Greg and Mandy's Travels

Today is our day to explore Fes, in Morocco.

Fes, for centuries, was the traditional capital of Morocco. It’s original old town, known as the Medina, was an ancient walled city built from the 11th century, so parts of it are about 1000 years old, though much of what we see is either newer or restored as the original buildings were constructed with mud before cement was discovered, and have largely crumbled.

It’s an absolute rabbit warren, grown randomly over the centuries as people have built anywhere there was space, and now inhabited by around 300,000 people, some of whom never venture outside the walls.…

So here’s what a travel day post-COVID looks like. 

7:30 Wake up

8:39 Get email saying our PCR test yesterday was negative 

8:45 Make futile attempt to check in to our flight online

9:05 Leave apartment and walk to bus station 

10:15 Board bus to the airport

12:30 Arrive at airport and find which terminal and counter we’ll use

12:35 Sit around

2:30 Stand around in queue for check in

3:30 Show passport, PCR test results and vaccination certificate and receive boarding pass

4:00 Sigh deeply with relief and buy a coffee

4:30 Try to work out which is the correct immigration queue and realise it doesn’t matter

4:45 Sit at the gate

5:00 Stand at gate behind the Business Class passengers

5:10 Board the same bus as everybody else including the pained Business Class travelers

5:25 Squash aboard a little twin prop known as an ATR-72.…

Today was Alhambra day – the second of the three days that the holiday has been built around.

But first we had to get our PCR tests to be able to get out of the country tomorrow, so we presented ourselves to one of the international clinics in the city promptly at 9am to have our brains tickled.

After the obligatory morning coffee, it was back to the apartment for an early lunch before walking down to the main square, and hiking all the way up to the top of the hill where the Alhambra is located gazing down over the city.…

We noticed that when we arrived in Seville in the rain that the footpaths were all brown and extremely slippery from a mixture of the rain and very fine red dust. Our clothes ended up with dust spots when they dried, and cars were filthy. I just put it down to the fact that nobody had a parking spot, let alone a garage to wash their car in. It was even worse when we got to Cordoba. Walking down the hill on cobbles after rain was like trying to walk on ice, and when it dried, all the footpaths looked dirty.…

The first of three special days that formed the pillars of our holiday – Cordoba.

We booked a guided tour of the Mezquita-Catedral for late in the day, and set off to see the other major sights of the city on a self-guided walk.

Córdoba was once the Roman and Moorish capital of Spain with its roots in the banks of the Guadalquivir River in Andalusia, Spain – the same river that flows up to Seville and was a major route of international trade, so Cordoba had an important role over the years. It has a rich cultural and architectural heritage and in medieval times it was one of the few places Jews, Muslims, and Christians lived together peacefully. …

A relaxed start to the day, with a wander down to yet another plaza for a cup of coffee. They’d actually been to barista school – texturised froth and art on top.

Lugged our bags over the cobbles on our longest walk yet to transport, and eventually found the swank train station with lots of non-Spanish eating options (if you get my drift). Spain seems to have outlawed plastic straws to help the environment (which is good), but then put my drink in a paper bag, my fries in a second, and my burger in a third. Then, because I couldn’t carry them all, put the three bags inside a large fourth one, together with two ketchups and eighteen napkins.…

Same story all over the world in cities with rivers. The city is built on one side of the river, and the gentry settle there. The poorer classes, or perhaps the ethnic minorities, settle on the other bank, and have to trudge over the river each day to get to their work. Nobody wants to live on the other side of the river, and you can’t give away the land. Eventually, when the prices on the city side get out of hand, people gaze wistfully at the decaying and crammed accomodation on the other bank, and this phenomenon that we call ‘urban renewal’ starts.…

Have you ever thrown a party, and nobody came? Bet you didn’t do it to the extent that Seville did. But the story starts a few hundred years ago, way back around 1492 when the Spanish kings sent Christopher Columbus out to discover a new way to India, and ran into America. At the time, Spain and Portugal were engaged in a fierce rivalry to claim every piece of the ‘non-Christian’ world, especially in South America, and they were fighting each other, as well as the peoples they were overrunning.

Well, the Pope thought it unseemly that two catholic nations were fighting each other, got them together in Spain in 1494, and signed the Treaty of Tordesillas which neatly divided the ‘New World’ of the Americas between the two superpowers by drawing a north-to-south line of demarcation in the Atlantic Ocean.…

Last morning in Portugal so we headed down to the main square in search of our last Portuguese tart. This time they made us a cappuccino by pouring a shot, then squirting canned cream on the top! At least a little more life in the place on a Saturday morning with a market being set up in the town square. A little different to markets back home that start around 6am, and people pack up by lunchtime. Here they were still unfolding their tables at 10am and pulling their stock out of the cars.

Left the apartment around 11, and rolled our way down to the bus station where we sat patiently until the bus arrived just after noon.…

You know that feeling you get when you go to a summer resort town in the winter. The ice cream shops are boarded up. The fairground rides are all wrapped, and the shopkeepers stand around forlornly. Well, that’s what Faro is like. It seemed that there was one tourist bus in town today. They alighted as a pack with lanyards around their necks, and trudged up the mall in a group through the rain. We actually saw one tour vendor bring in his boards and lock up the shop after the group went past, and it wasn’t even lunchtime.

And the weather didn’t spare us either.…