Clowning around...

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep…

Rothenburg was beautiful and peaceful, but beauty and peace makes a restless mind like mine resentful, turning inwards on its’ owner, jealous of the serenity unattainable to it. Berlin with all its’ glorious grime, graffiti and traffic is a more suitable home for this mind. Better when the roaring sounds of life deafen you to even your loudest thoughts, a city is a haven to the restless mind.

1/5/12: Paris as seen in the movies!

We had planned to head to the D’Orsay and Musee Rodin and were nicely headed on our way around 11 or so. On emerging from the entrance of the metro at Champs Elysee- Clemenceau we were greeted by the absolutely glorious sun and greenery and beauty that one usually only sees of Paris in the movies. I found it a little disorienting as you couldn’t see as far as usual for the trees. We were at Pont Alexandre, I think. We thought that this was as good a place as any to start our first proper day in Paris. As we crossed the bridge we saw a stone statue of a cherub with a lion to which someone had added splotches of red paint around the belly area of said cherub causing him to look as if the lion had ripped his guts out. Tee hee. Good show. We trundled along the Seine for a while our contented silence every now and then broken by my exclamations of surprize that there were actually leaves on the trees!

I could see the Eiffel tower so we ended up heading in its direction for a squiz. On our way we passed the huge edifice that is Hotel des Invalides. Not sure what it is or was… something to google methinks. Cool, done that, so it actually is a museum for military stuff and a hospital and retirement home for old and wounded soldiers. But I digress. God there were swarms of tourists at the Eiffel tower. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people at there before. Last time I was in Paris the place was proportionately deserted, but then, it was winter.

Unfortunately we had forgotten our map with all of the important coffee shops that Erin had hallmarked for us to visit so we were a bit at a loss to know how to get to the Musées from there. I ended up finding a map on my phone and we made our way towards the Rodin museum with a quick but failed detour to find the elusive coffee place.

The area around the Rodin was absolutely beautiful. All the flowers were in bloom and there was a beautiful little park nearby but we were getting hungry so decided to return another day and go find some food. We ended up walking back to St Germain for lunch, there was a place called La Criossanterie which sold set lunch menus of a huge sandwich made in a baguette with dessert and a drink. Perfect.

After we had sufficiently stuffed ourselves, we decided to go check out my favourite place from my last visit, Le Marais- the old Jewish quarter, nowadays home to expensive fashion and felafel restaurants. It was crowded too and made the place harder to enjoy but we walked around for a while and decided to head back to the flat but not before I bought some amazing bread from my favourite boulangerie at St Pauls metro.

Amazing baguette with amazing butter and substandard tomato soup for dinner.

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30/4/12: Barcelona to Paris

Woke up at 5:45 to the sound of the rain pissing down. Great, our 20 minute walk to the train heading for the airport should be thrilling!

Turns out that my guardian angel had turned the heavenly taps off for us by the time we had to leave and it was a nice, non-eventful walk to the station.

As it was that we were flying with Easy-Jet (the least expensive airline) we had to trek to the exclusive no-frills terminal for paupers and misers. I found myself amused at my own train of thought which moments before had been geared towards the question of how many times Jose Carreras might have flown out of this very airport. “No surely he doesn’t have to commute like the rest of us… maybe he has his own plane… don’t be silly he’s not that wealthy…surely.”

The only irksome thing I find about this particular airline is the way in which everything is so rushed. Our boarding really was like the opening pastiche from Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” where the workers piling into their offices turn into sheep being herded into a shearing pen. They had us all in the loading dock packed in like militant sardines in lines before the plane had even reached the terminal. On the plane though it was fine and dandy.

Once we arrived in Paris we were a bit pressed for time as we had a rendez-vous with the sister of the woman who’s apartment we were renting to pick up the keys. She was in the middle of town and it would take 45 mins to get there. Whilst standing around waiting for our bags I realised that we’d have to take the RER train system to get out to our suburb. Having used this system on my previous trip I had developed an aversion to it, bad memories or whatever so I was feeling a bit nonplussed already as we hurtled towards the ticket machines- or more to the point- the ends of the huge slowly moving lines to the too few and frustratingly complex ticket machines. We got to the front of the line and discovered that it wasn’t accepting cards and there was no provision for the use of notes. Great. To the back of another line and the clock keeps ticking.

Finally we had our tickets and a couple of seats on our way onto Paris! I was a bit concerned about finding the hotel in time as our seemingly detailed map of Paris did not show the street, which was to be our destination. On arriving at the Metro stop we asked the ticket lady if she knew the place. No she didn’t but she got out a street directory and found the place for us. Still it took our asking another person, finding another map and going the wrong way and back again before we found the place. Erin went in and asked for the sister, the concierge replied that she was not there. Shit. Already my mind was making plans. “If we can’t find a hostel we might be able to sleep in the metro or worse pay heaps of money for a hotel room like that time in Rome”.

The concierge kindly called the sister and it turned out that she had left the keys in a draw at the front desk.

That is enough catastrophising for one day Lucy.

Anyway, had a baguetty thing for lunch then headed out to our new pad to check out the area of Saint Denis. Our apartment is very arty and cool. I’m left wondering exactly what our host does for a living. It seems that she had produced a production of Cabaret. Cool!

The Queen of Sheba at the Movie Museum in Ait Benhaddou.

Camels in the Sahara

Morocco has been a culture shock in more ways than one. We arrived in Casablanca after a 1 hour ferry from Tarifa and a 6 hour train from Tangier. The first shock was that when we arrived at the hotel we were greeted by the tour guide who told us that we’d be staying in hotels! What a luxury! The second shock was the leery men and the quiet facelessness of the women. It’s been an adjustment to deliberately avoid eye contact when walking in the streets. One of our group got spat at and groped in one evening at Tangier. The third shock has been having to exist in the confinement of a tour group! It’s definitely easier and I think there would be no other way to have seen Morocco as solo girls who speak only English and a petit peu de Français but I certainly prefer the freedom of being able to decide where to go and with whome. Having said all this it has been an interesting journey.

We started in Casablanca which was just for one night and the little we saw of it looked like a war zone! We took a train straight to Rabat, the capital. It had a beautiful kasbah which was like going back in time. It was fascinating to see the people going about their business, I prefer watching this kind of activity to going to tourist museums and that kind of thing. The next day was back to Tangiers where we had started. We stayed in a amazing hotel which had been given to the Americans during the 20’s and was right on the harbour looking across the sea to Spain. We stayed a couple of nights at this amazing place. We spent most of our day here sitting on the the balcony in the sun drinking mint tea and playing cards. The breakfast room here was a miracle of craftsmanship with beautiful Arabic stucco work and mosaic tiles. It seemed like we were in a palace on the beach.

The next spot we went to was called Chefchaouen, is is a lovely little hillside town with sky blue painted houses gouged into the curves of the hills. Again our hotel was a masterpiece of stucco, wood and tile! Breakfast was an assortment of about a hundred different Moroccan biscuits and sugar with some mint and tea in it. I loved this little village.

Next day we were off to Fez which was an experience. The nouvelle ville where we stayed had not an ounce of charm, accordingly we did day trips out to the oldest Medina in Morocco. We walked through the 9th century Jewish quarter where once all the gold merchants would congregate, next was the 14th century section with it’s bustling souq and tiny winding streets and passages. The smells were amazing in this area. Also amazing was the fact that these 14th century houses were still being lived in today. We took another day trip out to see the beautifully preserved mosaics and Roman ruins at Volubilis. There were about 10 really decent mosaics all with minute detail and colour still well preserved. On the same trip we went to another medina in Meknes where i had to exhibit phenomenal restraint to avoid buying all the rugs i saw there.
This concluded our tour of what they call the blue part of Morocco which is characterised by it’s fertility and cooler climate, next was a 10 hour journey in a private bus over two mountain ranges to the red part of Morocco where lies the desert and scorched land. We broke our journey at our tour guide, Mostafa’s family home where we met his old Berber mother, his young wife and his two unmarried siblings. His sister had cooked us a delicious morning tea with homemade Moroccan crepes, which is somewhat more like a flat croissant made with oil instead of butter but which is delicious, especially with the homemade orange jam that they had put out in little dishes all over the table. I might mention here that all of our tour of 8 are girls but one and all under the age of 30 and all with a healthy obsession with chocolate. Not one day on our trip has gone by where we have not had to request a special chocolate finding excursion. In one of his phone calls to his family I think Mostafa had mentioned our love of chocolate and as a very sweet gesture his sister had put out little plates of homemade chocolate icing to go with our crepes. It was a lovely touch to meet our guides family as it was really the first interaction with locals that we had had on the trip. It was another 9 hours, 5 toilet stops, one lunch, and one chocolate finding expedition before we arrived at our destination of Merzouga. The last 3 hours had seen some of the most breathtaking scenery yet. We had been driving along in the barren desert for hours when suddenly a great green swathe cut through the red sand, soon we were driving along a lush gorge through which flowed a river creating a green agricultural belt along which are rumored to be a thousand kasbahs. The people along here were Tuaregs, Berbers and Arabs and the women were traditionally dressed in great big black cloaks with their faces covered. I made eye contact with one lady in a group of women in the back of a truck, she instantly covered her mouth and nose with her head covering and looked away. Yikes. This was a conservative and traditional society. Finally we arrived at our hotel. It was at the base of the sahara desert and was made out of mud and straw. Our room was lovely and there was a lovely pool and sitting area. We had our dinner in another beautifully decorated room, then afterwards when we were all over full the men who worked at the hotel all brought out their drums and played a little concert for us which then turned into a dance and ultimately into us making fools of ourselves trying to play their drums or sing a song from our culture. We couldn’t think of any other than Waltzing Matilda. The next day we lounged around playing cards until the afternoon when was scheduled an overnight camel trek. I was utterly terrified of the concept as the last thing I’d ridden before that other than a unicycle was a temperamental Shetland pony who had completely turned me off the idea of horse riding. Obediently I got on my seated camel and held on to the saddle with an iron grip. Suddenly with tremendous effort to stay astride my camel I was off the ground and perched atop a moving animal. After half an hour I was a pro, giving tips on how to go down hill with more ease to the others. What a dork. We arrived at our camp where we had our tea and dinner. Then as I was contemplating finding a nice distant sand dune to wee on, it started to rain. Yes, rain in the desert! We all hurried into our tents to buckle down for the night. Sand. Sand in everything. My bed had sand in it and that combined with the dripping of a leak in our tent made for a fairly sleepless night. The next day it was up a sparrows fart to ride our camels back to the hotel where we all raced to the showers to get the smell of wet camel off ourselves.
We were destined for the Todra Gorge that day and as we were driving along it became evident to us just how much it had rained that night. The whole area was drenched and presently we came up to a crossing that was near to a river which was flooded. We had to stop and Mostafa was madly calling people and chatting to the locals to see if we would be able to get through that day. No good. We’d have to go back the way we came and take an alternate route making our journey 9 hours instead of 6. Ah well.
That brings me up to date. We’re off to the High Atlas mountains tomorrow where I believe we’ll be hiking. As my jeans are covered with wet camel I suspect that I will be attempting to hike a mountain in a floor length dress and Oxford brogue shoes. Should be fun.

Granary of Meknes

Breakfast room in Tangier

Clowning around...

Fine Folk

Body in Rebellion: sonder

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Paris as seen in the movies!

Half a day in Paris.

Morocco on a petit peu de Français and wet CAMELS