It's Bank Holiday season and I need regular blogs to keep up with the trips we are taking. The Easter weekend in Great Britain is four days and we went up to the Lake District (Northwest England) about 5 hours with Brad and Audra. Audra planned the whole thing and we were along for the ride. It was awesome. We were pretty pathetic road trippers making a million and one stops on the relatively short drive and everyone in the car feeling car sick with the super windy roads. Brad and Jim did a great job mastering the narrow lanes and the wrong side of the road.
We rented a little (huge in comparison to our flat) two bedroom country house with old country English charm but modern amenities all the way. One of the greatest parts of the house besides the old stove fireplace and comfy four-post bed was the old latch mechanisms on the windows (haha hard to describe here). Our house was complete with a white and yellow daffodil garden, views of lambs and really annoying birds that Jim couldn't handle. It's funny that being in the middle of nowhere had as much background noise as the city, this time squawking and sheep bahs, not buses and sirens.
We packed in as much as we could including trying to pet a baby lamb (they run away), visited a lighthouse, rented a motorboat and hiked a small mountain. We were pretty excited that we could rent a motorboat and then we saw what they considered a motorboat, haha, which looked like a little police tug boat if you put a siren on top. No threat of going to fast on this thing, but fun nonetheless. Our mountain hike was pretty hilarious because it was us picking a mountain as we were driving a long and deciding that's the one we wanted to climb. When you think mountain don't think the Rockies but still a respectable climb when you go straight up the side through the sheep grazing areas and go to the summit. Note that the first time we tried this brilliant idea we got about 5 mins in and got stuck by a creek and the fences of the sheep farm and had to turn around. Later we found there was a public path that got you past the creek and then we deviated from the path again and went over/through multiple stone fences (some with gates some without) to get to the top. I accomplished this wearing ballet flats, haha. Right as we were clearing our last barbed wire/stone fence on the way down the owner of the land drove by the path and was less than happy with us being there and breaking his fence (which we didn't, but previously trespassers probably bent it down a bit). Luckily no shotguns were involved and we quickly moved on out of there!
We also had some serious evenings of board game wars (Taboo and Articulate). We were all highly too competitive for this and major trash talking and being uber nit-picky about the rules occurred.
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Monday, 18 April 2011
Marrakech
Part 2 - read Adventures first.
After waking up in our riad at Fes we decided not to stick around for long because we had to train all the way to Marrakech and didn't want a repeat of the previous night's experience. Highlights of the second train trip included finishing a 450 page book, meeting a young Moroccan guy that we spoke in German to and enjoying hours of seeing the beautiful countryside. 8 hours later we were there.
In Morocco, riads are the traditional guesthouses (think bed and breakfast but better). In Marrakech we stayed in the most beautiful place, only 8 rooms, all open air, a green tiled pool, big rooftop deck with chairs and couches, etc. All for a low price of €60/night. The hospitality is fabulous!
The traveling part of our trip was done and we had all of Wednesday and Thursday to relax which we definitely did; sleeping in, lounging around the riad roof and pool and playing French board games. Scrabble is interesting because most of the pieces are E's and A's and Monopoly is interesting because the Chance and Community Chest cards are in French but once you figure out the word for 'pay €' vs. 'receive €' that is all you need to know.
The main square/market in Marrakech is so ridiculous that when you are out and about things are ON! Then going back to the riad is a calming other world and you can't believe you are only a couple blocks away from the maddness.
I've never been in a Muslim country before and hearing the blaring megaphones from mosques all over the city with the call to prayer 5 times a day was really cool. It echoes everywhere is enchanting/eerie.
The main square market is filled with big carts selling fresh squeezed orange juice and others selling dates/nuts/dried apricots. Repeat. Then at night, tents go up and the whole center of square turns into make-shift restaurants back-to-back. Each one has a grill, a huge cart displaying piles of meat and other food, and long tables and benches. Local men stand next to each one very proactively trying to get people to come sit at theirs. The guys are hilarious. Remember "stall 1-1-7 takes you to heaven". That got us to sit down. The food is basically the same menu everywhere. You start with a round loaf of bread and dipping sauce, then skewers of lamb, beef or chicken and I also ate a lot of couscous and fries. Yummy. No food poisoning but my stomach hurt all weekend after Friday so maybe a little.
The people are friendly and really nice, but there are people that are looking to make as much money as they can from the tourists. There is one part of the square where there are real snake charms (freaky!) and people dancing around clapping things in your face and then asking for money. With my demeanor I didn't do so well with this part of the square and tried to avoid it! Funny story: on our last night doing our last lap of the square, a local woman was trying to get me to buy a henna drawing on my hand and she actually grabbed my hand when I said "Non Merci" she wouldn't let go! She wouldn't let go as I was trying to rip my hand away and I was left with a long drizzle of chunky henna ink across my hand. I was pooped on! It was quite hilarious and would only happen to me. :)
Loved Marrakech and visiting the palace ruins covered in colorful tiles. Once we have our pictures (Jim stayed in Morocco longer until tomorrow and has the camera) this will all make more sense and due it justice.
Other highlight: Renting a moped and zipping through the alleys and streets!
After waking up in our riad at Fes we decided not to stick around for long because we had to train all the way to Marrakech and didn't want a repeat of the previous night's experience. Highlights of the second train trip included finishing a 450 page book, meeting a young Moroccan guy that we spoke in German to and enjoying hours of seeing the beautiful countryside. 8 hours later we were there.
In Morocco, riads are the traditional guesthouses (think bed and breakfast but better). In Marrakech we stayed in the most beautiful place, only 8 rooms, all open air, a green tiled pool, big rooftop deck with chairs and couches, etc. All for a low price of €60/night. The hospitality is fabulous!
The traveling part of our trip was done and we had all of Wednesday and Thursday to relax which we definitely did; sleeping in, lounging around the riad roof and pool and playing French board games. Scrabble is interesting because most of the pieces are E's and A's and Monopoly is interesting because the Chance and Community Chest cards are in French but once you figure out the word for 'pay €' vs. 'receive €' that is all you need to know.
The main square/market in Marrakech is so ridiculous that when you are out and about things are ON! Then going back to the riad is a calming other world and you can't believe you are only a couple blocks away from the maddness.
I've never been in a Muslim country before and hearing the blaring megaphones from mosques all over the city with the call to prayer 5 times a day was really cool. It echoes everywhere is enchanting/eerie.
The main square market is filled with big carts selling fresh squeezed orange juice and others selling dates/nuts/dried apricots. Repeat. Then at night, tents go up and the whole center of square turns into make-shift restaurants back-to-back. Each one has a grill, a huge cart displaying piles of meat and other food, and long tables and benches. Local men stand next to each one very proactively trying to get people to come sit at theirs. The guys are hilarious. Remember "stall 1-1-7 takes you to heaven". That got us to sit down. The food is basically the same menu everywhere. You start with a round loaf of bread and dipping sauce, then skewers of lamb, beef or chicken and I also ate a lot of couscous and fries. Yummy. No food poisoning but my stomach hurt all weekend after Friday so maybe a little.
The people are friendly and really nice, but there are people that are looking to make as much money as they can from the tourists. There is one part of the square where there are real snake charms (freaky!) and people dancing around clapping things in your face and then asking for money. With my demeanor I didn't do so well with this part of the square and tried to avoid it! Funny story: on our last night doing our last lap of the square, a local woman was trying to get me to buy a henna drawing on my hand and she actually grabbed my hand when I said "Non Merci" she wouldn't let go! She wouldn't let go as I was trying to rip my hand away and I was left with a long drizzle of chunky henna ink across my hand. I was pooped on! It was quite hilarious and would only happen to me. :)
Loved Marrakech and visiting the palace ruins covered in colorful tiles. Once we have our pictures (Jim stayed in Morocco longer until tomorrow and has the camera) this will all make more sense and due it justice.
Other highlight: Renting a moped and zipping through the alleys and streets!
Adventures
We went to Spain and then took a boat across the Straight of Gibraltar (and then through the candy cane forest...haha this makes me think of the movie Elf when he is telling about his journey) and then took an overnight train through Africa.
The funniest part is that it took an entire day; 8:30am to 7pm to just get out of southern Spain when we were already on the coast and the ferry itself was only 35 mins :) FYI: no ferries from Malaga, ferries from Gibraltar only go on Fridays, ferries for the other city don't go to the right place, ferries from the fourth city get you to city of Tangiers in Morocco.
Jim graciously let me step foot into our new continent first (he's gotten 3 other continents before me! - one because of birth) and we were there. Within 5 mins we were picked up by a guy from the "tourism office" in perfect English who appointed himself our guide for the rest of the evening. This all worked out fairly well but we were super skeptical and not really sure when we were being taken advantage of as tourists and we were in a new world. What you may not know about Morocco is there are very few black people. It is more similar to the middle east and is a mostly Muslim country with Arabic and French as the languages. When we were in Marrakech going through the souks (market) I was surprised that we weren't immediately flagged as Americans but we weren't. With Jim's dark hair and eyes and growing sun tan if we were walked and people didn't hear us speak we were most often called out to with Ohlas! If they heard us speak English we got "where are you from? Sydney? South Africa?". Funny.
The night we arrived we had to take the 9:30pm train to Fes where we had already booked a riad for the night. We were thinking we would have been on 3pm train but didn't work out as such due to our adventures in Spain. After we had already spent some money on a handmade Moroccan linen and carpet (thanks to our "tourism office" guide) which are beautiful by the way, we decided to only get a second class train ticket. That was fine during the first part of the journey till around 11pm. Most of the train cars are set-up with little cabins with two long benches that can fit 8 per cabin sitting or we could each lay out on one bench when we commadered a cabin to ourselves. Around 11pm, we were joined by a nice couple that only spoke Arabic but I was happy that we were sharing with them. I pointed to the name of the city on my ticket and asked the man if that is were he got on because we knew we had to transfer trains but when you pull up to the stations most of them aren't marked! At this point we figured there was a chance we would miss our transfer and skip the city of Fes completely and just ride the train through the entire night (as opposed to 2am) and make it to Marrakech instead. At about 1am I was nudged awake by the man in our cabin and told we'd reached the city we needed to transfer at. Thank you. The problem was, the next train had already been traveling for a while and was packed. It was 1am, a dark, hot, smoke-filled train filled with men only speaking Arabic and there were no seats. We spend two hours crammed in sitting on the dirty floor of the narrow walkway in the car outside of the cabins. We arrived 1 hour late (due to the train stopping for 15 mins per station most times) at 3am. We found a taxi driver who drove us to the Medina (heart of the old section of Moroccan cities were the souks/stalls of the market are) and got out of the car at the Medina. The Medina is old and not meant for cars which do not fit down the narrow maze of alleys. As a tourist you need to be walked through when you first arrive and you could not find were you are going by yourself. Pretty much short of impossible. The nice guy walked us through the dark alleys all boarded up for the night with lots of garbage and stray cats. Where am I?! When the door opened to our riad it is a gorgeous oasis with a room decorated in great detail and a really nice host. Phew. PS walking out into the same alley the next day was completely transformed and a wonderful market. Couldn't believe it was the same place. :)
The funniest part is that it took an entire day; 8:30am to 7pm to just get out of southern Spain when we were already on the coast and the ferry itself was only 35 mins :) FYI: no ferries from Malaga, ferries from Gibraltar only go on Fridays, ferries for the other city don't go to the right place, ferries from the fourth city get you to city of Tangiers in Morocco.
Jim graciously let me step foot into our new continent first (he's gotten 3 other continents before me! - one because of birth) and we were there. Within 5 mins we were picked up by a guy from the "tourism office" in perfect English who appointed himself our guide for the rest of the evening. This all worked out fairly well but we were super skeptical and not really sure when we were being taken advantage of as tourists and we were in a new world. What you may not know about Morocco is there are very few black people. It is more similar to the middle east and is a mostly Muslim country with Arabic and French as the languages. When we were in Marrakech going through the souks (market) I was surprised that we weren't immediately flagged as Americans but we weren't. With Jim's dark hair and eyes and growing sun tan if we were walked and people didn't hear us speak we were most often called out to with Ohlas! If they heard us speak English we got "where are you from? Sydney? South Africa?". Funny.
The night we arrived we had to take the 9:30pm train to Fes where we had already booked a riad for the night. We were thinking we would have been on 3pm train but didn't work out as such due to our adventures in Spain. After we had already spent some money on a handmade Moroccan linen and carpet (thanks to our "tourism office" guide) which are beautiful by the way, we decided to only get a second class train ticket. That was fine during the first part of the journey till around 11pm. Most of the train cars are set-up with little cabins with two long benches that can fit 8 per cabin sitting or we could each lay out on one bench when we commadered a cabin to ourselves. Around 11pm, we were joined by a nice couple that only spoke Arabic but I was happy that we were sharing with them. I pointed to the name of the city on my ticket and asked the man if that is were he got on because we knew we had to transfer trains but when you pull up to the stations most of them aren't marked! At this point we figured there was a chance we would miss our transfer and skip the city of Fes completely and just ride the train through the entire night (as opposed to 2am) and make it to Marrakech instead. At about 1am I was nudged awake by the man in our cabin and told we'd reached the city we needed to transfer at. Thank you. The problem was, the next train had already been traveling for a while and was packed. It was 1am, a dark, hot, smoke-filled train filled with men only speaking Arabic and there were no seats. We spend two hours crammed in sitting on the dirty floor of the narrow walkway in the car outside of the cabins. We arrived 1 hour late (due to the train stopping for 15 mins per station most times) at 3am. We found a taxi driver who drove us to the Medina (heart of the old section of Moroccan cities were the souks/stalls of the market are) and got out of the car at the Medina. The Medina is old and not meant for cars which do not fit down the narrow maze of alleys. As a tourist you need to be walked through when you first arrive and you could not find were you are going by yourself. Pretty much short of impossible. The nice guy walked us through the dark alleys all boarded up for the night with lots of garbage and stray cats. Where am I?! When the door opened to our riad it is a gorgeous oasis with a room decorated in great detail and a really nice host. Phew. PS walking out into the same alley the next day was completely transformed and a wonderful market. Couldn't believe it was the same place. :)
Sunday, 3 April 2011
Let the games begin
Where do I begin on this one. Last night we hosted our first beer olympics at our flat which all in all was hilarious and a success. This was complete with 29 people in our little 400 square foot flat and a beer olympics bracket of 13 randomly selected co-ed teams featuring four events; beer pong, flippy cup, quarters and drunk ball.
There was a prize for best dressed, so most people were wearing their country colours and even some flags. Represented we had: USA, Canada, Mexico, The Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Germany, and some heavy Asian influences. Unfortunately our Brazilian and Austrialian invitees couldn't make it.
We opened the games with the Olympics song on YouTube and lit our Olympic torch/candle. Opening ceremonies and closing ceremonies consisted of more games where as many people as could fit around a table participated. It was honestly hilarious that this all went down and caused such a mess with our averaged age 28 years old participants. It was also good combining each of our work and outside of work friend groups and everyone being ridiculous together. The night was complete with going out dancing in Camden and of course 4am dinner at Hung's in Chinatown.
Highlights:
1) No visits from cops or angry neighbors
2) Nothing broke that couldn't be fixed
3) Everyone had FUN!
4) My team won it all!
5) Getting to wear tights with American flags and classic American pin-up girls from the 50's.
I've learned that hosting a beer olympics really takes an entire weekend. Friday night is starting to prepare and taking it easy because the Olympics is the next day. Saturday is frantically cleaning, buying food, prizes and beer and re-organising furniture. Sunday is sleeping it off and cleaning the floors and putting the furniture back in its place. Weekend gone.
There was a prize for best dressed, so most people were wearing their country colours and even some flags. Represented we had: USA, Canada, Mexico, The Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Germany, and some heavy Asian influences. Unfortunately our Brazilian and Austrialian invitees couldn't make it.
We opened the games with the Olympics song on YouTube and lit our Olympic torch/candle. Opening ceremonies and closing ceremonies consisted of more games where as many people as could fit around a table participated. It was honestly hilarious that this all went down and caused such a mess with our averaged age 28 years old participants. It was also good combining each of our work and outside of work friend groups and everyone being ridiculous together. The night was complete with going out dancing in Camden and of course 4am dinner at Hung's in Chinatown.
Highlights:
1) No visits from cops or angry neighbors
2) Nothing broke that couldn't be fixed
3) Everyone had FUN!
4) My team won it all!
5) Getting to wear tights with American flags and classic American pin-up girls from the 50's.
I've learned that hosting a beer olympics really takes an entire weekend. Friday night is starting to prepare and taking it easy because the Olympics is the next day. Saturday is frantically cleaning, buying food, prizes and beer and re-organising furniture. Sunday is sleeping it off and cleaning the floors and putting the furniture back in its place. Weekend gone.
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