Holiday Highlights

If you read the previous post you may have gathered that I am now somewhat sold on the benefits of Spanish and Portuguese holidays. Endless blue skies and a food a wine lover's delight, there is lots to enjoy. Having grown up a country girl and spent much of my time in Bangkok craving wide open spaces, it was something of a surprise to me that the highlights of both Spain and Portugal were exploring the cities. Then again in reflection, it is perhaps not such a great surprise when you think that other than the cities and towns, you are left with Mediterranean and Atlantic coast beaches (dirty and windswept respectively and both Arctic by my standards), or sleepy mountain villages.

During our trip the places that stood out were Ronda and Seville in Spain, and Lisbon in Portugal. These three locations all share some of the same features; great food and drink, narrow cobbled streets, character filled buildings, an abundance of Mediterranean culture and lets not forget that wonderful endless blue sky. As well as all this, each place has its own uniqueness and offers something different.

Seville

The Andalucian capital of Seville swelters in intense heat and is not best placed for any kind of breeze. The mid-day streets, quiet and empty of locals, are left to the tourists who don't know better and swealter. During July and August many locals leave for cooler climates or embrace the siesta experience. Businesses shut down and people retreat indoors for up to five hours. 

Seville has something for everyone. It concentrates all that is good about Andalusia; medieval winding streets, plazas filled with orange trees, is the home of flamenco, has a huge range of historical landmarks and there is high street and boutique shopping galore. 

 

Possibly the best thing about Seville though is the night-life. After snoozing away the hot hours, the streets come alive as the sun descends. The people of Seville really know how to enjoy themselves and as with the day time activities there is something for everyone. Posh restaurants interspersed with old and new tapas bars serving award winning nibbles, bar streets that stretch as far as the eye can see, and this was just our local area. We went to one unassuming little tapas bar that had taken over the church plaza across the road. Vacated tables and chairs here were quickly filled by locals trailing dogs. This is definitely my kind of dog walking.

Lisbon

In stark contrast to Seville, Portugal's understated star attraction is surprisingly cool at this time of year with a constant breeze that travels in from the Atlantic and up the Rio Tejo to keep Lisbon at a refreshing 25-30 degrees in the day and 20-25 degrees at night. This relative chill catches many unawares and clothes shops must do a bustling trade in extra layers sold to unprepared tourists. 

Lisbon has a profound effect on its visitors, with it reportedly found that over 90% of people wish to return. So just what is it about the Portuguese capital that sets it apart from other cities? The first thing that strikes you about Lisbon is the colour. Built partly on hills, the colourful buildings appear to tumble down into the water. The contrast of orange roofed, white washed cottages interspersed with brightly tiled town houses and grand Gothic churches are all complemented by the bright blue sky and the deep blue river. Steep tree lined one way streets are filled with the ringing bells of rickety yellow trams, a visiting driver's nightmare. This is a modern city with a village feel. It has an air of Sydney and what I imagine Rio to be like, but far more laid back.

 

While exploring the town centre it is hard not to get distracted, as we did, very, by the opportunities for Port and wine tasting. It is possible to go from one side of the road to another testing Tawnys and LBV's. All we were doing was walking to a friend's apartment, the 10 minute walk took us about an hour. I now have a new found love of Port. Thankfully it's not just seen as an old man's drink out there. I’ll just have to drink it in private when back home.

As well as the relaxed cafés and restaurants that can be found on every corner (apart from on a certain night where we were looking for a cheap eat and seemed to walk for 40 minutes without spotting anything better than a greasy spoon Café... even classy cities have them), there is the famed Bairro Alta area where you can enjoy fine food, music and pint and a half mojitos for €5. Here beautiful people spill out into the streets until they have drunk too much to remain beautiful, but by that point nobody really cares.

The draw of Lisbon is very acute. Even the fact that the city is rife with pick-pockets was not enough to put us off. Well maybe, just for a short while, after some huge Eastern European thug shouted in our faces that he was going to find us and '**** us up later' when Nick called him out for stealing someone's wallet on the tram. Regardless of all this drama we still found ourselves scouring the internet for possible job opportunities in the area even before we left. Lisbon is a city that takes hold of you. 

Ronda

Saving the best for last? With all that Lisbon offers it might be hard to believe that the small Andalucian mountain town of Ronda could top it as our favourite place to visit. Andalucia’s fastest growing town is full of historical charm, dramatic views and arguably the best tapas bar we've ever visited. These days with us it all eventually boils down to the quality of the food and drink. 

Ronda is the home of modern bullfighting and was the first place where a man got of his horse in order to come face to face with a bull. To be fair I still figure they should have left the bull alone either with a horse or on foot. Perched precariously on the edge of a plateau and divided by a 120 metre canyon, the two parts of the old town are linked by a grand Roman bridge. This bridge is about 220 years old and took forty years to build. It is architecturally stunning and is made up of three tiers of arches. What is perhaps most impressive about the bridge is the fact that it is still used today as a main thoroughfare. 

 

Ernest Hemingway once described Ronda, one of his seemingly endless summer holiday destinations, as 'the perfect place to honeymoon'. With its history, hidden plazas and dramatic views it is undoubtedly a very romantic city. While this wasn't completely lost on us, we arrived there after days in British styled Fuengirola with one thing and one thing only on our minds... tapas bars. It took us about half an hour to park the car and find the hotel before we hit our first tapas bar. While unlike Ceuta and Mellia the tapas are not free, they are the cheapest we have come across in our travels of mainland Spain. Perhaps it was the €1 beer €1 tapas deals that sealed our love of the place. We ate and drank until we could eat and drink no more. It was at that point we turned the corner on the way home to find the holy grail of tapas bars. Set into a brick arch with old barrels as tables outside, Entrevinos is distinct for offering twenty Ronda produced wines by the glass as well as a wide selection of gourmet style dishes. Actually, maybe my love for Ronda comes from the squid ink pasta and calamari or duck breast in Madeira sauce for €1.50. Not sure how we can work it into our travel plans to go back, but we'll try. 

 

With this new love of Europe it is hard to see how we will tear ourselves away from our convenient spot in north Morocco. Anyone know any jobs going in Europe?

The Bloom

As many of my previous posts have mentioned, our explorations here have led us to see Morocco as a country made up of vast expanses of barren dusty land interspersed with the occasional lush oasis nestled within a hidden valley. On our recent trip north to Melilla we drove through a land so changed since our last visit six weeks ago it was like driving through a different country. With rain comes spring and the ‘bloom’ has arrived.

The road north is a very picturesque route, even when it is dry and barren. Mountains, plains and a lake or two interspersed with the occasional small town. A lack of people keeps the rubbish to the minimum. This is one of the worst countries I have known for bushes blooming plastic bags or the national flower as they are becoming known.

This is one of the dump sites that are all over the place. At least here it's reasonably in one place and not all over the landscape.

Driving through after the rains have passed and dusty rocky slopes have been replaced with a variety of iridescent greens of fresh grass. It has become a Telly Tubby land of rolling green that doesn’t look real. It left me with an irrational desire to jump out the car and skip and roll in it like a 5 year old. Fat happy donkeys wonder contentedly in shoulder deep grass. Wild flowers run riot and as the sun dips the landscape shimmers with gold.

The strength of my reaction to this green surprised me. Having spent a disproportionate amount of my childhood sitting in fields I should be more than used to a little grass around me. We have more than enough rain in Manchester for the fields to be green year round. Living here has given me a new found appreciation for grass. I don’t take it for granted any more. Witnessing hundreds of kilometres of apparently unfertile brown land transform into waves of green billowing in the wind has to be one of the most spectacularly refreshing seasonal changes I have ever encountered.

Melila

I was quite convinced that having already eulogised the wonders of our local Spanish enclave that there would be little to write about on our recent visit. We had already experienced the cheap shopping, the café culture and being ridiculously taken advantage of in a tapas bar, how could we top that?

Ok, so this trip we did not get given ten free drinks in the first bar we walked into, it was only four. However this was perhaps a good thing as after a day of school followed by a 500 kilometre drive, we would never have made it out to do any shopping the next day. As it was we returned to Casa Marta where the same waiter over-enthusiastically topped up our drinks and gave us extra tapas before to our surprise plonking a plate of four steaks and tempura vegetables on the table. When we asked for water in an aim to slow down the alcohol consumption, he laughed and said “I no have that!” with a devious smile. Yet again he was not keen to let us leave without sneaking another drink into us. How often do you have to try and work out a tactical escape plan to pay and leave and avoid the free alcohol? Do we really look that deprived?

Feeling more fragile than we had planned the next day we still managed to get everything done we had intended, this included another ridiculous alcohol shop (we now have about 37 litres… must not panic buy) and a long lazy seafood lunch in the sun. That night we decided for the good of our health we should avoid Casa Marta and find another tapas bar. 

We went to Entrevinos. Reasonably full when we entered we were forced to stand at the bar. After the attentive care of our friend in Casa Marta we felt a little lost in Entrevinos, eye contact was hard to make with the waiter and the tapas situation was confusing. This was obviously not the place where we’d be getting free food and drink. Part way down our first drink the man next to me offered me a chair and bought us a round before he left. We then found a table and were given a steady stream of tapas and then free drinks at the end of the night. Why that man bought us a drink I have no idea. He didn’t talk to us and he wasn’t the manager like I first assumed. We obviously do look that deprived.

Entrevinos was a very interesting bar. For the first hour or so there was a constant stream of model like women coming in in groups. This was obviously the place to be. True this is no great achievement when as yet we have only found two tapas bars in town. And believe me we have tried. At around 10.00 when the place was packed with women, the men started to arrive. They arrived in packs. They may always chose to travel this way or it may have something to do with the fact that a Barca match had just finished. The thing was the long narrow bar was so busy by then that all the women ended up on one side and all the men on the other near the entrance. From these positions they then not so surreptitiously eyed each other up with the occasional brave individual breaking rank and heading over to the other side.  This was still going on by the time we left, hangovers having gotten the better of us.

Yay! There's pig under there...

Living in Morocco has its own unique benefits. These include endless sunshine, great food and quick flights to Europe and home. Sadly socialising and cheap alcohol are not amongst the benefits. Last week we took a much anticipated trip to Spain on an alcohol and pork run. As I have mentioned before, much to the Moroccans dismay and our delight, Spain has managed to hang on to two small enclaves on the Mediterranean coast of Morocco. Although they could do with being a little closer than 450 km away, we appreciate them nonetheless. After our last stressful seven hour drive to Ceuta, for this trip we decided to visit the slightly closer town of Melilla.

Melilla is a 12 kilometre squared piece of land and port which has been part of Spain for over 500 years and is highly contested by most Moroccans. Similar to the other enclaves and all the small islands close to Morocco that are considered to be Spanish, Melilla is somewhat of a sore point with the Moroccan government who believe the areas should be under Moroccan rule and the Spanish should leave. The Spanish are sticking to their guns and are not going anywhere. This decision seems somewhat hypocritical considering their contention over the British rule of Gibraltar.

The drive from Fes to Melilla is relatively easy by Moroccan standards. It is 450 kilometres in sunshine so strong that when experienced in a car without air-con makes you feel like you are being baked in a tin, even in March. However, half of the way you are on a highway that is empty and runs through land resembling the Lake District, and the other half is along a pot-holey but reasonably straight road that is good for overtaking on. Frustratingly, we made it 450 kilometres in four hours and then five kilometres in an hour when it came to crossing the border. It seems that we were not the only people who wanted to go to Spain on a Saturday lunch to do shopping. Surely the cheap shopping isn't cheap enough to warrant an hour border crossing each way? Yes we drove 450 kilometres in search of a Lidl, but we were on a long distance beer and pig mission. The fact that Melilla is one of the most popular places for illegal immigrants to enter the EU added to our queuing time. However, the thorough car checks and six metre barbed wire fences with watch towers seem pointless when people appear to be able to wander through without being stopped.

There are few borders that I have crossed in my travels that give you that feeling of literally entering another world. Obviously you always have that few kilometres or grubbiness and chaos, that seem to occur no matter how wealthy the country you are entering, but usually what's beyond that is reasonably similar to what you have left. Leaving Africa and entering Europe in the space of five kilometres is quite an experience, one that is probably only matched by crossing from Mexico into America. Not only are the streets, buildings and cars smarter, it is almost like the air is cleaner as well. We are perfectly content with life in Morocco, but immediately upon entering Spain you feel you are in a whole other level of civilisation and order. There are road markings, litter bins, long tree lined streets, fountains, parks and ornate buildings, all of them gleaming. You turn a corner in search of a secure underground car park and there one is just where you need it. Amongst all this pristine order stroll stylish families off to meet up with equally stylish friends and spend the entire day sitting at café tables enjoying tapas, wine and beer all the while looking very....well....stylish.

Now I am sure most European countries have there own version of this, but Spain seem to have this one down to a fine art. Long lazy sunny weekend days enjoying small chilled-cheap beers, great table wine and a never ending stream of amazing nibbles that are heavy on the pork. The extent of our longing for pork was such that as a plate of mystery tapas was put down later that day Nick exclaimed with glee “Yay! There's pig under there!” For our first round of tapas we settled in as close as we dared to all the stylish people in a restaurant overlooking a square. Here we were subjected to being taken advantage of as naïve tourists. The waiter, when kindly taking the time to explain the confusing menu to us took our nods not as confirmation of our understanding of product, but instead as confirmation of us wanting to order everything he listed. Unlike the tables around us who were presented with a restrained nibble or two at a time, we were made to look like immense pigs as six large portions of food were brought to our table all at once. While this was all very enjoyable, we hadn't quite been prepared for what was to be the most expensive lunch we have ever had. 

 

 

 

After lunch we went for a short walk before admitting defeat to a full stomach and going for a lie down. In most places going to bed late afternoon is a recipe for disaster, or a missed night at least. In Spain it seems that yet again they have planned for this eventuality. Enjoy your long, lazy and stylish lunch, sleep it off and make your way out refreshed and ready to start your night just about the times pubs in the UK are closing.