Traveler versus Tourist

Making Copper Pots in the Médina 

Olives 

Grant Eating Snails
While Hicham Watches. 

 Overseas Adventure Travels (OAT) prides itself on providing contacts with locals (being travelers) rather than just driving by and taking pictures (being tourists). To that end we have spoken with venders about their businesses, hopped off the bus and discussed herding with nomads, and eaten dinner with a Moroccan family.

At first, I was meh about this, but it has grown on me. I remember our family hosting college band members and other students when I was growing up. We were pleased to share our home with them for a meal or a stay.

Berber Nomads 

Dinner at a Local Family’s Home

On the other hand, sometimes, like going through the Fez Médina, we have been tourists, hurrying  along and just getting a brief glimpse of the area.

Saltwater Fish For Sale

Buying Camel Meat

  Our guide, Hicham, has herded us like baby goats. Even when he turns us over to a guide for a special area, he trails behind, making sure no one gets lost or left behind.
Actually, we are more like 14 not-too-unrulely cats who are easily distracted by all the things around us. Hicham gently nips at our heels to get us back on the path we should be following. There isn’t much slack in our schedule for us to wander off, and he consciously keeps us on it.

On To Morocco

We climbed down the stairs one last time at Charming Lavapiés, then rode the Metro to the aeropuerto for our plane to Casablanca. Grant, his suitcase, and I all made the trip easily. Now, three days later, and my suitcase still hasn’t arrived. I bought a T-shirt at the Rabat modern art museum but have resisted buying anything else, washing my underwear out each night, in the hope that my own clothes will show up soon. I am starting to loose faith.

To add insult, my glasses fell apart and are now held together with a staple until I get to an optometrist who can fix them.  Amazingly I found the screw. Plus my throat is sore, and my gut thinking about going down. Of course all our first aid and drugs are in my suitcase, now known to be in Madrid. As a woman on the tour said, “You really are a mess, aren’t you?” So true.

The Rabat Restaurant Cat  

But I'm glad we are here. Who knew there would be cats everywhere? We met the first one at the restaurant where we had lunch in Rabat, then noticed others all around the city. There were dozens at the Roman necropolis Chellah, cats waiting to be fed in the Kasbah, and cats sleeping in the royal stables. Traffic is amazingly terrible; lanes usage seem to be considered just a suggestion, people and cats walk everywhere, yet the roadside is not littered with bodies. It all seems to work.


 They seem to be cared for or at least tolerated. Somewhere between feral and house pets. Perhaps in the original cat role of rodenticide.
At lunch today in Meknès, a cat roamed around our table as we sat on the second story terrace. Waiters just walked around it as it checked to for any fallen food bit would have gladly taken hand outs.

Morocco Trip Route

Madrid and Beyond

Reina Sofia Museum

Seeing Guernica at the Museo de Reina Sofia, a guided tour of the Royal Palace, the day trip to Toledo and Segovia, and over the top delicious chocolate and churros at San Ginés took the rest of our time in Madrid. The Parque of El Capricho, Plaza de España and more have to wait for the future.

My list of things I want to do grows longer even as our time to do them grows shorter. This is true of our days in Madrid and of our life together. How to stay in the present rather than bemoan loss of possibilities?

At Toledo, we hustled through the narrow streets of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian quarters to the central square, following our guide as he explained Spanish history. I would have liked to returned to the church with the El Greco painting, but the town is too much of a labyrinth for me to be able to find my way there and back.

Iberian Ham Sandwiches  

Grant had made us Iberian ham sandwiches to eat on the bus, but he enjoyed see all the possibilities in Segovia. If US Customs would let us bring it is, we be lugging a whole ham around for the rest of the trip. They sell ham bags so it could have its own luggage. 

Segovia Aqueduct  

The Roman aqueduct, built around 100 BC, carried water to Segovia from the mountains until 1923. Just stone on top of stone, no mortar. 

Back to Madrid in time for some performance art and a flamenco show. 

“A Political Mass”

Lavapiés

Pickled Cactus
by Chinaski Tapas Bar 

“We ask with love that you speak softly
to respect the sleep of your neighbors .”

We were in Lavapiés during Tapa-piés celebrations, with bars competing for the best tapa designation. Every block seems to have at least two tapas bars with reviellers spilling out from early evening to late night. 

While we weren't kept up by the noise, some of the locals weren't as enamored with the party. They also seemed not as interested in having Lavapiés gentrified. 

"Our Neighborhood is Real.
It is Not Your Theme Park.

For us, however, it was a richly textured experience rather than staying in the bland sameness of a chain hotel. By the third day of climbing up to our apartment and back down again, my tight knee had loosened up from my forced inactivity. Dang, exercise is good for me. 

Because the streets and sidewalks are narrow, there isn't room for trees along most of them. The locals make do with window boxes, from full to minimalist. People need plants.

Even in Segovia

The Minimalist

Full Balconies

Travel Anxiety

We are in Madrid at the beginning of a week here on our own before we meet a tour group in Casablanca. Even though I’d checked and double checked, then checked one more time, I was crazed with anxiety. I worried we were going to miss the plane, the SIM phone cards wouldn’t work, we couldn’t find the hotel I’d booked. I had heart palpitations and shaking hands.

Our Apartment in Charming Lavapiés
(that’s the hotel’s name)  

I don’t know why this hit me all so hard. Usually I’m a little excited mixed with a little worry but this time I was undone. Add the jet lag and missing sleep, and the first 24 hours were not fun.

After arriving via Iberia Airlinea at 7:45 AM, we diddled at the airport while we somewhat figured out installing and using our European SIM cards I bought on Amazon. An hour Metro ride with 3 changes, we were at a sidería, (cider bar), having a late-morning espresso and a slice of potato tortilla while we waited to met the apartment rep, Antonio, to give us the keys.

Exhaustion replaced anxiety. I could barely keep my head up and my eyes open as we sat. Two teens practiced English at a table next to us. They were replaced by five middle-aged women chatting in Spanish. I understood about half in my eavesdropping.

A Contemporaneous Mona
Without Crowds

Now we’re settled into our minuscule studio apartment in the hip district of Lavapiés, our minuscule  studio apartment on the 5th floor with no elevator but with places to hang laundry over the courtyardo. We’ve toured the Prado and found local tapas bars.

Las Meninas at the Museo del Prado  

Pouring Cider  

My Spanish is coming back to me, and many of the locals speak some English so we are communicating. Maybe not discussing the way of the world, but we get more than enough to eat and drink. Even though we’re walk up and down all those stairs, I doubt we are calorie deprived.

Rays

We were walking with friends Donna and Bob at Bill Bags State Park when I noticed a large (4' wide) brown ray, likely a sting ray, swimming along about 5 feet off the seawall. It was cruising faster than us, so we quickly lost sight of it.

It reminded me of when my first husband and I were living aboard our boat, the Lazy S, in the Bahamas in the early 1970's. For a while, we anchored at Little Harbor and enjoyed meeting the sculptor Randolph Johnson. He was creating large bronze statures at the forge he built.

One evening, as we motored back to the Lazy S, it seemed like the whole ocean floor began to move. It was the largest ray we had ever seen. Certainly bigger than our little dinghy. All we could hope was that our unreliable Seagull outboard would keep chugging a long (it often conked out at inopportune times) and that we would make it home without the ray coming up under us. Frightening and yet so wonderful.

A couple of years ago, we visited Paige and Trip in Hilo, Hawaii and drove over to the Kona side coast to have dinner at Rays on the Bays so we could see the big Manta rays at night. Unfortunately, the surf was too rough, so the restaurant didn't turn on its big flood lights. Next time. Perhaps we will do the night kayak tour too.