did check out the painting in Santo Tomé and then slowly made our way back to Plaza Mayor.  Although by being at Santo Tomé we were within a couple blocks of a monastery and two historical synagogues, and the city's Alcázar was just a couple blocks from Plaza Mayor - all highlighted in my travel guidebook - none of these were covered in our guided tour, even though one of the synagogues was supposed to be.   We were given 45 minutes on our own for lunch and to spend how we wanted.  I grabbed a quick lunch at McDonalds - no lingering at some sidewalk cafe - and then targeted the Alcázar, although it had been substantially rebuilt after a 70-day siege during the Spanish Civil War.

And that was it for Toledo.  A decidedly underwhelming of a visit after looking forward to it for so long.  I'd learn pretty quickly that Insight's sightseeing would often be this superficial, and that we would routinely skip obvious sites that would normally be on the agenda of most visitors to the cities we stopped in.

Our target for the end of the day was Salamanca, where we were to get an orientation tour, have dinner and spend the night.

Our route to Salamanca took us over the Sierra de Gredos mountains and through Avila, one of my Madrid day trip targets.  We stopped for a few distant photos of the walled city from an overlook but didn't do any other sightseeing there, in spite of the fact that our brochure promised an "orientation tour" in Avila.

With the coolish temperatures and on and off cloudbursts alternating with bright sunshine, our guided decided to postpone our orientation walk of the Salamanca city center until the morning.  So when we settled into the hotel at about 5PM, I took advantage of the break in the rain to go ahead and explore the town on my own.  I managed to time my visit inside the Catedral de Salamanca with a short-cloudburst, too, so I stayed dry.

My first stop was Plaza Mayor, the main town square.  Like the main piazza in Bologna, it functions as a community meeting place.  This one is completely surrounded by buildings featuring baroque architecture.  Quite pretty with the sun out.  My guidebook suggests that it s the most beautiful public plaza in Spain.  I would say that it certainly ranks among the top plazas that I saw.

The city's main highlight is the Catedral de Salamanca, actually two cathedrals in one.  The newer cathedral, begun in 1513AD, mixes Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque, whereas the older one, which dates back to the 12th century, is Romanesque.  

Other sites include Iglesia-Convento San Esteban, Palacio de Anaya, Torre de Claverro, and some buildings associated with the university.  Iglesia de San Martin was interesting for the storks nested in its towers.

There aren't a lot of highlighted sites to see in Salamanca, so my 2 1/2 hour walk covered most of them, and certainly in more detail than I would have if I were with the group.  I got back to the hotel at about 8PM, got cleaned up, and joined the tour group for one of our included dinners.  All well and good - it is a nice group of people, after all - but except for the hotel staff, the only people in the dining room were the people from our group.  I'd really rather go out and dine with the locals when I'm exploring foreign countries, even if it is just McDonalds.

8:30PM is not an unusual dinner time by Spanish custom, but it was late for my stomach.  And the fact that it didn't end until 10PM didn't leave much time for journals and photo cleanup before bedtime.  Tomorrow morning's wakeup call was scheduled for 7AM.

Portugal - Fátima, Lisbon

Sunday April 20 -

Had I been traveling on my own, I would have skipped Portugal on this trip.  After my 28-day Germany trip last year, I had wanted something a bit shorter this year.  But I ended up with two nights in Lisbon on this tour, and I didn't want to trim anything off of my Madrid and Barcelona stays, so I ended up with 28 days again this year.  Of course it does give me one more country that I can now say that I've been to.

We got off to an 8:30AM start, but only as far as the Salamanca city center.  The introductory tour that had been originally scheduled for last night took the first hour of the day, at least for those folks who wanted to take it.  They were going to hit a couple of the stops I made yesterday, and it was raining lightly, so I decided to stay on the bus with a few folks who took a truncated introductory tour last night.  Folks who took the truncated tour last night came back saying that they didn't see anything new this morning, so I didn't miss anything.  Especially since I already got a lot of sunny photos from my excursion yesterday.

Beyond that, today was primarily a driving day as we made our way to Lisbon.  We had one sightseeing stop along the way.  In May 1917, three Portuguese peasant children were tending to their sheep in the parish of Fátima when they claimed to have a vision of "a Lady more brilliant than the sun", who was holding a white rosary.  The apparition reappeared for five consecutive months, the last time reportedly with 70,000 people present.  At the last visit, she claimed to be the "Lady of the Rosary" and that a chapel should be built there in her honor.  Christians have been making pilgrimages to Fátima ever since.  

The site has been developed to accommodate the pilgrims.  The Chapel of Apparitions now stands where Our Lady first appeared, and a basilica and church, several chapels, sculptures and related sites have been built there.  Annual pilgrimages can draw a million people (Portugal's total population is about 10 million) to the village of 8,000 people.

One of the first things visitors encounter is a place to buy candles or wax shapes of children and body parts.  Some candles were several feet long.  I'm used to seeing the candle-lighting in the various cathedrals that I visit, but nothing like the 3-foot candles I saw here.  The wax shapes would be thrown into flames to be melted, presumably with accompanying prayer.  I must admit that as an outsider to these rituals (throwing a wax child into a fire?), it's hard for me to relate to this sacrifice of wax.  But if it gives pilgrims comfort or inspires them to better things, there's certainly no harm in it.  On the other hand, when I saw some folks shove their way through the crowd of pilgrims so that they could light their own candles, I couldn't help but wonder which of their actions that they think God will notice.

We had plenty of time to tour the chapels, the basilica, and other buildings at the site, to explore the grounds, and to head into the nearby city center to get lunch - and souvenirs at any of a number of shops targeting the tourists.

After that, it was off to Lisbon.  We got to the hotel at 4:30PM, just as another cloudburst hit.  It didn't last long, though, and I was in a taxi to the city center shortly after 5PM.  I had a list of sites in the Alfama neighborhood (except for Castelo de São Jorge - the Castle of St. George -, which was listed as part of the itinerary for tomorrow's guided tour), and managed to hit them all - and more - although I was losing daylight towards the end of my explorations.  

Alfama is Lisbon's oldest neighborhood, and it existed under Moorish rule for the first 400 years of its existence.  It is built on a hillside, and like medinas it has a jumbled mix of streets, narrow sidewalks, laundry hanging out the windows.  It has a lot of character, and when the sun is out it is colorful to see.  In fact, among its key features are a number of miradouros, or viewing points, providing some great views of the neighborhood and of the city itself.

I took the taxi to Largo da Graça, site of Igreja da Graça and a miradouro.  I figured (correctly) that this would be the highest elevation point on my planned walk around the city, so that made it as good a starting point as any.  The church itself is pretty but unexceptional, worth a look if you haven't seen many old churches, but the miradouro is its primary attraction for tourists.

My next stop was São Vicente de Fora church and monastery, located just a few blocks from Igreja da Graça.  It was founded in 1147AD outside of what was then the city walls, built on the burial sites of earlier crusaders.  It was reconstructed in the early 1600s, and the main dome had to be rebuilt after it collapsed on worshippers during a 1755 earthquake that destroyed 85% of Lisbon and killed upwards of 90,000 people.  The Bragança Mausoleum contains the marble tombs of the former rulers of Portugal, but my late start didn't give me time to tour it.

A few more blocks to the east, I reached the Panteão Nacional de Santa Engracia.  This church was named the national pantheon in 1916 and thus it contains the tombs of and memorials to a large assortment of Portuguese notables, from presidents to fadistas (fado singers), explorers to artists.  The church was originally commissioned in 1568 but work on it didn't begin until 1683 - apparently it is hard to line up a good contractor in Lisbon.  Work on it continued after the 1712 death of its architect, but there was a setback that resulted from the 1755 earthquake, which partially destroyed the church.  But the dome was completed and the church finished by 1966, only 398 years after it was commissioned.  Unfortunately it was closed by the time I got there, so I only got a look at it from the outside.  Its gleaming white dome stands out in the Lisbon skyline, and it shows up on postcards and in just about everything that touts Lisbon's sightseeing highlights - except of course Insight's "in depth" tour of Lisbon.  

From there I took a walk through the Alfama neighborhood, making my way towards Catedral Sé.  I chose a route that would hit a few of the city's miradouros because the late day sun was catching the hillside buildings, creating a number of postcard views of the city.  Although Lisbon hadn't been in my plans, I was enjoying my walk, and I was interested in what I was seeing, so I was quite glad that we made the swing through the city on this trip.

I checked out the site of the ruins of a Roman theatre that had been unearthed during some urban renewal.  The 5000-seat theatre originally had been built at the time of Caesar Augustus and expanded during Nero's rule, surviving until the empire collapsed.  At that point many of its stones were used in construction elsewhere in the city.  What is left of the ruins are fenced off and a shelter was built over them, but it was possible to pick up a few good shots of the site.  There's a museum that provides more information on the ruins, but it was closed for the day.

My last targeted sightseeing stop in Alfama was the Sé Cathedral.  After King Afonso defeated the Moors after 1147's Siege of Lisbon, he decided to celebrate his victory by building this Romanesque cathedral on the site of the Moors' primary mosque.  It was an interesting if somewhat spartan cathedral, but with a service underway my exploration of the interior was pretty limited.

Time to find some place for dinner.  I began heading west and was walking through the Baixa neighborhood before I realized it.  So I decided to check out the waterfront, where I unexpectedly found the large plaza, Praça do Comércio, which featured its own palaces.  The Portuguese king moved to a palace here from Castelo de Sao Jorge in the 17th century (leading to the decline and ruin of the castelo), but that royal palace was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake.  Praça do Comércio continued to be an unlucky location for Portuguese royalty when anarchists assassinated King Carlos I and his son here in 1908, bringing about the end of the monarchy.

The plaza also fronts the Tagus River.  The small stream that surrounded Toledo on three sides is miles wide this close to the ocean, pretty amazing for a relatively short river, but I suspect that at this point along its path, the Tagus is a lot more ocean than river.  I had some decent views of Cristo Rei, the 90-feet tall statue of Christ the King situated on a hilltop across the river that was paid for by Portuguese women thankful for staying out of World War II.  I also could see the resemblance between Lisbon's Tagus-spanning Ponte 25 de Abril bridge and San Francisco's Golden Gate from this angle.

The Arco da Rua Augusta connects the plaza to Rua Augusta, a pedestrian mall that runs through the heart of Baixa.  Although it was lined with retail outlets, it was late enough on a Sunday evening that most places were closed.  I got a pepper steak dinner at a sidewalk restaurant here.  Good, but nothing special.  By the time I finished, it was dark out.  I noticed that the castelo above the city was illuminated, so I went on a nighttime photo walk as I looked for the best angle from which I could get a photo of it.

Almost immediately I came across the Elevador de Santa Justa, an elevator that reportedly would make it a whole lot easier to get up to Bairro Alto, the old hilltop neighborhood that I would explore tomorrow.  I also found a couple more plazas, one of which gave me the view of Castelo de São Jorge that I was looking for.

After that it was back to the hotel.  We gained an hour crossing into Portugal, but we'd lose it on our way out of the country, so I figured I wouldn't try too hard to get used to the time zone change.

Two days into the trip, and I've already personalized the group tour a lot with my own Salamanca and Lisbon/Alfama sightseeing.

Portugal - Lisbon, Cascais, Sintra

Monday April 21 -

Today provided examples of the best and worst of day trip-type bus tours.  Surprisingly, we had the same local guide for both.  

The only scheduled activity for our bus group today was an "in-depth" city sightseeing tour.  The tour description identified four specific places that our guide would "show" us, including Castelo de São Jorge and three sites in Belém.  The castle was my top Lisbon site to see, but I skipped it yesterday knowing that it was listed in the tour brochure.  

What we did was drive around town for awhile, and our guide mostly pointed out sites to look at while the bus was moving.  And most of them were on the left side of the bus; I was sitting on the right.  At one point we did stop to look at a leftward view of a park.  But instead of letting us get out for five minutes for photos, the guide talked in the bus for about five minutes.  And as with my Budapest day trip last year, what she had to say was little more than the basics found in any typical tourist guidebook.

We finally got off the bus in Alfama - at the bottom of the hill - and spent about 20 minutes taking a walk around a block while she talked.  I didn't mind the overlap with my walk yesterday, as it was a different block than the many blocks where I had walked.  But that turned out to be it for Alfama.  Many of Lisbon's key tourist destinations, including the castle, cathedral and national pantheon, are in that part of town, and we didn't visit any of them.  The castle in fact was the first item listed on the itinerary, but I guess that her pointing it out from a distance (on the left, of course) was all of the castle that she intended to show us.  Spending 20 minutes to see how the locals hang their laundry outside to dry is apparently Insight's idea of a Portuguese treasure.

We did make all three stops in Belém that were advertised, although our local guide made it sound like she was doing us a favor by stopping at one of them.  The rather ornate Torre de Belém (the Belém Tower) was built in 1515 as a watchtower to help protect Lisbon's harbor.  The Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) was designed in 1960, the 500th anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator.  It has a boat-like look to it, with a sculpture featuring the prince leading a number of Portuguese navigators and other national heroes.  Nearby is a sculpture of the plane used by the Portuguese aviators who made the first flight across the south Atlantic.  The Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (St. Jerome Monastery) was built on the site of a chapel where explorer Vasco da Gama and his crew prayed before sailing.  Today it is the final resting place of da Gama, although we didn't see it because the site is closed on Mondays (something Insight knows because today's activities always take place on Mondays when they run this tour).

That was the end of our tour.  Given how we covered the main part of the city, and I was glad that I saw what I did last evening.  I also made adjustments to my plans for this evening so that I could  see the castle.

We had an afternoon tour option to visit a couple coastal towns just to the west of Lisbon.  As we were already in the west end of town, and because only a few people in the group were skipping it, they were sent back to the hotel or to the city center in taxis.

The rest of us hit the road for the resort town of Cascais.  Once a coastal fishing village - and the importance that fishing continues to hold was still quite evident - Cascais is now a destination for well-to-do types as well as city beach-goers.  We got a running spiel from our guide during the drive over there, but once we were dropped off we had 1 1/2 hours to spend any way we wanted.  I got a quick lunch and then headed over to the waterfront.  I first headed west to the town's citadel, which once had a strategic position overlooking the mouth of the Tagus River, the main river in Portugal and a key part of the city's harbor activity.  A sign on the side of the structure seemed to suggest that it dated back to 1370, although I don't read Portuguese.

I then followed the waterfront back to the center of town until I reached the commercial center and a nearby residential neighborhood.  I explored the area and hunted down a Diet Coke as I filled out the remaining time of our visit.

Next we drove towards the village of Sintra, taking a back roads route to get there.  One of the great advantages of this route was that we got to stop for a view of Cabo Raso, the westernmost point of continental Europe, and thus the continent's closest point to the Americas.

Sintra was quite the contrast to Cascais.  Located on a hilltop and surrounded by some higher mountains, it is home to a few castles.  In the village itself is the Palácio Nacional de Sintra, which originated in the 13th century.  An unusual feature of this castle is its pair of cone-like chimneys.  The square in front of that palace provides a great view of the ruins of the Castelo dos Mouros, an ancient Moorish castle higher up the mountain.  If that weren't enough, we'd get a glimpse of a third castle, this one featuring the Bavarian excesses of Ludwig II, courtesy of a German who married a Portuguese princess.  We were given an hour in Sintra, long enough for a little photo walk and the chance to pick up a Portuguese souvenir.

Then it was back to Lisbon.  We were due back at the hotel at 4:30PM.  Probably due more to the guide's needs than our tour group.  Several people had signed up for an evening dinner and fado, and thus found themselves with a few hours to kill before leaving for that activity.  

As for me, I hit the bathroom and then caught a taxi to Castelo de São Jorge.  Construction at the castle site dates back to 138BC, and it eventually became part of a Christian settlement.  In 711AD, the Moors took over the place, and remained in control until the Siege of Lisbon in 1147.  King Afonso turned it into a royal residence, although it was left to fall into ruins in the 17th century.  What's left today is the shell of the castle - I'm not sure how much of it is a reconstruction - historical displays, the castle walls, and some outstanding views of the city from the castle grounds and from on top of the castle walls.  I took advantage of the viewpoints to get a number of city photos as I toured the castle ruins.

My original plan for this evening was to visit Bairro Alto, and that was still on my list.  But it was still light out and still early, so I made a stop at Catedral Sé to get the interior photos that I missed yesterday.  Then it was across Baixa and up through Chiado to Bairro Alto.  Which at this time of day was rather underwhelming.  There wasn't enough daylight left to bring out any charm, whatever charm it might have had was buried under massive amounts of graffiti everywhere, and I apparently hit at the cusp between when the shops close and the restaurants open.  

So I kept going.  I wrapped up my Lisbon photos with the views from Miradouro de Alcântera.  Then I checked out some nearby nightlife options but ultimately decided against all of them.  

It was getting dark, so I headed back into Bairro Alto to find a place for dinner.  I wanted a place that offered fado performances.  Fados are Portuguese folk songs.  I found several options and chose the one with the fadista actually performing.  I don't know how good (or bad) it was, but I thought it was entertaining enough (even if I didn't understand a word of it) and it is a Lisbon tradition.

And that was it.  It was pushing 10PM when I found a taxi.  I headed back to the hotel, checked out my day's photos, and readied for tomorrow's early departure.

Spain - Seville

Tuesday April 22 -

We began today with a drive from Lisbon to Seville.  We made only a couple break stops along the way as we were losing an hour when we crossed the border and we had a tour waiting for us in Seville.

Seville is the capital of Andalusia.  It is more than 2000 years old, dating back to Roman times.  It was conquered by the Vandals and then the Visigoths before the Moors captured it in 712AD.  They held onto it until it fell to the Christians in 1248AD.  It was one of the first cities to fall to Franco in the Spanish Civil War.  A key river port town, Seville is where Columbus docked when he returned from the Americas and where the Spanish royals greeted him upon his return.

We met up with a local guide when we got there.  Our guided tour first stopped in the area where there had once been a mint.  Then we made our way over to the Catedral de Sevilla and La Giralda Tower, where we got an extensive narrated tour.  The cathedral is the largest Gothic building in the world and the third largest church in Europe.  Construction began in the 1400s on the site of what had been the city's mosque, and some elements of the mosque were incorporated into the cathedral.  La Giralda, for example, was originally the mosque's minaret, but it was made taller and topped with a sculpture of El Giraldillo when it was converted to the cathedral's bell tower.  Among the many features inside the cathedral is a tomb mounted on four statues that reportedly contains the remains of Christopher Columbus, based on DNA test comparisons with a body known to be his brother.  The altarpiece and choir stalls are among the more impressive sites in the cathedral.

The Alcázar, just across a plaza from the cathedral, was developed from the city's old Moorish palace.  Work began in 1181AD and continued for over 500 years, as the Mudéjar-style palace took shape.  It is the oldest royal palace in Europe that is still in use; the current royals stay here when they're in Seville.  Isabella and Ferdinand welcomed Columbus here after he returned from the Americas.  Its interior walls and ceilings feature elaborate decorations and tile work; I'd be reminded of them later in Granada at the Alhambra.  There are also impressive gardens within the site.

None of which we saw on our tour.  Our Seville tour was identified as a "premium highlight" in the travel brochure, but apparently that just meant that our visit to the Alcázar was limited to merely walking by its outside walls.  I'd return here tomorrow afternoon to tour the Alcázar on my own.  We did take a short walk through the Santa Cruz neighborhood and adjacent Jardines de Murillo before boarding our bus and heading for our hotel.

No sightseeing on my own tonight.  We headed back into town to El Palacio Andaluz for dinner and a flamenco show.  Dinner was good and the show was excellent.  The style of dance actually reminded me of the traditional gaucho dances we saw at Centro Hipico in Ushuaia, Argentina, the day we set off for Antarctica.  Given that Argentina began as a Spanish colony, I suppose there's some relationship between the dance styles, but I don't know for sure.  Except for the table of women who sat behind us and didn't stop talking through the entire show, it was a great evening.

Spain - Seville, Córdoba Day Trip

Wednesday April 23 -

Today began with an optional excursion to Córdoba followed by time on our own to explore Seville, probably the most relaxed day of the trip.

Two thousand years ago, Córdoba was the capital of the Roman province of Hispania Ulterior Baetica.  A thousand years ago, Córdoba was arguably one of the greatest cities in the world, the capital of the Moorish Caliphate and the largest city in Europe.  It was a great cultural, political and economic center for Moorish Spain.  Today, it is a major tourist draw.

The city's main attraction is the Mezquita-Catedral de Córdoba, the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba.  Once the site of an ancient Roman temple, and then under the Visigoths the San Vicente church, after the Islamic invasion of Córdoba the Moslems demolished the San Vicente church and in 785AD began work on what would become the second largest mosque in the Moslem world, and one of more than 1000 in the city of Córdoba itself.   The mosque continued to be expanded and modified over the centuries of Moslem rule; with the many changes and its origins on the foundation of a Christian church, it was somewhat of an architectural oddity.  

The Christians recaptured the city in 1236 and began to transform the mosque into a cathedral.  Chapels were added to the building, as was a cathedral treasury and other components of a traditional cathedral.  What is now the Orange Tree Courtyard was remodeled and the palms replaced with orange trees.  The mosque's minaret was reworked into the present-day bell tower.

Today the building contains many of features from its service to both Moslems and Christians.  Its red and white arches, supported by more than 1000 columns, give it a unique, spectacular and almost surreal appearance.  It is a gorgeous building to explore, an architectural oddity, and a site with an incredible history.  Seeing it was one of the top highlights of the trip.

During the guided portion of our visit, we also checked out one of the local neighborhoods and took a walk through the old Jewish quarter to a synagogue.  Built in 1350, it is one of the few remaining pre-Inquisition synagogue buildings left in Spain, surviving first as a hospital and then as a Catholic chapel.  

We were supposed to have a significant amount of time on our own to explore the city, but a member of our group got separated from us twice, resulting in long periods of searching and waiting, ultimately leaving us with only about 15 minutes for shopping and sightseeing on our own.  I used the time to get a closer look at parts of the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, the fortress from which Isabella and Ferdinand governed Castile as they prepared to reconquer Granada, the last of the Moorish strongholds in Spain.  I also checked out the Puente Romano, what had begun as a Roman bridge across the Guadalquivir River, although so much of it had been replaced since the time of Augustus that it's Roman pretty much in name only.  From this angle I also got a few more photos of the exterior of the Mezquita-Catedral before rejoining the group for our departure.

Along the highway between Seville and Córdoba, our bus passed the town of Carmona.  This is the kind of town I would have made a special stop for.  It dates back to Neolithic times, and thrived under the Moors.  Today it features Roman walls, Moorish fortresses, Christian sites and the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre and necropolis, quite a lot to see in a rather small town.  Alas, I got some photos from the bus window, but it was not part of our tour and the guide made no mention of it.

When we got back to our Seville hotel, I dropped some stuff off in my room and then set off on my walk to the city center.  It proved to be a bit further than I had expected, about a 30-minute walk.  Between Madrid, Lisbon and now Seville, I couldn't say that I was impressed with the tour company's choice of hotel locations.  

I passed the ruins of an ancient Roman aqueduct en route to the old city, and then worked my way towards the city center, checking out Iglesia de San Esteban, Monolito Romano and the Santa Cruz neighborhood along the way.  I made it back to the cathedral and got a few more pictures of it before heading across the plaza to the Alcázar.  I spent about 90 minutes there exploring its various rooms, courtyards and gardens.

From there I plotted a loop around town so that I could see the remaining sites on my list.  I headed west past the Fabrica-Real de Tabacos (the first tobacco factory in Europe; later used as a setting in Carmen) to Parque de Marialuisa and its Plaza de España for some photos.  I then headed back towards the city center, stopping for some photos of Palacio de San Telmo and the city center before making my way over to the river.  Along the riverfront, I checked out the Torre del Oro.  It was built back in the 13th century by the Almohad dynasty to serve as a watch tower and defensive post for the river.  It was originally covered with gold tiles, giving the tower its name, but those tiles are long gone.

I followed the Río Guadalquivir riverfront park for several blocks, stopping for photos of the Teatro de la Maestranza and the Plaza de Toros - the bullring - until I reached Puenta Isabel II.  There I headed back into the city for a different sort of sightseeing.  I hadn't had any time for nightlife since I arrived in Spain, so I thought I'd check out a few places in Seville, which gave me an excuse to explore the Centro neighborhood.  The neighborhood was mildly interesting, but the locations I found didn't look like much in the early evening, certainly not enticing enough to justify all the walking I'd have to do tonight to check them out when they're open.  Oh well.

I found a McDonalds where I got something to drink and made use of their bathroom, and then I began the long walk back to the hotel.  The plan was to find a decent restaurant along the way, but all I came across were tapas bars, which really didn't appeal to be.  I made it all the way back to the hotel without finding a real restaurant.  Not wanting to eat at the hotel restaurant, I ended up at the Pizza Hut next door.  Not exactly what I had in mind for that evening's Spanish cuisine, but it hit the spot.

No nightlife tonight.  Journal and photo work and preparing for tomorrow's crossing over to Morocco filled out the rest of the evening.

Gibraltar, Morocco - Tangier

Thursday April 24 -

We hit the road early and drove straight through to Gibraltar.  Actually to the area just outside Gibraltar, as our bus didn't actually enter the British territory.  We brought our cameras and passports and walked through passport control into the British territory.  There we were greeted by a couple smaller buses that would be used for the tour.  After dropping of a couple people who didn't sign up for the optional tour, we started making our way through the town to the southernmost tip of the peninsula, Great Europa Point, where we were given a few minutes to get out and get some photos.  

Then we headed up to St. Michael's Cave, a large cave system with a number of interesting formations.  A basic trail winds its way around some of the formations, ending in an auditorium that is used for concerts and other presentations.  But the cave system is much more extensive than most casual visitors realize, dropping hundreds of feet to underground lengths (and according to unsubstantiated rumor extending all the way to Africa).

It was near the cave that we saw our first Barbary Macaques, also known as the Gibraltar apes, although we drove up to another area to see a lot more of them.  These are the only wild monkeys in Europe, although they seemed pretty tame to us.  Of course, they've had plenty of time to get used to busloads of tourist pointing cameras at them, to the point that they've figured out how to steal from some tourists (so keep a close eye on your stuff).  

From this area we also got some really good views of the Moroccan coast, our destination for later today.

Skipping the fortification on top of the rock for some unknown reason, our guide took us back down to Gibraltar's commercial district, where we were given time for lunch and shopping.  

My first stop was at a currency exchange.  As a British Overseas Territory, I figured that Gibraltar simply used the same coins that the U.K. does.  They essentially do, but it turns out that there are Gibraltar versions of them, so I asked the clerk to pick out a set for me and exchanged some Euros for them.  I'm not much for most souvenirs, but I do like to get a coin set and mail myself a postcard for each of the countries I visit.

I grabbed a quick sandwich at Burger King and then headed down the main street for a quick look at the shopping area and to find a postcard and a place to mail it back to my Seattle address - completing my Gibraltar souvenir shopping.  Then I cut out of the commercial zone and visited one of the local churches before following some castements back towards our pick-up point.  With about 45 minutes to spare, I continued on, heading back towards the airport runway which we had crossed earlier today.  With land at a premium in Gibraltar, and flat land extremely rare, the airport runway crosses the highway that connects Gibraltar to Spain.  I wanted some photos of that as well as the welcome sign we had passed on our way onto the peninsula.  I got my photos and then headed back to our bus pick-up area, getting there with just a couple minutes to spare.

We took our local busses back to passport control and then walks the rest of the distance to our own bus pickup point and were soon on our way to Morocco.

We followed the rugged coastline west, passing Algeciras, which was our original ferry terminal, ending up at Tarifa.  Change of plans, I guess, but Tarifa has a high-speed ferry.  We picked up our tickets, headed through passport control and soon boarded the ferry.

From our ferry we could see the Castillo Guzmán el Bueno, the castle of Guzmán the Good.  Alonso Pérez de Guzmán was given the title "the Good" when he refused to hand of the castle in 1296 to the Moors in exchange for the life of his son.  (It does make me wonder how "good" Junior thought his dad was.).  We could also see Punta de Tarifa, the southernmost point of continental Europe and the point that marks the boundary between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.  

The ferry ride was indeed fast, but because Morocco is an hour behind Spain due to time zone differences, and a second hour behind Spain due to daylight savings time differences, we picked up a couple hours of time, although not a couple hours of daylight.

We were now in Morocco, my 25th country, and we were now on the African continent, my sixth continent.

We made preparations to get back on our bus and head into Tangier.  We also picked up a second guide for this part of the trip.  Moroccan law requires that tour groups like ours have a Moroccan guide with us.  That could be a good thing, I suppose.  But except for an interesting discussion on rural customs of courtship (almost non-existent) and marriage (often arranged by the parents with little input from those actually getting married), I never got the impression that he added a lot, a thought that would occur to me several times over the next six days.  And as we left Morocco on the 30th, our Spanish and Moroccan guides got into a heated argument, so my guess is that our Spanish guide wasn't very impressed with him, either.

With a group dinner being our only scheduled activity this evening, I was looking forward to having some time for sightseeing on my own after we got to Tangier.  Unfortunately we managed to kill an extraordinary amount of time before we got our rooms in the hotel.  First we stopped near an ATM machine and a currency exchange shop so people could exchange currency.  This took about a half hour.  Then when we got to our hotel, we found that a group of Italian tourists had arrived just before we did, and their guide simply grabbed a stack of room keys and handed them out to his charges - the stack happened to be for our group, so that messed up everything that the hotel had set up for us.  It took at least another hour to get that mess sorted out.  I got my key, dropped a few things off in my room, and then made my way over towards the medina in the now-fading daylight.

I didn't get a lot of photos, between the fading daylight and cautions from our guide and the guidebooks about taking pictures of the locals.  I did check out the sites surrounding the Grand Socco, the one-time marketplace that is now the central traffic circle in the middle of the city that meets one of the gates into the medina.  It is dominated by the Sidi Bou Abid Mosque, which made for some good photos, and surrounded by some market areas.  I also got a picture of St. Andrews Church, an Anglican church leftover from Tangier's days as an international city.

Then I headed into the medina itself.  I had hoped to find the American Legation, which was given to the United States by the Moroccan sultan back in 1821.  It is a little known fact that when the United States declared its independence, Morocco was the first country to recognize the new nation.  The American Legation was the first American overseas property and ambassador's residence.  I passed a number of fresh food vendor stalls that looked like they were getting ready to call it a day, and I think I got a bit of a look at the outside of the American Legation Building if my map was at all meaningful about its location, but I didn't find the main entrance in the maze-like area.  Even if I had it would have been closed for the day by this time.

I backtracked to the main roadway in the median and followed it to the Grand Mosque, built in 1685 on the site of an old church.  It has an impressive tile entrance, but unlike Europe's cathedrals non-Moslems generally are not permitted in the mosques, and the narrow road didn't allow for me to step back much for a bigger view of the mosque.

I continued on a bit further at which point one local immediately followed by another offered to lead me down an isolated alley towards a viewpoint.  I knew that there was a viewpoint in that direction, but I felt like I was being tag-teamed by them, and my having a map did not deter them.  Our Spanish guide had given us several warnings about interacting with the locals, watching for pickpockets and muggers and so on, frankly to the point of excess.  But as this was my first foray into a medina, his warnings kept playing in the back of my mind, so I repeatedly turned them down, using as my excuse the need to get back to my hotel.  This would bug me the rest of the evening, because in my many international travels I haven't eyed the locals with such suspicion.  I decided to blow off our guide's warnings, and except for the usual precautions against pickpockets, I acted like I was in Berlin or Oslo - other than I wore long pants the entire time I was in Morocco out of respect for local customs.

Dinner at the hotel - folks in the group seemed to be unusually interested in my trip into the medina.  Given that it was only three blocks from the hotel, there was nothing stopping them from going there on their own.  Except of course all the cautions from our leader.

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Morocco - Tangier, Fés

Friday April 25 -

We were told that we could sleep in today, but with the change in time zones and daylight savings time, when I woke up at six it was like waking up at eight in Spain.  It was daylight out, and I had a few hours to kill before breakfast, so I decided to get up and do some more exploring of the medina, this time at the kasbah end.  The medina and kasbah were to be covered in our orientation tour later this morning, but I figured I could get some photos now without having to worry about keeping my 38 fellow travelers out of the shots.

I headed back to the Grand Socco and got some morning shots of the mosque there.  Then I checked out the Mendoubia Gardens before taking Rue de la Kasbah uphill, following the medina wall to Bab el Kasbah, the medina entrance to the kasbah sites in the medina.  A kasbah is basically a fort or fortress, and there were some fortifications visible up here, but I suppose that it has been so long since Tangier was attacked that the residential aspect of the medina actually dominated here.  I wandered through the nearly empty streets, eventually making my way over to the viewpoint that I had missed last night.  I could see the Spanish coastline in the distance, a pretty view, probably better as a sunset shot, though.  

Back in the medina, I headed over to the nearby Dar el Makhzen, the 17th century royal palace of the kasbah, which is now a museum that showcases the palace's mosaics and Moroccan art.  It wouldn't open until 9:30AM, however, so I only viewed it from the outside.  It has its own mosque so I got some pictures of that and then headed back towards Bab el Kasbah.  

The city was coming to life as I made my way back to the hotel.  I did wander around a bit more, finally finding a couple bottles of Diet Coke, one to serve as my alternative to morning coffee and the other one for the bus.  Then I hit the hotel, showered, and joined the gang for breakfast, filling folks in on my morning walk.  

Then it was time to check out - oops, minor glitch as I locked my room key in my room.  Like a lot of places outside of the U.S., room keys are inserted into a slot just inside the door to turn on the room's electricity, including the air conditioning.  It's a good energy saving device, but a bit of a nuisance if you're out late enjoying the nightlife and then come back to a hot room when you want to go to sleep.  I'm so used to having the key in my wallet that it slipped my mind when I headed out for breakfast.  I'd avoid that problem the rest of the trip by hanging something odd on the door handle whenever I entered the room, such as a sock or gym shorts.  Seeing it on the way out would remind me to grab my room key.

We boarded the bus on the opposite side of the hotel than we had entered it on - which explained my initial confusion with my map yesterday, as what I thought was the main entrance really wasn't, it turned out.  We then boarded the bus and set off on our orientation tour of Tangier, in which we were see the medina and kasbah before heading out of town.

We drove over to the Grand Socco, and our guided pointed out a gate into the medina as we rounded the traffic circle, then we headed up Rue Sidi Bou Abid past St. Andrew's Church and....  Well, we headed out of town.  Pointing to the medina gate was apparently all we were going to get out of our orientation tour of Tangier.  After the things we skipped in Toledo and Lisbon, I already was rather unimpressed with the sightseeing aspect of this tour.  Our Tangier experience sealed it - I won't be taking another Insight Vacations tour, and I certainly wouldn't recommend Insight Vacations to anyone else.

Several others would complain about the lack of sightseeing in Tangier.  At least I was prepared to make the most out of our visit to Tangier, spending almost three hours exploring the medina, the kasbah and the Grand Socco area on my own between last night and this morning, and leaving Tangier with about 80 photos from my sightseeing in the city.  For most people in the group, their experience in Tangier pretty much boiled down to the Italians creating a check-in mess for us at the hotel.

We cut through a rugged area and then headed down to the waterfront at Cap Spartel.  Cap Spartel is the northwesternmost point of the African continent, adding my third geographic -most of the trip.  It was a pretty area, and we stopped a few minutes for photos.  And here we got our first real taste of some pushy Moroccan sales people.  At just about anyplace tourist buses come to a stop, a handful of locals routinely would descend on us and offer us presumably great deals on anything from jewelry to hats to scarves to knives.  I'd eventually get the impression that these guys (in Rabat, some women did their best to sell us henna tattoos, but they were men and boys everywhere else) knew just enough English to make their sales pitch, but they simply did not understand any explained rejection - and they simply ignored "Lah!" ("No!").  And just enough tourists would actually buy something to make it worth their whiles, apparently.

We then hit the road, following the coast as we headed towards Larache.  A few miles south of Cap Spartel we passed a set of caves, the Caves of Hercules, which have been inhabited since prehistoric times.  At our first break stop, we watched folks making bread in earthen ovens and roasting chicken in large tajines.  Large ceramic tajines are commonly used for cooking meats and other dishes in Morocco.  Small ones are sold as souvenirs, and used for table seasonings.

As we continued south on what was a modern expressway-type highway, we'd pass small towns, little clusters of buildings with a mosque minaret sticking up where one would have expected a church steeple in similar towns in the American Midwest.  Although the towns seems a bit more rustic than what one might find in, say, rural Iowa, I was struck by the general familiarity of the scene.

We eventually reached the city of Larache, an ordinary city that had been occupied by the Spanish from 1911 to 1956.  As we drove south into the heart of town, we came upon a fortress, but then turned east without explanation (this is the kind of thing that I'd want our guides to explain to us).  

The bus finally pulled to a stop in front of a restaurant, and we were given an hour for lunch, presumably at that restaurant or at a nearby one.  But I figured that Larache was probably going to be the only ordinary Moroccan city that I'd have a chance to see on this trip, so I spent most of the lunch hour on a photo walk, first continuing on to a traffic circle area and then doubling back through the heart of the city, back to the Spanish fort ruins on the waterfront.  From there I had a distant view to the south of a mosque and cemetery.  Ordinary but colorful and somewhat alien to me, but that's how the locals looked at me, too - I don't think that Larache is a major tourist draw.

The small store near where the bus parked that I had mentally targeted for snacks (in lieu of the lunch I skipped) had closed by the time I got back, so I hurried back to the traffic circle where I bought some cookies and crackers from a sidewalk vendor and then headed back to the bus.  My tour companions may have been well-fed, but I had some crackers and a couple dozen photos from my walk around Larache.

We continued on towards Fés, with the scenery being along the lines of what one would find in western Colorado or Montana.  Farms, hay, grazing all in a rolling but not rugged high desert landscape.  Other than the farms were smaller and the livestock herds much smaller, typically a man was tending to no more than a dozen animals.  

We reached our Fés hotel after 5PM.  I took a walk around the neighborhood, and although it took a while, I finally found a shop that sold water and Diet Coke.  I was beginning to feel routinely dehydrated, and they didn't want us drinking the water in the hotel, not even to brush our teeth, so keeping stocked up became a routine goal every day.  Our hotel was far enough away from the highlighted sights of Fés that I didn't include any sightseeing in this evening's walk.

Dinner at the hotel included a "Folklore Show" with drums and belly dancing.  The music was good, but the show was limited to three acts - a man goofed around with a tray of food on his head as he mugged for tourist cameras, a women let out some sort of screechy call, and then another woman did a belly dance for a song.  I think they were members of the same family.  Calling it a "Folklore Show" was arguably more than a bit of an overstatement for all it was, but it was mildly entertaining.

And that wrapped up our first full day in Morocco.  I sorted through some photos and then turned in for the night.

Morocco - Fés, Meknes

Saturday April 26 -

With all the traveling I do and as much as I've seen around the world, it's hard for places to generate a "Wow!" from me.  The Fés medina is a "Wow!" place.

Today's highlight was indeed the highlight of the whole trip, our guided tour of the Fés medina.  The old city, Fés el Bali, is regarded as the world's largest still-functioning medieval city, with its more than 1000 maze-like narrow roads, alleys and dead ends, all lined with stores, food markets, spice shops, handicraft workshops from sewing to metalwork, homes, mosques and other features.  No cars, but donkeys hauling goods and people through the narrow passages were quite common - listen for "Balek!", basically "Get out of the way!" from the donkey drivers.  And they're serious about it - some of the passages were not wide enough for both donkeys and tourists.  It is reportedly quite easy to get lost inside the medina (pay a kid some dirhans to lead you out), although we weren't given a chance for that to happen.  It was truly a different world.  

We made our first stop at Bab Lamar, the elaborately decorated medina gates at the royal palace.  We couldn't go in to see the actual palace - it is closed to the public - but the close up view of the gates with their intricate carvings and mosaics were quite impressive.

Our next stop was the south fortress, up on a hill to the south of the medina.  Although the fortress itself may have been interesting in any other location, here it gave us an outstanding view of much of the medina, including the parts that we would be exploring on foot.  The Fés medina, which dates back to the 9th century, is pretty big, and far too much to thoroughly explore in a couple days.  We'd be spending a half day here, so we'd only be getting a pretty good taste of the place.

One of the features of the medina that was almost laughable was readily apparent from the fortress.  In spite of the medieval nature of the medina, multiple TV satellite dishes were on top of almost every building in the medina, the holy sites of course an exception.  Later on in the medina itself, I passed a Moroccan chatting on his cell phone, which seemed out of place in the medina, too, but cell phone sightings were pretty rare.

We then headed down into the medina itself, where we picked up a pair of local guides - ours in turn hired a local kid to help keep us together.  And then we did something really smart.  We split into two groups, separating the slow walkers and the fast walkers.  The smaller groups would be easier to handle in the narrow passages of the medina, and splitting by conditioning ensured that our group of fast walkers could maximize our sightseeing here.

We spent the first part of our excursion simply walking around some of the passages, stopping periodically for explanations from our guide.  We were more open to picture-taking here, not just because of the larger group, but because I suspect that our guide took us to friendly stops along the way - even if we usually moved too fast for anyone to consider buying anything.

Some of the shops and sights as we worked our way into the heart of the medina included the following:

As we neared the center of the medina, our sightseeing changed a bit.  We were led into the courtyard of a fondouk, a number of rooms or apartments three floors high built around the courtyard.  Fondouks are often private homes, but some function as rooming houses, hostels and hotels.  A bit rustic to say the least, but I would have appreciated the experience of staying in the medina rather than at our fancy hotel three miles away.

We then reached the Kairaouine Mosque.  As with all other mosques, as non-Moslems we could not enter the mosque.  But the door was wide open, and we were allowed to look all we wanted and to take photos.  At more than 10,000 square feet, the Kairaouine Mosque had been the largest mosque in Morocco until the Hassan II Mosque was built in Casablanca in the 1990s.  It was built by the Kairaouine Fatima in 857AD.  The first university in the west opened at the mosque in the 10th century.  Kairaouine University predates even Bologna, where I had attended a conference back in 2005.  Among its graduates was Pope Sylvester II, who took the Arabic concept of zero and introduced it into European mathematics.  The school still operates today, with an enrollment of about 2000 students.

The visible parts of the mosque itself were quite impressive, with its horseshoe-shaped arches, extensive tile mosaics, intricate carvings, fountains, places to wash ones feet, whitewashed walls and green tile roof - I had learned that green is a holy color, which is why it often is used in the decorative detail or tiled roof of a mosque.  (A nearby McDonalds outside the medina had a green tile roof, too, which reportedly had caused some controversy, according to our guide.)  It was quite beautiful, and much different than the kind of art I've come across in Christian cathedrals in my travels.

Our next stop was outside the Zaouia of Moulay Idriss II.  The zaouia is one of the holiest shrines in the medina, and houses the tomb of Moulay Idriss II, the founder of Fés.  It was originally built in the 9th century by the Idriss dynasty, and it was restored in the 13th century.  As with the mosques, entrance is limited to Moslems.  Much more intimate than the mosque, it still featured the horseshoe arches, tile work and carvings.

We then reached a carpet cooperative, where we got some discussion on how Moroccan carpets are handmade, and what the various patterns and colors meant.  We were even provided with some sweetened mint tea, the national drink of Morocco.  But this soon turned into a sales pitch, and a somewhat heavy handed one at that.  A few folk in our group were interested in buying carpets, so we ended up killing 45 minutes there (seemed to me that the hired kid could have escorted the buyers back to the bus when they were done while the rest of us did more sightseeing).

After that we made a similar - but thankfully much shorter - stop at a place where they did weaving and then turned the cloth into brightly colored traditional garments.  

I really wanted to see the tannery, and after our guide asked if we wanted to see it, we were led to the Terrasse des