Catalonia et Provence

This entire post is to be read out loud using stereotypical bad accents.  The first couple of pages should be read as if written in Castilian Spanish (all “s’s, and soft c’s are to be pronounced “th”). I can’t expect you to produce a Catalan accent, as that is far less internationally recognizable. For those who don’t know, and I didn’t before coming to Barcelona, Catalan is a language all its own. It isn’t even related directly to Spanish. It is derived from Latin like all of the romance languages, but other than that, it is no more Spanish than it is French. Castilian, however, is the dialect of Spanish that is considered most pure by those in Spain, sort of like “Oxford English”. The Spanish call it“Castellano”. I call it "shilly, becaushze of the lishpinesh." In any case, according to Wikipedia, 98% of the population of Barcelona speaks Castilian Spanish. About 60% speak Catalan as well. I speak neither, though I have a shot at understanding 50% of what is said in the former, and 10% of what is said in the latter. There you have it.

Once we get to France, you may change to your worst French accent (see French knight in castle, Monty Python, the Holy Grail.) Add in the occasional “Uh-huh-huh” or “Poo-poo”, or whatever else feels hoity-toity French to you for best results.

Bar”th”elona is my new favorite big city.  Sorry ‘bout that, Boston.  And no, San Francisco, I haven’t forgotten about you…it is just, well, what have you done for me lately?  Barcelona is just the right combination of cosmopolitan modernity and historical old-school Europe.  It is almost uber-clean like Singapore, but with old stone buildings and crazy labyrinth-like neighborhoods that you’d find in Paris or London.  The subway system is easy and clean and takes you everywhere.  The museums are plentiful and friendly, the waterfront is picturesque, and the people are sophisticated yet amiable.  Nobody tries to sell you things you don’t want.  Outsiders seem welcome, not for their cash, but for the neighborliness of it all.  The Gaudi architecture makes the town unique and a bit whimsical.  I just fell in love.

Our apartment in Barcelona was glorious, and on the eighth floor, providing us both with an extra workout and with a great view.  The only negative worth reporting here was in the bathroom.  We were finally so close to having a good shower!  In place after place since the trip began, we have either had no hot water, or no water pressure, or no substantial water volume, or a combination of these travesties.  “My kingdom for a good shower,” I’ve proclaimed more than once on this trip.  Well in Barcelona it all came so close.  There was plenty of water coming out of the nozzle, and the pressure was excellent.  It was plenty hot too, so what was the problem?  Well, the stall was so small I could not rotate within it.  Seriously!  It was located in the corner and so had two tiled walls.  The glass door was a rounded affair that created a space something like a quarter of a circle to stand in with a radius of less than a meter. But there was this enormous floor to ceiling mechanism protruding from the tiled walls and from which the water shot out as if from little water pistols.  Water could spout horizontally from five or six different heights.  I have no idea why anyone would want single streams of water bursting out at belly button level and at other even more awkward levels, but that was an option.  Attached to this enormous contraption, and taking up maybe half of the available space of the stall, was a bench that jutted out at about knee-level, leaving one with even less room to maneuver.  I tried to sit on the bench, but then my knees wouldn’t fit within the space the door provided.  If I weighed another thirty pounds I wouldn’t have even been able to shut the glass door when standing.  As it was, I had to contort myself into some pretty crazy shapes just to get a good scrub on.  The saddest part?  They could have tripled the size of the shower without sacrificing any other usable space in the bathroom, if they just got rid of the stupid bidet that none of us would even dream of using.  Sigh.  Ah well, the rest of the apartment was perfect.  It was large, well-lit, comfortably furnished and tastefully decorated, and all of the moving parts actually worked!  The kitchen was small but very usable. And the view really was incredible.  

You can't see much of the bench at the bottom, but you can see the rounded door track at the top of the shower.

The view out of the balcony window of our apartment.

Another memorable thing about the apartment was the laundry situation. The building was sort of a super tall doughnut. The hole in the middle was probably to supply more daylight into the apartments. "What does this have to do with laundry," you ask? Well, there was a working washing machine in the apartment, a huge bonus. But there was no dryer. We had to hang our laundry out to dry on clotheslines set up in the "hole" between apartments. But we were eight stories up and there was no way into the hole from the ground level. So if we dropped anything while hanging our clothes, it was gone for good. I could just imagine the pile of lost socks and such on the ground eight floors down. I couldn't actually see anything down there as it got progressively darker the lower you looked, and there was so much other hanging laundry from the floors below, that there was no seeing the ground. But hey, in my mind, the pile was spectacular. The hole was maybe fifteen square meters. I picture the ground covered completely in people’s skivvies up to a height of a couple of meters or whatever couldn’t be reached by people on the second floor, as there were no windows on the ground level. But enough about the apartment, what of the city?

As I have said, Barcelona is simply fantastic.  We visited the Parque Guell in town, famous for endless examples of Gaudi craziness. Then we visited the insanely ahead-of-its-time La Pedrera apartment building that Gaudi designed.  Finally, we topped it off with a visit to his crowning achievement, La Sagrada Familia, the most grandiose cathedral ever conceived.  Gaudi was a very busy genius.  I believe he was also certifiably loony.  I loved it all.  My favorite part of the cathedral wasn’t even Gaudi’s work though.  A sculptor named Subirachs put all of this amazing detail into the Passion Façade that just blew Carol and I away.  You should “Google” images of the Sagrada Familia Passion Façade to see what I’m referring to.  Our pictures don’t do it justice.  Though in our defense we were trying to work around all of the scaffolding and the thousands of other looky-loos that were in the way of a good shot.  I hadn’t realized before we got to Spain that the construction wasn’t finished.  Even though the building was started around 1900, and construction has gone on continuously ever since then, they still won’t be done building for another forty years or so.  Who says they don’t build ‘em like they used to?

Some of the cool sculpture work on the outside of La Sagrada Familia

This is the roof of the apartment building we visited.  Those crazy helmet things are chimney vents.

A shot of the inside of La Sagrada Familia cathedral.

One of dozens of stained glass windows in the cathedral.

We also visited the Miro museum as Senor Miro is one of Carol’s personal favorites.  A quick stop by the Olympic stadium, which hosted the 1992 summer games, and another by the national museum, mostly to get views of the city, and we had run out of specific destinations. The rest of Barcelona for us was just about getting lost among the shops and cafes and churches and museums in the Gothic district.  Tapas bars were ubiquitous, and we partook as often as was economically feasible.  We even cooked a couple of our own meals based on authentic Catalan recipes.  We did pretty well, if I do say so myself, and I do.

The National Museum.  The view of the city from the top of the front steps is pretty sweet.

On our last day in Barcelona we picked up a European sim-card for the phone so we could actually make a phone call when necessary, and then we got the car that we have leased for the remainder of our time in continental Europe.  We chose the driving alternative mostly to give us the ultimate flexibility to go when and where we want.  Cost-wise, I think it is a wash.  With the train we would need to buy four tickets wherever we went.  Then we would need bus tickets and taxis whenever the train wasn’t sufficient.  But with the car, there are the hundreds of Euros worth of tolls, the parking costs are not unsubstantial, and the thousand Euros worth of diesel we’ll end up buying add quite a bit to the cost of leasing.  In the end the decision was less about costs and more about flexibility and route planning stress-relief.  The trains can only bring you to so many places.  With a car, the options are endless.  The problem is that you have to actually concentrate on the road while driving and you miss some of the incredible scenery along the way.  I wish the kids could drive.  They hardly ever look out the window anyway.  Scenery is not worth craning your neck for, in their humble opinion.  I, on the other hand, don’t get enough neck-craning opportunities, as I need to keep my eye on the road and on all of those crazy European drivers.

It is now time to switch to your worst French accent as you continue to read this post out loud.

Our first stop after Barcelona was Carcassone in Southwestern France. It is a walled city with an incredible castle built in sections first by the ancient Romans (we’re talking B.C. here) and then the Visigoths in the 6^th century and French in the 12^th century.  When you picture a castle in your mind’s eye, this is what you picture.  We took an hour-long audio tour of the place and were blown away by the medieviality of it all.  Yes, I know that is not a word, but it should be.  Moats and drawbridges and cannons and knights and well, the whole shebang, seem like more than just fairy tales now.

Carcassone

"I told them we've already got one (snicker, snicker)."  Don't get the reference?  Watch Monty Python: "The Holy Grail."  You can thank me later.

Extra cannonballs in the castle.

Carcassone was just a quick stop.  Two nights and one full day of exploration later, we were off to Provence, the countryside of southern France and wine country extraordinaire.  While there, I often felt as if I was back home touring Napa or Sonoma.  Only each time that feeling overtook me we would immediately come upon another hilltop town with its own castle and I’d be reminded that home was indeed not quite so close at hand.  We stayed in a sleepy little village outside of Rousillon, one of those hilltop castle affairs, and coincidentally the seat of power in the region a thousand years earlier.  Our two-story rental house was as “Provencal” as they come, complete with wooden ceilings and stone walls and a fireplace in every room.  It would have been absolutely perfect if it weren’t so darn drafty.  Sadly, Europe is apparently going through one of its coldest and wettest springs in quite a while.  We have had trouble getting out of our warm beds each morning.  But despite the literal dampness we haven’t let the weather put a metaphorical damper on our sightseeing.

Pont du Gard, a Roman aqueduct built in the first century A.D.  It is 50 meters high, and only drops in elevation by only 2.5 cm over the entire length.  Just steep enough to keep the water flowing, and no steeper.  Unbelievable engineering.

The clay around Roussillon is full of ochre, used worldwide since medieval times for dyes.  This is an abandoned quarry.

Carol and I visited (the kids chose to stay at home) at least a dozen of those hilltop villages.  Every one had at least one ancient church or cathedral, and most had some form of medieval castle or at least some walls that were once part of a castle that has since fallen.  But each one was unique in some way and all were worth the visit.  The problem is that now, only a week later, the details have been lost in my memory.  The collection of towns is now, for me, just one big smushed-up memory full of fuzzy recollections.  That will have to do, I suppose.  I don’t regret any of the time spent navigating the hillsides finding each of the towns.  Carol’s biggest regret from Provence is that we missed lavender season.  There were almost as many lavender fields as there were vineyards.  But the row-upon-row of lavender plants were still brown as the buds weren’t due for another few months.  It would have been so amazing if the ground were covered in purple hues as depicted in all of the paintings and photographs on display in every town.  Ah well, you can’t have everything.

Now I know what you are thinking. "No, your biggest regret should have been not sampling a few hundred different bottles of wine," you say. We were, after all, in Provence. But as you may or may not know, I don’t drink wine, and Carol doesn’t drink at all. So I suppose the crime is in simply being a non-wine-drinker in Provence, not in actually failing to partake once there. Sorry, that is sacrilegious to most of my readers, I know.

The castles in these towns are huge, but the doors are so little!

This is Roussillon, I think. So many hilltop towns! Notice the color of the buildings is the same as the clay above.

This is not Roussillon.  Can't tell you anymore which town it is.  I've got a map with a dozen towns circled that we visited.  It is one of those.  That's the best I can do.

This is Chateau de la Barben, where we got to see inside one of the ancient mansions, but more importantly, where the kids got to go on an Easter Egg Hunt.

Some pictures from the hunt in the gardens.

In Provence, we tried a lot of local recipes again.  The recipes were all about tomato sauces with olives and garlic.  The short ribs were awesome.  The Provencal Shrimp dish was above average, but only earned us three and half stars on the local Trip Advisor hotel page.  We’re working on that.  Cooking is fun for us both, especially after the two straight months of restaurants in Asia.  But it is difficult to cook in other people’s kitchens, especially when you find there are no spatulas, or there is no colander, or the burner only works intermittently, or the pots and pans collect soot due to some problem with the fuel on the stove and you get black all over everything trying to clean up.  But it is a culinary adventure each and every night and we are trying to laugh at the goofy setbacks rather than get frustrated by them.  I did finally just buy a spatula to carry with us from here on out.  

I know, the picture is too posed.  But we had to get a shot of one our attempts at Provence cuisine in our cute kitchen.

The opening round of what was to become dozens of games of can-pong on kitchen tables around Europe.  Josh's spirits have risen substantially since he got this as a birthday gift.

The real difficulty comes in the shopping.  We have frequented many a farmer’s market, and we love tasting the local delicacies before buying, but inevitably we do find ourselves at the supermarket as well, looking lost among the shelves with no way out but through guess-work.  “You think this is tomato paste, honey?”  “Could be… either that or it’s floor wax.  Buy it, we’ll find out later.”

You should have seen the look on the cashier’s face when I dumped all of my fruits and vegetables on her conveyor without any price stickers.  Little did I know, you have to put the items on a scale in the actual vegetable section of the market, and then push a button indicating what is being weighed.  A little sticker comes out that you attach to your lemon or your asparagus or your whatever-that-white-and-green-fuzzy-looking-thingymabob is called in French or Italian.  Well, the cashier wasn’t amused.  I was sent back to the broccoli section with a stern reprimand in what I can only assume was French mixed with some southern dialect of Klingon.  I didn’t know at first where I was being sent to exactly or why I was banned from the check-out line, but I did know I had been a bad, bad boy.  I had far too many groceries already on the belt to pick them all up now.  So I left poor Chloe there with the warden and ran as fast as my bum-foot would carry me, carrying all of my produce, all the while enduring disparaging comments from the locals who had me pegged perfectly as a stupid tourist.  Managing the sticker machine was rough the first time around with no guidance.  I’ve got the hang of it now, but there is always the problem of identifying your produce when the options are all in French (or now, Italian) and the picture list is often sub-comprehensive.  But I did my best, though I think twelve Euros is a bit steep for one avocado.  Perhaps the machine thought I was buying caviar?  I flew back to the counter, thankfully inconveniencing nobody but the cashier, and dropped my goods with a giant smile and a hardy exhale. 

This was actually taken later in Italy, but it shows the machines you use to price your own fruit and veggies.  Carol particularly likes the plastic gloves they make you wear to handle the fruit.  They allow dogs in the grocery stores, but no touching the produce with bare hands! In case you were curious, her purse looks like an owl when hanging straight. It was purchased in Bangkok.

All was now good, except that I had five bags worth of groceries and no bags in which to carry said groceries.  The shopping basket must not leave the store!  I was used to having to pay for grocery bags when I forgot to bring my reusable ones.  But that wasn’t even an option in this mammoth store.  Nope, it is your own bags or nothing.  While I applaud the environmental policy, I simply wished I had been informed of it prior to the completion of check-out. “Chloe, quick, take your rainjacket off.  We’re improvising!”  We did manage to get it all out to the car, but not without looking like complete morons, and not without a smug smile from our friendly neighborhood grocer.  Ah well, chalk it up as Stupid Gringo move number thirty-seven or eight.

We drove from Rousillon to the Cote D’Azur, attempting to experience the French Riviera in one day and night.  We don’t really like the uber-touristy spots, preferring instead the small towns that feel more real.  But some things just have to be seen, and the Riviera is one of those things.  This traveling day just so happened to be Carol’s birthday.  So other than taking in the scenery, the most important thing on the agenda was placating her sweet tooth.   But before I discuss the destination, I need to say a bit more about the journey. 

I often sigh wistfully when I see one of the trains go by.  It seems so tranquil and romantic to just sit on the train and watch the countryside pass by your window.  They pass us going so fast and looking so sleek and modern, that I just can’t help being envious of the passengers.  But as Carol continues to remind me, dealing with train schedules and finding stations, as well as getting from said stations to places we actually want to be, would require a whole lot of planning that, with the car, can be wholly avoided.  The GPS we bought back in the states continues to be completely useless.  It never finds anything.  Seriously, I typed in “Pisa” the other day and it replied with a virtual “Huh?” But the GPS that came with the car is awesome.  We never need to know how to get anywhere because the lovely disembodied British lady on our dash is simply brilliant that way.  

It is not quite truthful to say that she hasn’t gotten us into some trouble, mind you.  On our very first day of driving I took exactly six wrong turns in Barcelona due in large part to her lack of one-way street knowledge and we spent a good extra half an hour trying to leave town.  A few days later we got on the expressway going the wrong direction due to some ambiguous guidance about bearing right and ended up having to drive a full 40 km round trip (including three Euros in tolls) just to get back to where we started.  Twenty kilometers of me grumbling about there never being an exit when you need one and then twenty more back with me grumbling about paying extra tolls was not what Carol had in mind when picturing our first day in France.

The first stop on the birthday girl’s tour was a sweet little beach town called Cassis, just east of Marseille.  It was our first meeting with the Mediterranean itself, and it was perfect.  I’d go back and spend a week in that little town in a heartbeat.  We ate a picnic lunch on a breakwater and Josh and I got soaked by a rogue wave.  Not quite Samara-kayaking size, mind you, but big enough to get our attention.  We window-shopped and quick-snuck a little fruit-tart into our mouths when the calorie-fairy wasn’t looking.  Then we got back in the car and continued up the coast.  We had to pass right by San Raphael, for fear that it might make us homesick.  There are so many beautiful little towns!  Why does anyone go to the big tourist traps?  Same reason we did, I guess.  The next stop was Cannes.

Our first siting of the Mediterranean, other than from an airplane.  This was taken in Cassis.

Cassis.

In Cannes, we didn’t notice any big film festival going on, but the whole town just seemed to ooze money.  We walked along the main drag on the beach with one particular destination in mind.  We were going to have tea at the Carlton hotel, come hell or high water.  Thankfully, neither came.  Global warming wasn’t raising the water level fast enough to thwart our binge and it was rough to choose among the desserts, but I wouldn’t quite equate it to hell. We got a seat right away. None of us actually drank tea. Carol had a latte and a fruit tart. The kids had cakes and hot chocolate. I had crème brulee and an American cup of good ole coffee. The experience was quite extravagant and indulgent. Just what the birthday girl ordered. I shielded my eyes when it came time to sign the bill. I was afraid the snack cost more than our entire week in Cambodia.

The Carlton Hotel (a.k.a. the original Ritz-Carlton) made famous by the Cary Grant movie "North by Northwest."

Happy Birthday Carol!

Back in the car again, our intent was to see Monaco before we found our hotel.  But we got wiped out before that could happen and decided to make a bee-line for our latest home-for-the-night.  Unfortunately, near Monaco, a bee-line really means a snaking set of multiple dozens of switchbacks down an incredibly steep mountain towards the seaside that is so curvy it makes most roller-coasters seem like zip-lines.  We showed up at our hotel a bit groggy from a combination of motion-sickness and altitude-sickness, only to find out that our reservation didn’t take.  Apparently, there was a glitch on the booking website.  Carol and I would have been horrified if it didn’t occur to us that among all of this traveling, this is the first time that anything like this had happened.  In fact, it forced us to count our blessings on this trip.  

Now as I type these next few sentences, know that I am knocking on wood with my head (can’t use my hands, I’m typing, remember?) so as not to tempt fate.  We have never had a piece of luggage lost on all of these flights and train rides and bus rides.  We have never had anything of major importance (passports, tickets, wallets) stolen from us. We haven’t lost anything that couldn’t be replaced, well except for a few hundred pictures in a stolen camera in Costa Rica. But that is chump change, right? Oh, and I lost my wedding ring in the ocean, but that could have happened back home too. Can’t blame that on traveling! We’ve never been stuck in a predicament that wasn’t easily remedied (though the wrong train in Japan still laughs at us).  No snafus at customs or immigration.  No clerical errors at an airport or a hotel.  No disagreements about money with a house-owner or a shop-keeper.  No traffic tickets or parking tickets or stupid-tourist tickets.  We have been blessed.  Though this does lead me to question something about myself.  I’ve always believed that life deals each of us with just as much adversity as we can handle, making us stronger in the process.  Does this mean that I’m not capable of handling much?

Well, the latest problem turned out to be a non-problem in the end.  The hotel apologized and found us a comparable hotel in the next town over for the same price.  It was just fine.  Instead of staying in Eze Sur Mer, as was planned, we stayed in an itty-bitty town just west of that called Beaulieu Sur Mer.  But the only thing we did there was eat and sleep.  It was a place to deposit the exhausted kids and go have some night-time fun in Monte Carlo.  It was a quick drive to Monaco although we ended up in some brightly lit space-age tunnels under the city that Marge (our GPS, if you weren’t paying attention) didn’t seem to understand. After emerging from the tunnels and parking, we walked out of the garage and into the square and then stopped. What should we do? Neither of us gambles. Carol doesn’t drink, so we weren’t going to a bar. We’d already eaten dinner and weren’t about to blow $100 on dessert as we’d already had two desserts that day (OK, Carol had three, but admittedly it was her birthday). Ignoring the fact that I hate dancing, we couldn’t do that anyway because of my busted foot. Are we really so old and lame that we couldn’t figure out anything to do in the way of adult fun?

One of many hotel-casinos in Monaco.

We wander the streets and do some window-shopping, but are surprised to find nothing open on a Friday night. This is ridiculous! “OK, fine, let’s see what fun we can find in that casino… I’ll blow $50 at a blackjack table just to be able to say I did.” Then we get within 50 meters of the door and notice that every man within eye-shot is wearing a custom-fit Italian suit and the minimum heel size for a woman’s shoe appears to be four inches. Everyone is between the ages of twenty and thirty and at least three levels of good-looking better than us. Carol and I are wearing our nicest clothes (jeans and a fleece for each, because we couldn’t fit anything nicer in the suitcase!) We shame ourselves out of going in and instead just wander the city looking at the stunning architecture. We are absolute party-animals, I know.

The next morning we went back to Monaco when all of the vampires were asleep, so that we could visit the much-hailed aquarium there.  It was better than the hype.  We watched an octopus for close to half an hour as it attempted to navigate a maze provided as a challenge for it.  The little guy never made it to his lunch while we were watching, but it seemed obvious that he was smart enough to figure it out eventually.  We saw plenty of species we’d never seen before, even though the number of aquariums we have been to over time has easily reached double digits.  The aquarium is also a superb maritime museum that was started by Prince Albert I and so includes all kinds of stuff from around 1900.  It was also presided over by Jacques Cousteau for about thirty years.  In addition to the appeal of the intriguing exhibits, the building itself is an incredible bit of architecture.  And, to boot, it has a spectacular view of the city on one side and the Mediterranean on the other.  It was definitely worth the time.

Oceanographic museums are bit more over-the-top grandiose in Monaco.

The outside of the building isn't too shabby either.

Our octopus friend and Carol's favorite fish siting.

Driving from the Cote d’Azur to Tuscany was relatively easy.  The hardest part was figuring out the new system for taking tolls on the motorways.  Every country does things differently, and it is quite stressful the first few times around.  Are we in the correct lane at the tollbooth?  Do we take a ticket or pay as we go?  Do we need correct change?  Do we have to buy a pass ahead of time?  It is tough when you have dozens of cars behind you wanting to get through and passed the ignorant tourists.  But we survived Spain and France, and we’ll survive Italy as well.  In fact, last night we flew by a poor guy who was stopped in the middle of the ten-lane plaza, about 50 feet from the toll booths, apparently baffled as to which way he should proceed.  Ha-ha, loser…

So now we are in Lucca, Italy, a little walled town between Pisa and Florence.  We’ve already visited both of those towns and much more, but our adventures here will have to wait for the next post.  So for now, I bid you adieu!

We Finally Get Our Just Deserts (No, that's not a spelling mistake. Read and understand.)

Morocco kicked all sorts of butt. If you recall, my one complaint with Bali was that we had already seen pretty much all that the island had to offer on some previous part of the trip. We needed something different. Well, we got it. Morocco was a completely new experience for all of us. The only thing even remotely close for me, in a lifetime worth of experience, was Israel, which I visited almost exactly thirty years ago. As did Asia, Morocco provided us with our fill of Mother Nature and with plenty of religious grandiosity. But there was no overlap in the details… at all.

The reasons for going to Morocco were entirely about the desert and the camels. And that part of the adventure did not disappoint in the least. (Wait a second. If something doesn’t disappoint, shouldn’t that mean it “appoints”? What is up with that? Oh. I’m sorry for ruining the train of thought. Let me begin again.) Neither the desert nor the camels disappointed us in the least. In fact, the desert rocked, literally and figuratively, though in the literal sense the rocks were more of a conglomeration of zillions of eensy-weensy jobbers that were so fine, they were almost soft to the touch. But I am getting ahead of myself. My point was that we were drawn to Morocco by the desert, but we ended up enjoying much more than that. So as always, I shall have to begin, again, at the beginning.

Side joke: “How do you get a cat in the refrigerator?” Answer to come.

The flight from Bali to Singapore was quick. The layover at Singapore airport was too short and altogether sublime. We love that place! The flight to London was long but as pleasant as a flight in cattle-class can be. I watched four movies. Enough said. London was all about recovering from timezone-warp. We had two nights and one day and did little besides eat and sleep. A lovely Indian food restaurant did three of us some good, while Carol just stayed in the hotel and slept through dinner. We did make a quick visit to the Natural History Museum as it was quite near our hotel. I remember an over abundance of dinosaur bones and a crazy astronomy display, nothing more. It is all one big jet-lagged blur.

Back on another plane, and we were in Morocco before you could say "tally-ho," or whatever those crazy Brits say when you leave. The flight was short and sweet. It included some lovely views of the Iberian peninsula. And then, just like that, we were in a new continent yet again, and ready for new experiences.

Answer to joke: “Open the door, put the cat in, close the door. Simple!” Not funny? My children disagree, based on their reaction when they heard this whilst sitting under the stars in the middle of the desert. There is more of this to come. I apologize in advance.

We caught a taxi that was supposed to take us to our hotel, but that instead dropped us off on some unmarked dirt road surrounded by stone walls.  Luckily there was a man waiting for us there who took us down one dark alley (though the sun was still high in the sky) after another.  Each alley was progressively narrower than the last, with lower and lower archways between the walls.  If we didn’t know any better, and really, we didn’t, we would have expected a mugging at that point.  We really shouldn’t ever have seen our luggage again.  It was crazy.  Even the alleys have alleys.  The hotel door, just like dozens of others that we’d passed, was an unmarked full metal rectangle (albeit intricately detailed) five feet high and three feet wide in the middle of a giant stone wall that looked no different than the previous two hundred meters of wall after five or six unmarked turns.  Five-o-clock news, here we come.  Is that guy salivating on us?

Broad daylight, I swear.  These alleyways are scary.

I guess we didn't get a picture of the first hotel door.  This was the door to the hotel on the fifth night.  Much larger,  but same idea.  No markings anywhere on the endless wall other than that number.

But when we stepped through the hotel door, we stepped into a wide-open oasis of charm and culture. We were bombarded with fantastic sights and wonderful smells all around us. The fountains and pools and ceramic sculptures and murals and tapestries and wall paintings and gorgeous tile work were well, 100% contrast from the walls outside.  And that was just the courtyard.  The rooms were equally charming.

Side joke #2: OK. But how do you get a camel into the refrigerator in four steps?

We loved all of the rooms that we stayed in while in Morocco (there were four if you are keeping count), even the one that had genuine Saharan sand as the floor.  The character of each was over-the-top authentically Moroccan.  So Cool!  So what makes Morocco, well, Moroccan?  To start, it is a mix of French culture, Arabic culture, and the local Berber culture that thrived there before the conquering influences made their mark.  English was a distant fourth on the language usage scale, but we had no trouble finding people who spoke it fluently.  The official language is Arabic, and everything is written in that beautiful script.  I’m not even certain Berber has a written language.  We never encountered it. 

OK, Carol tells me there most certainly is one, and it is character based and reads from left to right, rather than the right to left of Arabic.  But I swear it is never used.  But most Moroccans speak in Berber to each other, or so I’m told.  Not that I can hear a difference between that and Arabic.  Every local who sees the white folk coming immediately bursts into French, and only defers to English when given that eyes-glazed-over look.  But they all seem to speak English as well.  At least they speak enough to be able to sell you stuff you don’t need, and don’t want, but may buy anyway, just to get them to stop trying so hard to sell it to you.  When I say all of them, I mean all of the men.  We almost never spoke to, or were spoken to by, a woman.  They all wear the ubiquitous Islamic head coverings and do not make eye contact, much less interact, with foreigners.  Rather than editorializing on that situation, I shall take it for what it is, and comment no further.

Just as in Asia, religion was everywhere, but not in the form of statues and idols and over-done temples.  There were two or three mosques on every block, but they were so understated that the kids didn’t even realize the mosques were anything other than houses.  The women’s clothing was an obvious nod to Islamic tradition, but even the men were garbed in such a way as to promote tradition over comfort.  The call to prayer would come blasting in over the loudspeakers in whatever town you found yourself six times a day (once two hours before dawn!, and once each at dawn and midday, once in the afternoon when shadows are as long as the object casting said shadow, once at sunset, and once when the last light of day has disappeared). “God is Great.  There is no god but God. Mohammed is the Prophet of God.  Come to prayer.  Come to salvation.  God is Great.  There is no god but God.”  Over and over and over again.  And you thought I spoke not a word of Arabic.

Answer to joke #2:  Open door.  Remove cat.  Shove in camel.  Close door.  Problems?

Side joke #3:  What do I call my delectable cheddar? 

One shot of the bazaar from a cafe terrace.  That's one of those unassuming mosques dead center, by the way.

Endless wares to ogle.

Thousands of "stalls" just like this one.

Chloe is trying out her bedouin look in a scarf shop.

This guy didn't want us to pass through this way.  He was kind of an ass about it.

In the main square of the old walled part of the city of Marrakech, and branching out in all directions from there, was a bazaar just like you see in the movies.  Endless stalls filled with colorful wares and even more colorful salesman made for an experience I shall never forget.  Josh learned how to haggle.  Carol got swindled into buying a couple of scarves she wasn’t even looking to buy.  We all got schooled in the art of only looking at things in your peripheral vision so as not to attract the salesman.  On our first day we sat on a veranda on the second floor of a café so that we could watch the hustle and bustle from on high.  After that we got braver and joined in with the fun.  We never saw a snake-charmer as was promised, but we did see a number of performers and countless toothless beggars and endless men wearing the garb of the sand people in Star Wars.  The pointy hoods made us smile every time.  My favorite part was the staggeringly large group of guys who sell nuts.  We’ve got a picture to show you how that worked.

Nice hoody.  Definitely a crowd favorite.

The nut guys have a little hole through which they crawl to be in among the fruits and nuts.  We stocked up on both.

Answer to joke number 3:  Nach-yo Cheese!

Side joke number 4:  How do you make a tissue dance?

Moroccans eat the same two meals over and over again.  One is couscous with vegetables and either chicken or lamb.  The other is a stew called tagine that is potato based but usually contained chicken or beef or lamb as well.  Both are excellent.  I had a tagine cooked at a stall no bigger than a kid’s lemonade stand once, and it was top-rate cuisine.  Though upon finishing I noticed that the method of cleaning the dishes before re-use was to rub with a napkin.  Ouch.  All tagine is made in little ceramic pots with lids that look like the pointy hats all the wanderers in the market wear.  Those cooking pots were also sold in seemingly every other stall in the bazaar.  We would have bought one as a souvenir if we could have handled the extra weight in our luggage.  But alas, souvenirs are not to be had.

This is the lunch stall to which I referred.  Yummy!

The bazaar in Marrakech was pretty much our entire Morocco experience for the first day and the last day of the five-day trip.  The middle three days, however, were all about the Sahara desert adventure.  I will leave the telling of the camel part of the journey up to Chloe.  But it wasn’t all about the destination.  The journey in and of itself was worth an account.

Answer to joke #4:  Put a little boogie in it.

Side joke #5:  A lion was having a jungle party and a truce was called so that no animals would need to fear being eaten for one night.  All of the animals of the jungle and the forests and the desert and the savannah were invited.  Almost every animal came.  It was a total rager.  But which animal never showed up?

For starters, the SUV we made the trip in was actually in motion for a grand total of about 27 hours over three days.  If you want an epic adventure, you’ve got to be willing to put in the effort.  It wasn’t particularly grueling, however.  We had three other people on the tour with us: Mohammed, our guide/driver, and two Swedish ladies in their mid-twenties named Johanna and Emilie, who were extremely friendly.  All three were wonderful traveling companions.  We also made one interesting stop after another, which really helped to break up the monotony.  And the scenery was incredible.  We had sweeping mountain vistas and enormous canyons and endless deserts with bright blue skies and orange sands.  There were hundreds of villages where the buildings, which were made of the surrounding clay, blended into the hillsides so well that you’d have to be looking for them specifically if you wanted to even notice they were there.

A typical town in the hills.

The Kasbah from a distance. 

A closer look.

A list of the movies that featured this particular kasbah.

Do you think it was built to code?

We were taken to an extremely famous Kasbah that was built in the 11^th century and that has been used in countless Hollywood movies.  We got to climb around on the roofs and pretend we belonged in the land of Lawrence of Arabia.  We were taken to a canyon so magnificent that that other one near Vegas seems like more of a ditch now.  We went through mountain passes with endless switchbacks that seemed at time like the Colorado Rockies at others like the Swiss Alps. 

Impressive mountain views.

Mohammed even brought us into his own home and fed us a Tagine that was out of this world good and cooked by his wife.  We, of course, never got to meet her.  But the personal touch was not unappreciated, especially in a culture that is so private.  We did get to meet his adorable daughter, though.  I guess three-year-olds are still allowed to be sociable.  Also, in his hometown, we went to a warehouse where they make everything you can think of out of fossils mined from the nearby rocks.  We got a lesson in Pre-cambrian archaeology during the tour.  Again, we would have stocked up on souvenirs if we could have carried them with us. 

Mohammed and I appreciating the blue skies.

The canyon.

Lunch at Mohammed's house.  That is the dynamic duo, Johanna and Emilie, our new BFFs.

Josh is chiseling rock away from fossil.

We finally arrived at our destination, a town called Merzouga, which was only about 20 km from the Algerian border.  We were to ride into the heart of the desert on camels and stay overnight in a traditional Bedouin tent city.  But as I hinted at earlier, Chloe is in charge of that part of the story.  So without further ado…

Chloe:  Riding a camel through the Sahara Desert is the most amazing experience I have ever had.  After a long drive, we arrived at the edge of the desert.  When we got out of the car, we all saw the majestic camels sitting peacefully in a row. We all looked at them longingly waiting to mount, wondering which camel would be ours.  Mine was particularly fuzzy which I liked. When I got on my camel, I felt just how much you get jostled around when the camel stands up.  It doesn’t rise all at once, but first stands with its back legs lurching you forwards and then its front legs, evening you out. It almost feels like riding on a living and breathing rollercoaster. Just to add to that fact, once they started walking it was a bit jolty. I rode for a while, gripping on tightly to the bar in front of me worried that I might fall off. But eventually, I got into rhythm with the camel, and didn’t need to hold on, even when we were going down hill. After a while we decided to name our camels. My brother named his Bobby, for no particular reason. My dad named his Kasbah because of the amazing Kasbah we had seen the day before. The two Swedish women that we were travelling with named their camels Scarface and Black Beauty. One had lots of scars and the other was completely black. My mom named hers Turban because he was wearing a turban earlier, and I named mine Fuzzel because he was a very fuzzy camel.

I loved watching the beautiful sand dunes all around us with the amazing color contrast. The orange dunes paired with the bright blue sky seemed too perfect to be real.  About an hour and a half later we arrived at the campsite, dismounted our camels and explored the campsite. It was made up of many different rooms.  One for cooking, one for eating, three for sleeping, and one large open area in the middle for sitting. Soon after we arrived it was time to go and watch the sunset. We started walking up the sand dunes, and discovered it was much more difficult than it appeared when the camels did it. When we finally arrived at the top, and were waiting for the sunset, Josh decided to roll back down the hill completely covering himself in sand. I almost followed him until I thought about the hike back up, and that the campsite had no showers to de-sand myself. So instead I decided I would slide down on my butt after the sunset. That way I wouldn’t get as sandy, and I wouldn’t have to walk back up. When the sun set the sky turned a beautiful pinkish purple around the edges, while the rest of the sky was still blue.

After the sunset, we were served a lovely meal of couscous, chicken, veggies and potato.  Once we finished dinner, we all headed to the middle of the camp to play drums, tell jokes, and look at the stars.  First, we all played the drums, which kind of failed except for the guides, who had played many times before. It was still fun trying though. Next we looked at the stars, which were very bright, due to the fact that there were no lights on the ground to block them out. We found three different constellations, and made up two of our own (the camel, and the puny dipper). Then we told jokes many of which were from the guides and were pretty funny. After we had finished, we all went off to bed, to get ready for the day ahead. When we woke up the next morning at 5am, you could still see the stars. As we were riding the camels back, to the car, we watched the sky change from a dark blue to a purple and then a light blue. When we had walked about half way, we stopped to watch the sunrise. Soon enough we were leaving the desert, and saying goodbye to our camels. I still miss Fuzzel.

Haven't seen one of these in Marin.

Josh, Johanna, Emilie, Carol, Chloe and yours truly, in that order.

It was cooler when I did it.

No words... 

Beach without the ocean.

Our tent in the desert.  You can see the sand at the left wall.

Fuzzel. 

Just after sunrise, so the shadows were pretty sweet.  

Steve:  So there you have it.  Chloe wasn’t exaggerating when she said it was the best experience of her life.  She really feels that way.  It was pretty darn awesome, I have to admit.  The ride back was long but epic.  When we finally had to say goodbye to our traveling companions, it was nearly a teary-eyed one.  We had shared so much in so little time that we all felt like old friends.  But all good things must come to an end.  And so do mediocre things, like, say, this blog post…

Answer to joke #5: Duh!  The camel.  He was stuck in the fridge.

These were the jokes told that magical night in the desert. We told jokes three and four.  We heard both of them for the first time at “Mike Wyzowski’s Monster’s Inc. School of Humor” attraction at Disneyworld.  The other three jokes were provided by our Bedouin hosts.  The kids were in stitches.  Laughter is always better in the good ‘ole outdoors.

Catch you later!  Next edition in Europe!