Italy, Morocco, Spain and then Home Again

August 2, 2010 to February 1, 2011


The Photos (Link Coming Soon!)


This is the continuation of the letter I started in response to an e-mail from a couple that I met in Guatemala.  Some of it will be duplicate information from the writing Rebecca did while we were biking, so bear with that and realize that; No you aren’t going crazy.  Yes, some of this is a rerun.  Reruns are always better the second time around, right?  Sorry we left so many loyal readers in the lurch waiting for tasty morsels of story.  All I can really say is get out there and travel for yourself.

Resume Letter:

After much biking, we made it to Paris.  We loved it, of course.  Although as we have found out throughout our journey it’s not the cities so much as the people we get to meet that make places worth staying in.  Rebecca’s mom arrived, which was both unexpected (she had never acquired a passport until Rebecca left) and much anticipated (when we were in Guatemala rumors began circulating that she might join us).  It was almost as much fun watching Peggy discover new things as it has been watching her daughter.  I captured a really great video of the two of them buying a Coke from a GIANT vending machine.

To top it all off, we made a day trip to Versailles and while we were all awed by the extreme extravagance, I was overjoyed at the discovery that my favorite artist, Takashi Murakami, had an exhibit starting soon.  Since the opening was in just a few days almost all the pieces were already placed.  I got to see so many wonderful sculptures up close and personal.  I think I was just about the only person who enjoyed it though, because most of the other tourists just seemed stunned to see “a giant multicolored lobster outside the king’s bedroom”.  It was an excellent pre birthday surprise from Rebecca … although she pretends not to have had anything to do with it!  Then, just before we left Paris, we really celebrated my birthday by visiting a couple of modern art museums and having a roiling tickle fight on the streets of Paris getting some wonderful looks from passerby's.

Finally the day came to leave Paris.  We packed our remaining belongings (after sending about half of our possessions home with Rebecca’s mom) into the BoB trailer that I bought, leaving us the space equal to three panniers free for provisions.  Find the trail out of town to be absolutely dreadful along a busy highway … Then we found the Forests of Fontainebleau.  WonDrousNess!  We spent at least a week there camping (illegally) in the park.  So Yeah, camping in France, we did a lot of it.  Sometimes we would find an actual sanctioned campground, which was usually pretty cheap.  The rest of the time we would just camp in a field or beside a canal or in a national forest (see above).  It was very liberating to bike for as long or as short as we wanted and then camp.  I would say our time was split 50/50 between legal and illegal camping in the 1000+ miles of biking.

We biked (almost) to Lyon.  I say quibbling over the last 60 miles is too trivial in the overall mile count but Rebecca refutes that it shows exactly how tired of biking we really were … not to mention how abysmal the trail was becoming.  Either way we B-iked or B-ussed to Lyon.  To CouchSurf (or CaravanSurf if you will) with Fox at La Friche.  Fox is a tall bike building, TIG and Stick welding, tree hugging, velorutionist who used to live in Oregon, camping in the trees when necessary and now lives the squat life in La Friche.  La Friche is a 34,000 square meter (they are French after all!) factory turned squat in the heart of Lyon France.  Well, maybe not the historical heart but certainly the artistic heart and this is metaphor anyway so we can say what we want!

Every available space is either someone’s house or studio or both.  Unfortunately we arrived near the end of La Friche’s glorious history, they were in the process of being evicted by the city so a shopping mall or apartment complex or some other uselessness could go up in it’s space.  Despite our late arrival, it was still wonderful to see the remnants of creativity that had been the life’s blood of this amazing place.  As for the particulars, Fox’ space was a three story construct within the factory along with a very large bike workshop, where he creates anything his mind can think of.  Bikes are his passion, tall bikes are his specialty, teaching others how to do for themselves is his mission, all in the furthering of Biking Down Babylon.  There’s limited heat, unreliable hot water and blazing fast internet with free calls to the United States.  Nearly every bit of wall space is covered in paint, stickers or other fantastic graffiti.

Early one morning Fox took me dumpster diving, as he is completely Freegan.  He only buys wine and very rarely cheese or was it coffee, either way his small contribution to consumerism is tiny enough that we were impressed and amazed.  So at five o’clock in the morning, I leave the sleeping Rebecca and venture out into the cold with Fox.  We mount up two cargo trikes and trike around Lyon heading to all the places that Fox has long ago discovered are good dive spots.  Fox informed me that diving in the States is much more difficult for many reasons.  First, the stores own the property their dumpsters are on and then lock up their trash so people can’t get into it.  If by some chance you can get to the trash, it’s essentially considered breaking and entering and therefore criminal.  France on the other hand, has no such property laws and once it goes on the street it no longer belongs to anyone, until some lucky freegan comes by and sorts out the good stuff.  Fox even told me that one store owner does not like him and will wait till he has passed before he puts out the trash.  I was completely blown away by the sheer quantity of edible food we find as almost half the so called trash is edible.  Every kind of vegetable and fruit, mass quantities of milks and yogurts, prepackaged lunch meats and high quality cheeses … which are the most absurd since most of the cheeses thrown out have mold throughout anyway, it’s what makes it cheese!  Since Fox is also vegan, most of the lunch meats go to Rustine, the cat, or not so vegan CouchSurfers.

It was amazing to realize how little we all need to survive and sad to see how much is wasted in time, effort and resources as we overproduce trying to out consume.

Our wonderful week of immersion in yet another side of the European artistic world ended with a bang and a whimper when on the way to buy a book for Rebecca we had our second experience with revolutionaries and our first experience with tear gas.  It was quite surreal to stand with the crowd behind the riot squad as they fired tear gas into the approaching rioters.  The riots started over pension reforms but I think it escalated to all out violence and social upheaval toute de suite.

We decided to go ahead and take our chances on the rioting train workers and make our way to the much more peaceable Damanhur.  An artistically based community designed to embrace the future; growing, healing, illuminating; joined karmically to life, meditation and necessity; an organization preventing quandaries by realizing synchronically timed universal variety from welcome xenophiles yields zeal.  OK, that might have been a little too alphabetical but I had fun creating it  … until I got to XYZ!  However, in all seriousness that carefully contrived sentence reads fairly accurately.  Situated in the hills about 40 minutes north of Torino, Italy, their most known feature is their underground temples.  Built surreptitiously over the course of 14 years starting in 1978 and then more openly from 1992 on.  They are absolutely amazing representations of the philosophies the community holds in esteem.  They seem to take the best from other world religions, philosophies and beliefs, test them for veracity and embrace the ones that prove beneficial.  They honor the elements (Earth, Air, Fire and Water), the never ending  Cycle of Life and the human progression through Time, among many other more esoteric ruminations.

We spent about ten days learning a little about the beliefs they value, viewing the seven magnificently decorated temples, talking to Damanhurians and visitors alike to better understand the ideas that draw people here from all over the world, finding the things that felt like matches in our own souls and in the end walking away with more questions than answers, but I think that’s part of the spirit of Damanhur.

We also had some truly outstanding times.  A whole day of sculpting in clay.  We were instructed to make physical representatives of ourselves.  I made a wonderful satyr offering sacrament to a higher power, which spurred all kinds of creative offshoots from costume design to entire art projects.

Then we were introduced to the music of the plants.  It was absolutely wild to behold as they hooked a house plant up to a series of machines designed to read the electromagnetic pulses given off by the plant and transformed it into music.  Several of us took turns interacting with the plant in an attempt to effect the sounds the plant was making.  We were also told a nearly unbelievable story about a guy who had an outdoor plant hooked up to the keyless entry of his house.  This worked perfectly as the plant would recognize him and unlock the door.  Until he came home sick one day and his faithful door guard didn’t recognize him..

We also got to experience a true Italian feast.  We wanted to have a congenial dinner with the fluctuating group we spent the most time with.  So we asked our sculpture teacher for a recommendation.  He not only told us where to go, he drove us there and joined us for dinner.  We had a wonderful time eating way too much food, drinking just enough wine and talking the night away.  A lovely group composed of three Dutchies, Herry, Annalise and Art, who informed us there was much more to the Netherlands than just Amsterdam, Mary Helen from France, now living in Berlin, Ilsa from Australia and of course our teacher Agnello.  It was truly a magical night and one none of us will forget.  We ended our stay at Damanhur by observing a full moon celebration on Halloween night and next morning began the long (in time not distance) trip to Parma to visit the guys we met while camping in Paris.

Despite our utter lack of planning on this leg of our journey, it turned out remarkably well.  Our time was almost evenly split between Michele and Marco in Parma and Alberto, his family and extended animal family in Fornovo.  Michele and Marco picked us up at the train station and it was truly amazing to see them again.  We fell into conversations as if we had known them forever and had only been away for a few hours.  We met Michele’s siblings and parents and had an impromptu jam session as Marco and Michele’s brother, Lucas, played guitar and sang while Gregory spun flags and taught flag spinning.

The next morning we met up with Alberto, our CouchSurfing host.  Alberto lives in Fornovo, near Parma, in a wonderful old farmhouse which they have divided into 3 separate living spaces for his sister, Valentina, and her partner, their mother and him.  Alberto is a teacher and Valentina owns a stable and horse breeding farm, that they all work together on.  We got to help muck out the stalls and feed the horses.  It was all hard work and despite our desire to help, I’m sure we just slowed Alberto down, but he didn’t seem to mind too terribly.

One of the most heart rending but also amazing things was meeting Sheila.  Sheila had been to the farm once before with a male of the same breed, for boarding and training (with a side of fattening up).  Once they were returned to their owner, they were (once again) left to waste away.  The male of the pair had recently died and Sheila was ‘given’ back to the farm as payment for the previous services never paid for.  Sheila seemed in really bad shape to us, but Alberto assured us that she was a lot tougher than she seemed and that she would be back up to the breed standard in short order.  It was sadly fascinating to watch her breathing so nervously, seeing the constant and uncontrollable twitching of her soft nose.  Fortunately, just as Alberto said, Sheila was doing better even the next morning as she was well fed, warm and loved upon by all of us.  One of our last Sheila moments was getting the chance to brush and love upon her after Alberto and Valentina had trimmed her hooves.  Slowly working the tangles off her mane and tail and brushing the mud from her legs.

Staying at Alberto’s was not ALL horses and old farmhouses, we also had some wonderful meals and great conversations which are the things we seem to enjoy the most.  Alberto and I share a love of skiing that led to several great stories and comparisons of experiences and I just found him really easy to talk and relate to.  Yet another wonderful CouchSurf, that continues to reaffirm my belief in every human I have yet to meet.

All of our time at Alberto’s was interspersed by time spent hanging out with Michele and Marco.  We took a rambling walking, talking tour of Parma with Marco, seeing all the things that he finds interesting about his home town and talking about dreams, life experiences, tattoos and friendships.  We spent several cozy evenings around various fireplaces, eating great food, singing boisterously, talking existentially and roasting and eating chestnuts.  We played a fun, involved game of Talisman and ate ourselves fat on pizza.

Then Michele took us to Bardi Castle, a little over an hour away from Parma.  Both Marco and Michele had given us glowing reviews of their favorite castle and once we got there it was easy to see why.  Built upon an outcropping of red jasper, it is quite formidable in appearance.  Once inside, you can tell (with a little help from Michele) that it was a space built and used by many different people over many different times.  A structure built to intimidate without over the top opulence the word castle now implies.  It was wonderful to wander from the lowest dungeon to the highest tower, reliving the stories Michele knows from his countless trips with family and boy scouts.  A great day of friends and explorations, perfectly capped by getting to meet Michele’s lovely fiance, Giulia.  We stopped by her workplace and got a quick hello hug which made me even more sad that we had not had more time to get to know her.  Requiring to work and not living the life of leisurely travelers are completely understandable but we still don’t like it when it interferes with getting to know people.

With only a day to spare before our flight to Spain, we regretfully said our goodbyes and let the train whisk us away to one of the most beautiful places we have seen, Venice.  Sadly we only stayed one night … really, really sad.  We know it will still be there and it certainly gives both of us a reason to come back.  I can’t compare Venice to any city I have been to.  Nor, do I know how the citizens manage to get around this rather large city with NO roads.  A pedestrian city of archipelagos connected by bridges and boats, certainly not on the grid system.  It is impossible to stand in the street and try to determine how to get from where you are to where you want to be.  It was wonderful, we got thoroughly lost and confused even with our GPS.  Following paths that dead end into walls or water, retracing, back tracking and completely getting lost window shopping.  I do look forward to CouchSurfing this city in the future, because I am wondering exactly how people manage to get anywhere on time.

Next stop Spain, where lack of planning on our part does not constitute a place for us to stay (the ONE time this year that could have been managed better but we totally get a redo, more on that later).  Fly into Sevilla, find a hostel, discover our further Spanish travels are quashed, so we continue south.  Two bus rides, a peer at Gibraltar and one ferry ride later we find ourselves in Tangiers, Morocco.  At the ferry terminal, a suddenly formed group of six is mostly content to wait for the free bus.  I, however, scope out the taxi situation.  Reporting back, the added price doesn’t seem worth it to Rebecca and I, but the deal I found is enticing to two British girls on vacation who don’t want to wait up to an hour for the free shuttle bus.  Since it was my deal and we are always willing to further our adventure, we tag along.  Of course, once we get outside the person I made my deal with is gone, but it gives us a place to start bargaining and fortunately one of the girls speaks some Arabic.  It’s not completely smooth sailing as the guy who starts our deal speaking broken English, hands us off to another guy who speaks more, or would that be less, broken English.  This man deposits us in a cab where yet a third person slides into the driver’s seat, speaking no English, little or no French and even seems to ignore the Arabic our new friend is trying.  It seems mostly established that we want deposited at the train station and the girls will continue on to their hotel.  So we sit back and enjoy our ride, getting to know our car mates as well as we can in the time.  Immediately upon arrival to the train station we purchase our ticket on the overnight train to Marrakech and prepare for the short wait and the long ride, at least we got a sleeper cabin.

Once the sun came up and we couldn’t pretend to sleep anymore, we spent the rest of the trip looking out at the completely foreign landscape and talking to the few other travelers.  Earlier we met Daniel and Laura on the bus from Sevilla to Algeciras, where they grabbed a ferry and we went on to la Línea de la Concepción only to find out we had to go back to Algeciras to get the ferry, stupid under-informative, less than current ferry website.  In talking to them we found out they were going on a desert excursion as soon as they get off the train.  This sounded like a really great opportunity to hang out with them some more so we invited ourselves along … at least to meet the guy and see if there was room for two more.

The guy didn’t seemed thrilled to have additional people, but the chance of making more money won out, so he piled the four of us in the backseat of his SUV type vehicle and took us to a breakfast spot near to his ‘office’.  We rushed through our breakfast and then went on a walking tour of automatic teller machines as it was imperative that we pay the 650 euro before we go.  Of course the ATM will not let us have that amount of money and Rebecca and I start to take it as a sign that it’s not meant for us this time.  We are also feeling quite rushed, harassed and even bullied by our tour guide.  Once Rebecca and I stopped to talk it over, we both realized that almost 1000 dollars for a weeks excitement would put a definite strain on finances and despite knowing we would have had a blast we bowed out and said goodbye to Daniel and Laura.  Once away, we marveled at the squicky feeling the guy gave us and how stubbornness for this adventure had almost caused a problem for us financially and emotionally.

*We tried to catch up with Daniel and Laura when they got back but they were only in town for one night and we didn’t know our way around town well enough to arrange it.  I did get an e-mail from Daniel sometime later and although it was the best part of their trip, they could definitely tell that the guy was not on the level.

During the planning phases of finishing our trip in Morocco, we send out some inquiries through CouchSurfing for an apartment to rent.  Rebecca gets back decent responses and we decide to meet with a guy who has an agent looking for something for him on his claims that a furnished little apartment won’t be that expensive.  The meeting goes well and we all seem to get along so we have no qualms about the slight change in plans to rent a space with Younés instead of our own space.  He currently lives at home, but also rents an efficiency with 5 or 6 other guys.  Younés uses that space for CouchSurfers, the other guys use it to get away from their wives and hang out with the guys.  With Younés’ encouragement, we get a cell phone so he can get ahold of us easily and then we wait.  We meet with him again to see the place and it’s not furnished but Younés says we can get a bed for cheap.  With the weekend and the hours our host works it’s taking longer than it should to get the apartment issue settled.  Finally, I force the issue of wanting to stay in the new apartment and Younés takes us to his CouchSurfing pad.

What a dump.  Two small rooms, a gross kitchen and a bathroom with barely running water.  The main room is almost cozy with sofa lined walls and pillows but the smell of hash smoke is pervasive and the road noise from outside is unbelievably loud.  The bedroom is nicer, but that’s strictly from the perspective that the overhead light is red and it’s hard to see anything after the sun goes down.  Once the sun comes up, you know you should sleep in your clothes and with one eye open.  The first night we get almost no sleep, the second night slightly more.  Next day, we go out with Younés to sign paperwork and get keys and a mattress and then he drops us off to grab our stuff and he’ll pick us up later to take us to the apartment.  We walk in to find 3 guys on the sofa and the door to the bedroom locked.  We sit in the hookah room and try to make some conversation with the guys who speak Arabic and French but little to no English.  Eventually the door opens and a man walks out, talks to the guys and then goes back into the room.  I get engrossed in watching the American movie with Arabic dubs and don’t see the man and woman finally leave but Rebecca sees them scamper out without giving us a backward glance.  Considering we know all the guys are married, we couldn’t tell if this was a girlfriend or a hooker, either way we dubbed it the Hash and Hooker Hovel.  It really gave us the creepy crawlies and we were suddenly quite happy not to be spending another night on THAT bed!

*We find out later that people don’t go to the theaters in Morocco to watch movies, they go to have sex because they don’t have a Hash and Hooker Hovel.

Younés makes many promises to further furnish the rather spacious 3 bedroom apartment and to spend time with us but he only comes by once without calling in the 3 weeks we lived there.  We were exceptionally lazy in Marrakech, mostly because we allowed ourselves to be as lazy as we wanted.  We spent plenty of time following wikipedia thoughts down rabbit holes and really only left for food and groceries.  In retrospect I think some of our laziness is directly proportional to the sleep we didn’t get on the crappy mattress we bought.  On the day we left for Fes, we took the mattress up on the building’s roof so we could watch the sunrise and then Rebecca got the joy and justification of ripping open our mattress to find out why it was so damned uncomfortable.  It was literally a box spring sandwiched between cardboard covered with the barest amount of foam sewn into a mattress cover.  Horribly, horribly uncomfortable.

Which brings us to today, not the real today when this blog was finished and posted but a day much like today when it was started in response to an e-mail.  We are now in the wonderful city of Fes.  I found a fantastic family through CouchSurfing that was willing to rent out a bedroom for 200 euro for the month.  The outside temperature has dropped significantly, it is 48 on Christmas Day, which has allowed us to be motivated to work on the blog you are reading now.  Fes is a massively wonderful change from Marrakech.  They are both deserts but Fes has water.  That sounds silly but Las Vegas without water is a desert.  That water has created a vibrant OLD town.  Fes was the first city in my life that I would compare to Venice.  Fes is a walking labyrinth without the water or canals.  It is wonderful to walk out your door knowing you will be on an adventure for some time, although mostly because you can’t find your way back to the house.  I used a GPS and was able to get close but since the signal doesn’t want to reach all the way into the bottom of the labyrinth, I was off by a few twisty turning blocks.  I highly recommend Fes as a safe lively place to become familiar with this wonderful Arabic culture.  So many people making their wares right there. The tanneries, the metal pot makers, the foot spun stone-wheel knife sharpeners, macramé hat makers, dress makers, weavers, musical instrument makers ... the Medina was almost endless.  I took a pretty cool video of the tanneries that ALMOST captures it's size and importance to their culture.

Then we have our home life.  We are living on the top floor of a three story three bedroom, two bathroom concrete home.  The home is owned by Fatiha, a divorcee with two boys, Marouane, 24 and Nizar, 19.  Fatiha’s two siblings, Khalid and Hassania, also live here as does their mother, Zhour.  They have owned the house since Zhour’s husband traded a rifle for it in 1966.  Fatiha works in an office, Khalid works at a farm when there is work to do, and Hassania prepares the majority of the meals, keep the house neat and takes care of Zhour.  Marouane is going to school for tourism and Nizar is going to school for economics and or accounting.

Mealtimes were absolutely wonderful for me.  I’ve always preferred to eat with my hands and in Fes we rarely used utensils.  Each meal is served in a large communal bowl called a tajine usually some vegetables, a little meat and lots of juice or broth.  Instead of forks, we used fresh baked bread to sop up the juices and pinch at the meat or veggies.  Every day Hassania would prepare the dough into round flat loafs about a foot in diameter and then take them across the street to the neighborhood bakery.  We eventually learned that you can bake anything in the community oven.  They pay a monthly fee for all the bread they bake and pay a per pan fee for cookies, cakes and other baked goods.  It was also strange to me that there was rarely a beverage served with lunch or dinner.  Breakfast and tea time were amply supplied with tea or coffee but the other two meals were lacking in refreshment.  Occasionally a large bottle of tap water and a single glass would make an appearance but for the most part no drinks at the table.

One of the strangest things Rebecca saw, I never got to witness but it was bizarre to me while at the same time making sense within their culture.  Before the men go to prayer they have quite a bit of preparation to do.  First they enter the mosque, taking their shoes off before stepping inside.  Then they go over to the public water fountain and begin cleansing.  First they wash their feet and fairly high up on their legs.  Next they wash their face and ears and some even wash their heads.  Then they wash out their mouths, using their finger along their teeth in a toothbrushing action repeating 3 times.  Last they wash their hands and go to find a place to pray.  They do this FIVE times a day.  It makes me think there was a plague or something in their history that makes them highly aware of hygiene.  

We spent Christmas Day with the family and some neighbors playing clay drums and tambourines.  Earlier that day we set up the plastic Christmas tree that the family has had for 6 years.  I have no idea why this Muslim family owns a Christmas tree, possibly the French influence.  They try to buy a new set of ornaments every year and they have some neat ones from years past.  Not a traditional Christmas for either of us, but we definitely felt like part of the family and that means a lot to both of us. 

New Years was amazing.  More instrument playing, the wonderful tradition of eating cakes for a sweet year (and for Fatiha’s birth day) and then I spun fire on the roof for our hosts, friends of the family and visiting CouchSurfers.  Right before we left Fes we had the awesome luck of being invited to a wedding.    This gave me the chance to wear the jalaba I had made, from scratch.  I ordered the cloth woven having vert little idea of what do with it other than possibly sew some cool sock poi.  Once we picked it up from the weaver, Nizar said that it would make a great jalaba, so Fatiha and I went to a seamstress and had it made.  When they first quoted me the price of 8,000 Rials, I was in shock as I thought it was in Dirham.  Which would have been about 800 Euro.  It was quickly pointed out that the price was in Rials so doing all the conversions (8,000 Rials to 400 Dirhams to 40 Euros to 50 Dollars) it ended up costing me about 60 dollars total for my one of a kind desert wear and it was elegant enough to be worn at the wedding.  Fatiha provided a lovely kaftan for Rebecca, from her collection.  It was amazingly ornate and decorated.

The wedding itself was amazing and unlike anything either of us had ever experienced.  An unbelievable number of ornate outfits.  The bride went through at least 6 costume changes and every woman there was wearing a kaftan of intricate beadwork and decoration.  I was saddened that the men have transitioned to plain business suits and have lost the cultural flair of either a jalaba or decorated tunic and pants.  When we arrived, at the wedding hall at 6pm, everyone was waiting for things to start.  The guests were standing outside waiting to be invited in.  Shortly after we arrived the band started playing and we all troop in.  The room is set up very similarly to a Moroccan home with couch lined sitting areas on left and right and a large space between them.  Just inside the door was a large curtain draped couch that also got in on some of the costume changing action as it started out white, then changed to green, then purple.  Everyone grabs a seat in the two side rooms and the few chairs in front of the wedding couch and then the band really starts up.  Nizar and I go outside to watch and take pictures as the bride is carried into the hall in a carriage carried by 4 men and the groom rides in on a horse … right into the wedding hall.

The couple is maneuvered around the small dance floor with the groom pumping up the crowd and the bride looking like she might shatter at any moment.  They finally disembark and go to the couch.  Lots of singing, lots of dancing, lots of entertainment.  The wait staff bring the tapas style nibbles around the room and we quickly fill up our tiny table with cookies, nuts and savory treats, many of which end up in Hassania’s purse to take home for later.  At first we thought this was quirky and then we saw other women also filling their purses with goodies so that’s just what is done.  Several of the costume changes are accompanied by more carriage carrying of the couple and the most memorable was the last time as she comes out in this giant golden crowned embroidered cobra hooded dress that we were amazed she could even hold up.  Immediately she gets placed into a carriage and they begin the star patterned shuffle while the groom really pumps up the crowd.  We took plenty of pictures and videos of this event and the set can be viewed HERE!

I was flabbergasted at the sheer cost obviously associated with everything required for this wedding, but I was eventually informed that almost everything is rented, from the decorations, carriages, horse and most, if not all, of the costumes.  I’m sure it’s still a pretty penny to rent it all but I was relieved to find out that the costumes and carriages were not now the property of the new couple as that seems like a storage nightmare and not the best way to start a new life together.

Immediately after the wedding, we get on the 2 am train to Tangier with a final destination of Granada, Spain.  Not realizing we are supposed to transfer we unfortunately get all the way to Rabat before the conductor checks our ticket and tells us the best way to get back on track.  We double back and arrive in Tangier without further incident.  Trying to find the best way to Tangier Mediterranean, we find a taxi driver who tells us we can get a fast ferry to Tarifa and a bus to Algeciras without the hour drive to Tangier Med.  Wonderful.  He drops us off and sure enough we are sitting at the train station in Algeciras with tickets in hand for Granada.

We grab a coffee to shake out the cobwebs and sit down to have a marvelous conversation as we wait for the train.  As the time for our train approaches, Rebecca goes to check on it and wouldn’t you know it, we missed that damned train.  In our defense, the train station was under some serious renovations AND we were completely unaware that we had lost an hour coming from Morocco to Spain.  Damn and Blast.  The ticket counter won’t refund our money and there are NO more trains running today to anywhere.  So we go across the street to the bus station to see what our options are.  We can take the next bus to Málaga and from there with very little turn around a bus to Granada.  We call our lovely Granada hosts to make sure our eventual arrival will not disrupt the house and they graciously tell us to come on over.

Garrick and Dziu live in the heart of Granada and I have not seen either of them in several years.  We have been friends since college when Garrick lived next door to me in the freshman dorm.  It felt really good to be able to spend time with old friends and they have a really wonderful life that is fulfilling to them.  It seems their biggest decision right now is when or even if they should return to the United States so their children can be sure of a good education.  We spent the next few days getting reacquainted with them both and watching how their children, Evelyn and Mathis are adapting to life in Spain.  Smack in the middle of our stay we celebrated Three Kings by watching a crazy candy throwing cabalgata.  Think regular Fourth of July or Saint Patrick’s Day parade, add 10,000 kilos of hard candy thrown with gusto and hundreds of people on the sidelines absolutely desperate for their fair share of that candy.  Despite the warnings from Garrick and Dziu we were quite surprised at the force with which candy was thrown at the spectators and I know Rebecca took a hit to the forehead before deciding the safest way to collect candy was to pick it up off the ground.

We were not ready to leave but leave we must, off to Paris to catch our plane back to the states, stopping off to visit Rebecca’s brother, Brady, and sister-in-law, Airon, in New Jersey and various friends in New York.  I really enjoyed watching Rebecca and Brady goofing off and hassling each other.  She really lights up around him and I always like to see that.  So as not to be too burdensome on Brady and Airon, we found a great place to stay in Brooklyn through a friend of a friend, giving us the perfect central location to meet up with Pedro Perez from high school, Friar Tuck from one of my previous visits to NY and Nissim, a former coworker of Rebecca’s.  We also reconnected with Aaron, whom we met in Guatemala and shared as many laughs and stories this time as we did when in Guatemala.  On our last day, we split up our forces so Rebecca could meet up with a former lover and I could catch up with my oldest family friend Mike Dorman.  He shared with me his love for Japanese culture and cuisine then topped it off with a walk across the George Washington Bridge on a FREEZING day. What a great way to finish up New York.

The last time I was in New York, the House of Yes burned down.  So it was certainly a highlight to catch an Aerial Variety show in their new location.  It was great to see the new space and realize that so much good came out of that accident.  It seems like it came at exactly the right time to make it grow at a point when it could have just fizzled away.  Brady and Airon hadn’t seen anything like it and I’m sure they were shocked and secretly tickled to see their sister go up on stage and staple $20 to a clown’s ass.

While in New Jersey we also set up a CraigsList ride with a guy who frequently drives from New York to Dallas and back.  His estimated leave date fit perfectly with our plans and despite the nonstop driving we were both really looking forward to the trip.  However, car trouble and wintry weather in New Jersey caused him to indefinitely postpone his trip so we cashed in our flight miles and bought a ticket home … to arrive on the very first day of Snowmagedden 2011. Strange thought … it snowed the day we left Dallas on December 1, 2009 and we thought it was Dallas trying it’s hardest to keep us here.  Now it snows on our return February 1, 2011 … makes me wonder what message it’s trying to deliver this time.  It’s definitely good to be home, even if we don’t recognize it all dressed in white.


For those of you not willing to wander through our 10,000+ photos, here is Gregory's HighLight Reel at just 350 of the most interesting.

Gas Prices as We Left

Gas Prices Upon Our Return