Arles et Les Baux de Provence Day trip + pics

Saturday, November 22. Arles et Les Baux de Provence.

Population Arles: 52,600.

Arles is this little town about an hour outside of Aix that is known for its pictoresque views of the countryside and many Roman ruins from the first century BC. I went with three friends from the group and we got to walk around and see the highlights of the city, while bearing the freezing cold Mistral wind (you think its nice and sunny outside but you're dead wrong). There was a huge Saturday market set up with lots of clothes, jewelry, gifts, and all sorts of food so we walked up and down the length of the main street for a while admiring all the nice great things to buy, Danny got a coat (he even bargained down the price) and we all got donuts, paella, clementines, crossiants, etc mini samplings that were all good. The market is a lot less touristy than the one in Aix, which follows the fact that the town in general is a lot less touristy, so prices were cheaper and things weren't as commercialized as we're used to, we got to see the locals doing their Saturday shopping. Anyways, Arles is a lot like Aix-Hotel de Ville square with an obelisk in the middle instead of a fountain (Aix gets to keep the fountains as its unique specialty), but also the market, there was a carousel right in the middle of another part of town, the streets reminded us of Aix a lot, little winding cobblestone roads with apartments going up four or five stories, windows with shutters closed or open dotting the alleys. We saw the Arles museum which has lots of roman statues in this courtyard, the Chappelle of St Trophime which is famous for its cloitre, which is where the monks would work and live, and its belltower which is a mix of Roman and Gothic architecture but is the most famous one in Provence. It had a little statue of some god on top of a cuppola shaped tower, different than the others I've seen. Hotel de Ville square had its three main facades as old Roman buildings and the obelisk in the middle was remade out of the stone from the original one (it had a big crack down the middle where it was refastened). Also learned that the Chapel of St Trophime is a UNESCO world heritage site-yeayea!  Then we walked on to another square where there was a big statue of Frederic Mistral, and Le Cafe La Nuit, the cafe that inspire Van Gogh's painting which I think in English is called The Night Cafe? Maybe. Anyways, Van Gogh resided in Arles when he was in France, it was here that he cut off his ear and was hospitalized, so there were  a fewmonuments to him and you could see his old bedroom (we opted not to). Lauren bought a santon, these little painted figurines for the creche that are typically provencal because they're characters only found in provence, for example Le Mistralier, the guy who's outo n the plains holding his hat and staff hunched over against the Mistral wind (thats the one she bought). There was  a store that only sold santons-which are mad expensive. Back to the tour, we saw the old theatre of the Roman period and the amphitheatre which they are restoring so its looking brand new instead of like  aruin (they still use it for bullfights and big events) and it was out of use for  a couple hundred years until the 1800s and when they decided to reuse it they had to destroy 212 houses and 2 chapels that had been built inside the oval shaped dome- it had sprouted up a little village all to its own. We climbed up to this other little church where behind it was a great view of the countryside, we could see windtowers and towers from castles/an abbey of Montmajour, and all the curved tile rooftops of Arles. We walked up to the Rhone which was another amazing view of the water, saw the Thermes of Constantin, then sat down in a little cafe for lunch and it was time to go. Next we stopped quickly at the moulin (windmill) that was the inspriation for Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de Mon  Moulin, his most famous work, and we saw where he lived (we learned about him in Provence history class just a few days before) and then we went to Les Baux de Provence, another perched village town with a big castle coming out of the rocky cliffs right at the top. It looked a lot like Gourdes so I heard (I got sick so I missed Les Baux :() and then we returned home. Yay for Provence sightseeing! and two quotes of the trip: "I would love to usher a child into the world right now, Connor Gabriel Winter, WELCOME!" and "So America was going to buy secrets from Hitler too but then...YEAH BUT...just wait until you're on Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and you lose!"

Pics:

http://photo2.walgreens.com/share/p=879231227450445456/l=25622409/g=3230505/cobrandOid=1009/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

It's Not for Girls, but I am! Pics from Merrie England.

London Pics:

http://photo2.walgreens.com/share/p=581161226856927024/l=25602730/g=3230505/cobrandOid=1009/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Tales from LONDON BABY! My life is not complete without Caspar from Harrod's.

November 14-16, 2008

Shortest trip to London, England ever, but still excellent.

London Population: Over 7 million!!! The largest city in Europe!!!

Tales from London:

Roll into Gatwick Airport (me, Lauren, and Dave) and Tube it to our hostel in Hammersmith. Awesome British names for everything: Hammersmith, Baron's Court, Earl's Court, Southgate, Wellington, Gloucester Square, Leicester Square, Covent Garden, Piccadilly Circus, Tower Hill, Monument, Liverpool Street, Portobello Road, Notting Hill, etc etc etc. Put our affairs down in this awesome hostel that's really like a hotel, its a converted nurses quarters turned masonic lodge turned hostel, really random. 

First stop, Sloane Street (haute couture as Dave says) window shop lots of fancy names and marvel at British taxis that look like their from the first half of the 20th century, the red telephone booths, the streets with Look Left, Look Right spray painted on them, the police with high oval hats like you see in films, the mantra Mind the Gap repeating over and over in the Tube underground. Up to Harrod's, dont worry, even with my cool yellow Moroccan shoes I can get in, we go to the Egyptian room and Egyptian escalator (the lamps are these huge head busts of pharoahs with big hats, and the whole thing is marble and granite and ornately decoarted but not grandiose, its very intimate wihtout being cluttered, very cool, )and fancy watch room and candy shop, toy shop, explore all the cool rooms for a while.  On to Leicester Square, hot spot for theatre and movies (there were three giant movie theatres in the same square, movies for students by the way are the equivalent of $20!!) yeah, the pound is not cheap, that's for sure. It's also a really fat, really heavy coin compared to the Euro. Anyways, eat at this nice restaurant Maxwells, appetizers, main course, dessert (sticky toffee pudding, and this vanilla ice cream/toffee/caramel creation), tea and coffee, yum.  We see people really dressed up, some girls dressed up as in dressed in barely anything, and we have a very cute waiter who is I'm sure making millions of girls cry as he is of the male preference...Dave learned that when asking for his recomendations for night clubs...aww Oliver. Learn that guys in suits speaking English with the British accent are practically irresistible.  We were in this area that during the day is a big market, it used to be an apple market and something else not sure what, at night its a lot of pubs and restaurants, pubs where people take their beers outside and stand on the sidewalk talking if the pub is too full, so there's lots of activity and people everywhere. Walk to Leicester Square from there which is full of people, guys on bikes pulling those littles carts that'll take you around the town. Heres our consensus on Britain- not only are things expensive, people somehow manage to look good all the time, the girls are always dressed up to the nines, look very chic, high heeled boots , tights, skirt, guys sweater and jeans, but really it was remarkable they were almost more fashionable than the French. Walk around for a litte, then return to our hostel and sit at the bar for a while, play some pool and watch soccer on TV. Next day, we really see britain, we only had one day so we tried to cram as much in as possible. Up early, go to Notting Hill (like the movie!!) where there's Portobello Street Antique Market on Saturdays, browse and peruse the amazingly amazing antiques of all shapes and sizes-engraved elephant tusks, lots of silverware, magnifying glasses, pocketwatches, jewelry, handbags, handmade garments, really pretty compact mirrors, soccer memorabilia, tin plaques of all sorts, Beatles paraphernelia, old books, block print letters like they had in printing presses, and a ton of other cool stuff that I can't remember. We bought some cool going out tops that were from stores before the actual antique market-I'm excited to wear it out its this tank top with this flowery stuff on the back. We went into this one store with a rather rude woman who told us that, "If Americans have the money, they always buy from me" in reference to her one of a kind vetements, this after I commented in a fairly loud voice that one of the jackets looked like  Ron Wealey sweater (HP fans get that reference bien sur!) There was also a food market after the antique market with lots of international food and of course fresh fruits and pastries and such. Also side note, learned what a cornish pasty is, its like a fast food type thing like a hot pocket filled with minced vegetables and meats. Lots of funny british names for things. Also there are a TON of Starbucks in Britain, not just one in the major plaza, no, but really maybe every four blocks instead of every one like in the US, there's a Starbucks, and they're popular, we saw lots of people with the throwaway cups.  Continuing. so the antique market was awesome, if I lived there I would go every Saturday. Then we go to Hyde Park, a nice little park with the Wellington Arch in tribute to Duke Wellingont in the center, and we meet up for a tour of the city. How small a world is it that on this tour with thirty five people one of them is this girl I went to high school with?!?! So I recognized her and we said hi, she's studying in Barcelona. But really, that was quite quite quite random (quite is a very British term so we learned, in addition to right, brilliant, CHEERS!, rubbish, uni). So this tour took us to Buckingham Palace and we saw the changing of the guards, then we saw Prince Charles house, the old Palace (St James?) that is now the official residence of the queen, where you'd address a letter to, and Diana lived there when she divorced Charles. We walked down the street there that is famous because most of the houses are royal residences but I forget the name, saw Nell Gwyne's house (King Charles II most famous mistress who was loved by the people because she was not Catholic and not French, unlike his wife) who lived in the 1600s, then we went to this intersection with some big statues that our guide didn't explain but there were a bunch of Old Boys clubs there, the one we saw was Athena, and it really wasn't open to women, they couldn't even step onto the premises until last year! On to Trafalgar Square, where the National Portrait Gallery is, and Trafalgar Square has a big monument to Nelson who won at the Battle of Trafalgar with these four giant lions at the base (the sculpteur had never seen a lion before so he modeled them after his dogs, but they look like real lions so far as I know), and a big statue of one eyed one armed Napoleon, a little stab at the French (our guide pointed out a lot of these, but for all that there were a ton of French tourists there). Actually the lions are supposedly made out of melted down canons of the French artillery (Napoleon's Column is Paris is made of melted down English cannons, so it works both ways) there was also this big Arch where royal processions come through (the name's escaping me) and there was a random nose in the middle of one of the arches that legend has it is Napoleon's nose, and anytime the army marches through the arch they give it a little squeeze. Nelson died in the battle of Trafalgar, taken out by a sniper who easily saw him because he insisted on going into battle with all of his medallions and his colonel/commander gear. Anyways, his body was transported back to England in a giant barrel full of rum of some drink because it was good for preservation, but the soldiers and sailors on the ship were celebrating their victory and tapped into his barrel and drank half of what was in it, so he wasnt really preserved at all and all the guys on the ship "drank" a dead body soaked beverage, gross. That was really the only little anecdote we got on the tour, it wasn't as informative as the other one I did from the same company in Amsterdam, but still good. We ran into another funny character one of the guys who organized the tours but wasnt our guide, completely hung over, blood shot eyes, Lauren thought his long fingernails were gross, but he was actually pretty cool we offered him some of our granola. On the tour we did some French/English guessing games, its hard!! but the french do have their signature look, there was this one guy (Healy Hanson jacket) who looked so typically french (in a good good good way), but we didn't talk to him and couldn't figure him out because his friend who was clearly american was speaking to him in english, and we couldn't hear his responses.  Our only interaction, unfortunately, was me brushing a ladybug off his back and saying sorry you had a ladybug on your back. Lame. 

So our tour moves on, we saw Downing Street where the Prime Minister lives, the National Calvary Museum and this world war II bunker covered in red ivy next to it, St James Park which was gorgeous with this big lake in the middle of it and it used to be the zoo but the zoo was moved and they only left two giant white pelicans which are still in control of the lake and sometimes you can see them eat pigeons in the park, then we walked up to Westminster Abbey and Big Ben right on the River Thames, next to the Houses of Parliament and we heard the story of Guy Fawkes and Bonfire Night, we could see the London Eye on the other side of the Thames which is this big ferris wheel where you ride it and can see a good view of London, we also saw Winston Churchill's World War II bunker which is now part of the Imperial War Museum, and then the tour ended. So fun fact, Big Ben refers to the sixteen ton carillon bell inside the tower. From there we undergrounded it to the other side of the river (it was very complicated because there were planned engineering closures on the tube and lots of stops we wanted to go to were closed, so we had to take indirect routes) Once there we went to a fish and chips place and ate lunch and walked along the Thames, crossed the London bridge (its jsut a regular old bridge nothing special at all, it was special because the original was the first bridge across the Thames but it fell down and it was moved a little upstream, some of the original stones are still farther downstream and other parts of the original were moved to this bridge in Arizona, so the newly reconstructed London Bridge was built in 1973. Crossed that, walked around the egg building which is really pretty new glass structure that looks like an easter egg (farther upstream theres another building that is rounded and also looks like an egg, also modern but more fat and not as tall, a squashed egg maybe, also cool. Then we walked up and found the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge, which actually is decorated and has two big towers and some ornamentation on the brige in red and blue crosses.  The Tower of London is not an actual tower we came to find out, it's more of an old fortress that was the London mint until the operations became too large, it was also of course a house of torture and the highest prisonary chambers, it was also and still is house of the royal crown jewels, basically, its a free for all. it's surrounded by two walls of protection, medieval style, and inside the court there are a few different buildings and passages. It's right on the border of the Thames by the Tower Bridge and you get a good skyline view of the southern half of London. 

Then we searched for an open metro stop for quite a while, finally found one, and went to The British Museum!! Home to a million and one objects from the Middle East, East Asia, Africa, basically paying homage to Britain's days of colonization (Greece is still in major dispute with the museum in regards to some friezes that came off the Parthenon and the British took and refuse to give back) The museum itself is huge, it looks like the entire world. You walk in and there's this giant silver statue of a body with arms that are wings, that stretch out for maybe thirty feet like airplane wings, and then past the entrance is this grand hall with a giant circular building in the middle that's the archives and library and the ceiling is arched, way high up, it looks like the sky its a dark blue with silver railings criss crossed the length of it. So we go up to the Egyptian rooms and see all these mummies, the boxes that they were stored in, learn about how the wooden boxes all have different types of designs based on the era they were made in, there was also a cool case from when the Romans took over the Egyptians and it had the Roman leader's head with his wreath of olive branches painted on the top of the box, then we walked around the Korea rooms and some of the more modern acquisiton rooms, one of which had this giant face on its side that was oddly lifelike, with a five o clock shadow and everything, I think its famous because Lauren said she'd read an article about it and there was a big crowd of people around it, also in the mummy room we saw a fully preserved human rom thousand sof years ago, they used to bury regular people in these big sand dunes and the dry air preserved the skin and made it dry out so the body was this charred black color curled up in a fetal position but the skin was still intact...it was scary. And there was a mummy of an eight-to ten year old but the coffin/box looked like it could hold a three year old by today's standards.  Then we went to the Ancient Greece rooms where we saw the friezes and some grecian and roman ruins, we also saw the Rosetta Stone (stele) which was super super cool, it was the stone that helped researchers decode hierogylphs in the 1820s, it has a code written in hierogylphic, the language that common Egyptians used (demotic) and then classical greek.  Then we also saw these huge parts of anicent Egyptian statues that were giant carved stones of marble and they reminded us of that ancient wonder of the world that was a statue of a  man at a port on the mediterranean with one foot on each island, so boats could pass through him (well that part's disputed)..its called the Colussus of Rhodes. Okay, so we walked around some more and then they kicked us out at 5:30 so we left, bought some postcards at a cornershop (another british term) where they had all these cool Cadbury candy bars that they dont sell in France or the states, and Toffee flavored rolos, and these bars made by Nestle called Yorkies with a byline "It's not for girls" and a picture in the O like a traffic sign with a women crossed out in red. So i go to buy it just to spite the system (female empowerment, I'm wearing the yellow shoes!) and the guy goes, "its not for girls, but I am for girls" and i go "yeah I'm for girls too! plus I like breaking the rules" and pay, then we walk out and Lauren informs me that I just declared my sexual preference as a lesbian and he probably assumes she's my partner. Awesome. It's even funnier because a similar thing happened earlier that week in Aix. But the candy bar turns out to be just chocolate made out of pure fat essentially.  We meet up with Dave, go to MacDo britain (where the handwashing machines in the bathroom are super cool, its this console and you push one button for soap, another for water, and a third for the dryer, but its all from the same hole very efficient) and then head back to the hostel. We walked soo many miles we were dead tired, then we woke up and made it to Gatwick. Oh yeah, we also stopped at our fave store Harrods again (they apparently close down the whole store at a phone call's request if you're "somebody famous" though I never found out how famous you had to be to qualify) and we bought some souvenirs to say we'd been there from an extremely young but nonetheless adorable british boy with the excellent british name of Caspar (I told him we really liked his name). Excellent sejour a Londres, must go back to see a play sometime, and go to stonehenge and bath and cambridge/oxford and of course return to the antique market on Notting Hill.

Ana be-heh-bek, Ana o-hei-buk, Tanger.

Je t'aime = I love you, Tanger style.

Pictures from Tanger, Morocco:

http://photo2.walgreens.com/share/p=94791226238930314/l=25575433/g=3230505/cobrandOid=1009/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

Out of Africa-We put the Rock in Morocco.

November 7-9, 2008 Tanger,  Morocco

Population:  + 700,000

Tanger, Morocco. Where's that, you say? Well, its on the very northwesternmost tip of Africa, right below Spain, and its where Ryanair goes cheap from Marseille. It is also where me and two of my friends spent an amazing three days this past weekend. Here's a recap:

So we get on this plane, early, as usual, to go to Tanger, fifth largest city in Morocco, second largest industriel city after Casablanca. It's near Spain so we hear everyone speaks Spanish, some French, and Arabic of course, maybe english?  Turns out everyone speaks Arabic, just arabic, and you have some people that know elementary french and even more elementary spanish, so communication was a little difficult, but I think we had the most native experience of any of our trips which made it soo good. We stayed at some guy's house that we found through couchsurfing, this 27year old sociology student who lives with his family a few kilometers out of the center city.  But to backtrack- Ryanair is my hero,we get there twenty five minutes ahead of schedule (coming back we got home like thirtyfive minutes ahead of schedule and everyone starts clapping five times over and they're reeling off the names of the captain and crew and where they're from and it was very very funny, like the end of a play. So the airport's nice, clean, you have guards in the same uniforms as policemen you'd see in the street monitoring traffic, these really formal suits with pilot hats, black boots, etc, and you walk out of the airport and see palm trees and blue sky and plains that are really pretty greens and misty orange. Theres really no public transportation, one bus that goes a little ways out of the city, but from the airport we took a taxi that was a put put car, you jostled everytime we hit a bump and could hear the otor going put put, no door handles, reupholstered several times...you get the idea. So we give the guy the address and lo and behold he has no clue where it is...not such a good start. On top of which the host doesnt pick up his phone, so we drive around for a good hour and a half, picking up friends of the taxi drivers and asking them where they think it might be, finally arriving to the proximity of the house and finding his friends who agree to take us off the taxi driver's hands and show us around. We pay the driver double what the normal rate is in dirhams (he told us to) and get out, meet up with two of our host's friends who show us to one of their homes which is connected to his tailor shop-this little storefront with torn out pics from magazines of guys in suits, a little stereo to listen to music, a workbench, and lots of woodshavings on the floor that we have not clue from whence they came. We sit there, a little worried about the situation, but its all good and the guy comes back after a while with croissants and mint tea, the traditional drink of North Africa, and we have this deliciously sweet tea and croissants which was just what we needed, then we leave our stuff to take a tour of the city. Out of the main city where this guy lives its a town that he calls middle/poor economically, lots of windy streets with mud everywhere, paved roads but pavement is cracked and uneven, there are people with mats and storefronts selling all this bread and candy and other stuff and tons of little kids running around everywhere doing cartwheels in the middle of the street and of course looking at us the only tourists, a donkey cart rolled by once, you had banana cart men and orange cart men with the orange leaves strewn on the ground, generally a fairly high level of garbage, wrappers and such, some old cars weaving in and out of the larger streets that were really muddy and needed a good wash, a very active scene in general. We passed the old corrida arena that's no longer in use but its really big and pretty (where they had bullfights) then kept walking down a main road for 3 kilometers to get to the center of town which is beachfront.  Beachfront there is the boardwalk street La Corniche with on the side nearest the water all the nightclubs below ground, far our on the water you see cranes of some sort industrial, not many people on the beach but the weather is pretty nice, sunny and seventy, maybe sixties, a man selling cigarettes, and on the other side of the street lots of cafes with people just sitting and sipping tea. So in terms of dress, maybe half the people are wearing jeans and a shirt, not really "matching" as youd say, and the other half of men are either wearing this long monk type cloak with this pointy hood up or a sort of smock covering, the women would be wearing a monk cloak female version dress thing, slippers or pajama pants underneath, or these pointy leather shoes that everyone has (the men traditionally wear yellow-very clash color) and all the women except a very very few wore the burka headcovering.  Our host told us now a days this is more of a cultural thing than religious, fashionable if you will, and you won't get kicked out of anywhere for not wearing one but of course there are some very religious families that disdain uncovered heads in their private homes. 

Continuing, we walk the Corniche, then walk into the medina, the old town with windy streets, houses with big wrought iron gates in loopy designs and mosaic tiles outside the door with a bulb shape at the top (I loved their front doors) houses really close with ivy or plants in teh windowsils and on top the hosue is open to the sky so you can peek down from your terrace where there's usually laundry drying, the walls around the medina are painted bright colors and theres little souk markets all over people in storefronts with all different types of those pointy shoes, a lot of mineral rich designed things or animals carved into stone, tea sets, gold and silver jewelry, tailors with beautiful traditional dresses for women, flower shops with designs for marriages, then guys selling this round flat bread called "hobs/hops" that we ate at every meal in big stacks (see the pics) and baguettes and fresh fish, we saw one guy selling sting rays whole, chickens with their headscut off, plucked too, fruits and veggies but mainly just bananas , dragonfruits, and oranges, leathergoods, purses and stool coverings in cool designs.  Oh yeah, at the water at the very end of the street is the port, with these big cruisers docked therea nd there's one that goes to Taflika (I think that's the name) spain every hour, its a realy short ride only 14 kilometers to Spain past the straits of gibraltar. According to legend its the point where Hercules, in battle with the giant Antee (I don't know the english name) with a pound of his body on the ground split Africa from Europe. We climbed the hill of the medina to the casbah, old town square with this really old fortress, and we walked through the white town walls and had the beautiful stretch of landscape of the rocky coast and the butt of Africa and the tip of Spain, we could see two continents at once!! It was very cool, and there were some people just standing really meditatively looking out and the ocean. 

Then we walk up to this famous Cafe, Cafe Hava, sit and have tea and bread with this green bean soup and olives and these sandwiches with cornmeal bread, and we literally are staring out at the sea form up on a cliff. Then we walk back and go back to the friends house where he gives us more tea, couscous with vegetables and chicken and we all share from the same plate (thats the way we do it here, we also eat with our hands) and we watched Friends with arabic subtitles-yes. They get two hundred channels free, CNN and MSNBC but also all the channels from every arab world state, Iran and Iraq and Libya, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, it was really interesting even though we couldnt understand most of it. The spoken arabic from country to coutnry differs too, but they can at least understand it all. PS I forgot two things 1. on the airport drive we passed a ton of half constructed buildings that looked like they were rundown but really were never completed to begin with, not sure why, and 2. we passed on the median this policeman in that army type uniform with a tripod camera and a sign saying Radar control-there were those policemen on a lot of corners and most times they had someone pulled over-very revenue generating. So finally we meet our host and he takes us to his house which is three stories, the top story has that terrace with a wall you can peek over, the wrought iron entry gate with mosaic decorations, his stairs are all painted with pretty paisley designs and the walls are covered in mosaic tiles, floors covered in persian rugs and theres couches lining all the walls so theres lots of rooms to sit/sleep, with these huge thick comfy furry blankets all around because it got a little chilly inside at night. To keep the story short, his family was the most welcoming family ever, they cooked for us and were really friendly and he and his friends payed for a lot of our meals and drove us around everywhere and he was like our personal tour guide which was definitely necessary and he did everything with us that we wanted to do and it was amazing.  His hosue was really homey he had a seveteen year old sister and twenty two year old brother and he has three other siblings out of the house, and his mom and dad were there and they're older so the dad doesnt work but he was really funny and passably spoke a few words of french enough to make us laugh, and it reminded me a lot of thanksgiving time/going to grandmas-sitting around eating a lot, making jokes, catching up on family stuff and watching funny movies on tv. That was the gist of it. So that night we took a walking tour of the little town he lives in and climbed up this big hill where we got some more tea and looked out over all of Tanger and saw the big lighthouse blinking and shooting stars, and then we went back and sat on the couches and talked and at 10 PM we ate this really good traditional meal of the circle bread that used to dip into this plate with sauce and meat and vegetables, and we had Fanta with it /Hawaii, this other sugary pineapple drink which I've never heard of but was super good, then we cocooned up in those massive blankets and slept forever.  

Day 2 Morocco- wake up, go upstairs to the kitchen where our house mom puts out baguette, honey, olive oil, butter, and bananas (I think they're really easy to come by) and coffee. The first good coffee I've had since I've been across the atlantic, its like french coffee but then they fill the rest of the cup with milk (novel idea, no? )so it's like a latte, and you put a big sugar piece in it and its good. Then off for a day of exploring-walk back down to the ocean and we have this really long and extremely intersting talk about life in Morocco, how it is to live with a king, his family  and what they do, how marriage works and womens issues, the perception of the US, the perception of Israel, Iran, etc etc I was fascinated because some of our differences are so much deeper than cultural things, they're literally facts that are considered false or true- we have a different conception of historical truth which is so fundamental to ....to everything. But then again I guess people in America do to, thinking of evolution/creationism as the best example (I had another great converstaion about religion and basic truths with one of my friends when we were sitting in the cafe later that night) but its just good to hear the other "factsets" and realize how hard it is to have a peaceful world where people are willing to listen with so many different views floating around. So we go shopping a little, I buy these amazing shoes that I was told later in the day were, "hideous," dont worry I'm wearing them first thing tomorrow to class, and then we meet up with this Canadian girl and Australian who will be staying with us tonight and we hang out with them for the rest of the day, both girls are super sweet and have interesting travel stories. We go to the Hercules Caves, where legend has it Hercules slept and did some other stuff that I cant remember and also some legends say its where the cyclops in the story of Ulysses lived and theres some other myths associated with it, you go down into the caves (not very deep) and theres water dripping from the ceiling and theres little caverns and mud puddles everywhere and at the end theres a cliff that goes down into a crevice or pool of water thats coming in fromt eh sea and breaking in foamy waves, and the opening out looks like an inversed continent of Africa and you can directly see the sun as its setting it was very very pretty. And there was a pack of camels in the parking lot, there were also camels down by the beach. So we walk around there for a while, all the while our host and his friend are teaching us basic arabic phrases and the australian lived in saudi arabia for a while so she knows lots of saudi arabic, and then we go outside the cave and theres these cliffs with fishermen and little cafes and tidal pools and the water's coming and breaking and squirting up like a geiser and we just look out, then we go down to another cavern which has souvenirs and this famous statued of hercules with chains and theres real live monkeys chained up to the statue, one of my friends Medora got a baby monkey to climb up her and rest in the crook of her arms...cute yes, but lets consider that its a monkey, weve already been around tons of stray cats and a random herd of sheep and dogs and the bathroom at our host house is an "arabia bathroom" aka squat toilet, no paper, no soap to wash hands, and even in the cafes weve yet to find either of those two things though at least they have european style toilets, and we have no shower at home, so our general level of cleanliness is at an all time low. But thats all the fun of travelling. So now its getting dark, we drive back downtown and go to Miami In, this cafe where all these guys are huddled around a big screen tv watching a soccer match and drinking tea (no one drinks alcohol here, "religiously") and here come five girls and two guys and we sit and watch and talk and drink tea, no one really gave us looks or anything because our host knew lots of people there, but it was definitely "guy night" activity, then we left and went to the port to eat outside with the freshest jsut caught fish and shrimp and fried squid, for everyone who liked seafood (everyone but me) they said it was the best fish they'd ever eaten. Again a fun atmosphere, and they kept bringing us good break and we had tea at the end and there were lots of families and people there. By now its eleven ish and where as yesterday we ended our outings at 8ish, when lots of people were still walking around women and men, by 11 the streets are a lot more dead, though near our house a few little kids were still running around the streets and playing playstation in this random room off to the side of the house. Now the question is, sleep or nightclub? My three objectives for the day were: buy pointy shoes (check, i even bought a second pair of yellow ones-go female empowerment no more sexist colors here), go to the caves, and go to a nightclub. Serendiptiously I encountered a Moroccan guy the night before we left who recommended to me to go to this club called 555, it was supposed to be really good. So I wanted to go but was tired, and no one really wanted to go but finally, yes lets go, I've been missing my fill of dancing in Aix and my gosh, when are you going to have the opportunity to party in Morocco again? Also, with the culture being so very different, I was really curious to see what went down at the clubs. So, in my very dirty jeans and a tshirt I'd already worn friday, no makeup, hair greasy and not straightened, socks under my ballet flats, I'm ready to hit the town. not to worry, I got in. So 555 had a brand new DJ so it was full, but instead we went to Mondial down the street, and let me tell you, what an experience. Basically it was this really nice place, white leather couches and tables all around the dance floor which was big, surrounded by pillars that you could go up on and dance, a giant disco ball and flashing lights and loud house music for the most part, I really only recognized one song but some were in arabic and they were cool and some in spanish, very eclectic, some people were drinking alcohol we got red bulls for the group, and the party was going strong. Who was there you ask? Upper twenties men, maybe low thirties, definitely not my age, and guy to girl ratio was staggering, there were girls but they all looked again same age as the guys, amybe a few years younger, most dressed in way way tight dresses, miniskirt, high heels, very low cut top, makeuped extensively. And they were all generally promiscuous dancers, off to the side at tables they were giving private dances or massaging guys (not lap dances, also there was no making out on the dance floor or anything, and no guys were going up to random girls to dance, dancing was generally more distanced even with those girls than in America say) and we proceed to learn that they are all, yes all, prostitutes, paid to be there as escorts. Made sense. So we were dancing with our host and his guy friends on the dance floor having a blast with this crazy topsy turvy world going on around us, no one really bothered us, and I even got to dance on a pillar-baller. Oh yeah, there was also a lot of security watching the dance floor at all times and breaking up certain no=nos, though I was a little confused about that, and there were tv screens all around that showed us dancing sometimes and sometimes showed really promiscuous music videos although for one song it showed these animated cartoon characters dancing which was pretty random. So anyways, this club was very bizarre but made me really proud to be a self-sufficient woman of America in 2008, and glad to be from a culture that gives women the chance to dance with no strings attached. The cultural thing connected with what our host was telling us about how women are either engaged to be married before eighteen and the arrangements are taken care of, or they end up not married spinsters, or are shunned by the family for some reason and become prostitutes, those are pretty much the only options. I'll be interested to see what its like in twenty years at Mondial. 

To conclude then, we got home super early, slept for super little, and made our way to the airport and out of africa, back to homebase Aix en Provence. Again in the airport we get "Obama!" shouts from the security guards-oh yeah. So all in all we had an amazingly fun time in Morocco, I would definitely go back, and we had the most welcoming, hospitable family and friends I've ever met.

PICS from the East!!

Toussaints Part 1-Vienna, Austria

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50172103/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 2-Ljubljana, Slovenia

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50172425/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 3- Zagreb, Croatia

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50173729/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 4- Belgrade, Serbia

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50173915/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 5- Budapest, Hungary

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50173920/a=3230505/t_=3230505

Toussaints Part 6- Bratislava, Slovak Republic

http://photo2.walgreens.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=50173919/a=3230505/t_=3230505

ENJOY!!

Last stop Bratislava and completing the circle- back to Wien.

Day 9 of Toussaints (less than 24 hours left!!!! OhMyGoodness!) - Bratislava, Slovak Republic

Population: roughly 550,000

Working my way up the Danube (Danuj in Slovakian) we reach Bratislava, capital of Slovak republic. I didn't have much time here (which was actually okay by me, again not one of my fave cities) so I didn't get to learn anything really about its history and I'd like to start by a brief overview that I'm looking up as I type.  So (merci de Wikipedia):

Bratislava is known in German as Pressburg, it was the capital of the kingdom of hungary under the Hapsburgs from 1536-1783 when the Turks took over Hungary. In 1993 after the Velvet Divorce we got the Slovak Republic and the Czech Republic. Okay, moving on.

First off train ride Budapest to Bratislava- two and a half hours, went quickly, again mostly farmland but sometimes we passed this giant lake with mountains in the background which was pretty, pine trees lined it it reminded me of the lake in Harry Potter where Harry sees his stag across the way as he's trying to revive his godfather.  Cities passed: Nove Zamky, Szob, then I stopped looking and read some French literature and did some typing. I've officially broken my headphones, they literally snapped, so my music jam sessions have come to an end, I also entered Slovakia with a whopping fifteen euros and fifty centimes which was almost enough to get by but not enough to buy the ticket to the Vienna airport, so I was forced to withdraw Slovak Konuts at the bus station (30 to 1 euro). So we get to Bratislava, its a pretty dead city it seems like, its bigger than Ljubljana but the buildings are nothing much , its a dreary day, the architecture is very simple no great statues and even when you walk down to the Danube theres not a whole lot to see although the river itself is of course pretty, most of the shops were closed I think because it's All Saint's Day but nonetheless not the greatest town to be a tourist in, and as you've seen from my brief history lesson Slovak history is dominated by the Hungarians and the Czechs and Austrians so the national sentiment is not a huge factor in memorials or great squares. I didn't take any pictures for the first three hours of being here and walking around because there really was nothing to take pictures of, high rise five to six story buildings and streets, pretty bland. Even the colors of the town (granted its not sunny out) seem dull. But with my map in hand I set out to make a tour of the area. So I saw a bunch of churches, all with those spires with the little bulb on the clock tower in oxidized copper and then a cross on top, St Elizabeth's nunnery with real live uns outside, although the actual nunnery was sort of hidden behind these old brick walls, the biggest church here St Martin's and inside it was very dark, not too amazing it had those long narrow stained glass windows again, the Old Town Hall and the square in front which had these funny statues of lifelike people in different positions, a guard type figure and then someone bending over a bench and someone looking around a corner with a camera in hand- very playful. There was also a Primate's palace which was a smaller building and I really have no idea what its significance is.  My final stop was the synagogue, apparently Slovakia had a big Jewish population before the Holocaust and their synagogue is still intact, it was closed of course but even from the outside it was not striking in any fashion. I think it was granite but it was really boxy with straight lines, no carvings or symbols really, faded orangy red with big square pillars and big metal doors, no Jewish stars, nothing. and a wrought iron gate. There was also a Jewish museum which is supposed to be good and was on my list of things to see but when I got there I figured it would be closed on a Saturday- not only was it closed, it is closed indefinitely for repairs/reconstruction, the sign was in Slovak but it had the date September 8th- either it's been closed since then or was supposed to reopen then, either way not a good sign for a major museum of the capital city of the country. Greatness. But then I walked up up upto the Hrad Castle/Slovakia Castle- this one really does look like a castle combined with fortress walls high up on a hill, its a big square building with cloisters on the wings and lots of little connected houses behind it that might have been where everyone lived, all painted a nice goldenrod.  Again the actual castle was undergoing major reconstruction so there was tons of scaffolding and you couldn't go in which was anoying, even though the grounds were prety you couldn'te get the proper feel of how the castle was supposed to look, but the view of the Danube was good. From the little sign outside I learned that the castle was originally built in 907, then under King Sigsimun in the 1200s it started to be baroque in fashion and they added this big tower, then it was the seat of the Hungarian kings for a while and under Maria Theresa (1740-80) it underwent major baroque renovations, then in burned down in 1811 and was only partially reconstructed in 1953 and they're still working on it. So it's unfortunate that the 907 castle isn't there and I'm not sure if they're rebuilding it in the baroque style or what, so its kind of new old history. Still, it was the best sight in town. Oh yeah, and on the other side of the Danube (its not like Budapest there's nothing to see on the other side its housing, I'm not even sure if its still part of Bratislava proper) there's this big observation tower they just put in with these steel ropes that connect to the main bridge crossing the river, its just like the tower in Montreal, kind of ugly and imposing but its THE thing to see on the skyline.  As you walk down from the castle there's some "gates" that are significant and there's Michael's Gate over in Old Town which was the original only entry into the city over an old moat thats not there anymore, but they aren't really gates anymore there's been so much built around them houses and such that now they're just arched entryways that are part of other constructions and really don't look like anything even if they have cool stories. Michael's Gate had this plaque near it in the ground with a woman screaming, and it was dedicated to the first witch burnt in Bratislava in 1602 (apparently she wasn't a real witch she was just too pretty for her own good at the time..harsh). And the other funny thing was that I did walk through old town but the real "old town" must have been tiny because I kept seeing signs pointing this way and that saying old town, it was like I never entered it but was always inches away. And right near there very inconspicuously there were these metal squares in the ground like a tic tac toe board and you could jump on them and they chimed out and you could play songs with your feet- it was totally random but very fun. So after walking around a fairly dead city and not being impressed I returned to the hostel to write these little ditties, chat with friends, and prepare myself for waking up in the 4 o clock hour to catch a bus to the bus station to catch a bus to the Vienna airport to take a plane to Munich, then Marseille, then a final bus Marseille-Aix and be back to homebase!!! Excellent circle of eastern europe (fingers crossed it ends well tomorrow). Pics will be up soon.