Sevilla

Alright… we´re back from Morocco and have keyboards that work (well keyboards that we can work). To recap, we arrived to Sevilla on the 28th. Upon arriving, we realized we had no information on any hostels because we forgot to look it up before we left Lagos. It was around noon and about 95 degrees and getting hotter. We decided to walk to one of the hostels recommended by our book and we made it there about 45 minutes later. The hostel was quite a change from our previous two. It was formerly a convent and was very quiet and relaxed which was a nice change of pace. Now on to Sevilla and its beautiful sights…

Sevilla

Walking Around Sevilla

One of our favorites was the air conditioned electronics store. Sevilla is home of siestas. In the afternoon, most of the shops and restaurants close down and everyone goes to nap for a couple of hours because of the long days and intense heat. After visiting the electronics store and walking around Sevilla, we ate dinner at a tapas bar. The food was really good even though we weren´t exactly sure what all of it was. We walked around a little more after dinner and went back for the night.

The Royal Alcazar Palace

On our second day in Sevilla we visited the Royal Alacazar Palace. The photo above is a picture of the entrance. While the palace itself wasn´t the most impressive, the gardens located on its grounds were amazing.

Marc in the Maze

There was a pretty sweet hedge “maze” in the gardens. We could only find one entrance/exit so I´m not really sure if it was actually a maze.

The Gardens

Another view of the gardens…

Gardens

The gardens had a lot of shade which was a nice escape from the heat. There were people spread throughout lounging in the gardens.

After the gardens, we went back to our hostel and did as the locals do and took a siesta to prepare for the match. Luckily, our second night in Sevilla was the night Spain played Germany in an attempt to become the Champions of Europe.

The Game

A photo of the bar we watched the first half of the game from. As you can see, we were pretty far back. At the half we decided to find a bar with a better TV and more Spanish people. The first bar was filled with mostly English speakers.

¡Campeones!

Mitch and I celebrating

Ole Ole, Espana Campeones! We found the right group of people for the second half as they knew exactly where to go after the victory.

Before

The celebration in the beginning…

After

The celebration once everybody made it down…

Marc in the Fountain

When walking back to the hostel, we saw a group of Spanish kids in the fountain. They asked us if we were German. We said, “No! Espana!” and they said to get in to the fountain to prove it. The reason Marc is the only one in the fountain is because right as he got in, everyone jumped out because the police came flying around the corner and everyone else noticed and jumped out. He managed to get out in time and everything turned out fine.

The party continued long into the night but we headed back around 2am because we were heading to Tarifa in the morning. Sevilla was an amazing city with very nice and relaxed people. My time on the computer is running out so that´s all for now but we´ll try and blog more throughot the trip.

-Mitch

Chefchaouen

Okay we made it back to Spain completely safe, so moms you can now breathe a huuuuuge sigh of relief.

Mitch is going to write up a Sevilla post, and I was put in charge of talking about Morocco and hopefully supplying you with some pictures.

So the first place we went, not including Tangier where we arrived on the ferry, was Chefchaouen, a small town in the mountains with a beautiful maze like blue and white medina pretty much all looking like this, but with more people and shops lining the small streets:

The Medina

And this is a view of the town from a hill we climbed to the top of at sunset:

Chefchaouen

Anyways, we hung out in this place for a night, and I think it would be unanimously considered the best night we had in Morocco.

We had taken the bus to this town with two Norwegian girls(we ended up staying with them for our four days or so in Morocco and having a lot of fun with them) that we met coming out of the ferry. We all wandered around the city after finally finding our hostel, and while exploring the medina, we found an art exhibit filled with really nice paintings (you can see one in the picture above) by a guy that kind of looked like a Moroccan version of my dad when he still had his mustache. We looked around for a while not really thinking we would buy anything and he ended up inviting us to a cup of mint tea to try and sell us some paintings.

So we sat down with him for a bit and the two Norwegian girls we were with ended up getting Henna tattoos from him, and before we knew it he had invited us to dinner.

So the five of us, along with him and a few of his friends, ended up moving a little ways up the medina into this small room filled and lined with carpets and rugs to eat a home cooked Moroccan meal. The meal didn´t come for quite some time and we ended up talking and watching the artist and his friends play the drums for hours.

Here´s a picture of them, the artist is on the left:

The Drum Circle

We were with them from about 6 to 12 before the food finally came. But it was definetely worth the wait. The picture might not look too appetizing, but it was one of the best meals I have ever had.

Home cooked tajine, which they said was way better than any restaurant tajine.

Home Cooked Tajine

We used our hands and pieces of bread as our forks and thoroughly enjoyed the meal we had waited so long for. After the meal we said our goodbye´s, Marc bought a small painting, and we left the next morning for Fes, the most different place you could ever imagine from Chefchaouen. I couldnt have imagined a better way to get a feel for what the real people of Morocco are like, and no experience came close to this throughout the rest of our time in Morocco.

My time is running out in the internet cafe so I´m going to stop now, but I´ll try and post about the rest of Morocco, we ended up staying in Fes and Asilah, tomorrow or something. We saw quite a different Morocco in these places, both good and bad.

We leave for Granada tomorrow, and hopefully we´ll have a lot of good stories for you from there.

-Max