jumping the continents

Ok-- first thing is first-- we have moved on to spain. So typing is about 100 times easier, so hopefully i can do a bit better than the short little posts thus far.

wendy and I spent our last day in Marrakech exporing the ¨new city¨ that is, the city built by the french in the 1920´s. lots of lovely pink art deco buildings. Have I mentioned that all the buildings in Marrakech are painted pink? and I do mean all of them. It felt like a bit of a shock, to be in the more modern part of the city, after spending the last week wandering the kasbahs and medinas of the old city. every modern convenience you could want, all there. cell phones and spas and La Vie en Rose stores.

We went back to the big square and the hawkers food stalls in the old city for diner. sat at our favorite tea stall and watched the huge crowd that came out on a Sunday night. Thousands of people, lots of families, and not a few stunned looking tourists. My stomach wasn´t the best, so we didn´t have a big feed, but did try some tasty snails cooked in a spicy broth. And bought the best dates of my life (the fruit, not the activity!)!

we struck up a conversation with a berber fellow named Hassan, who was interesting to chat with, as he was really open to answering all of our questions about some of the things that we had seen in Morocco. turns out the offers of camels that we were getting were not marraige offers, but more along the lines of a ´sugar daddy´sorta thing. good to have that cleared up!

on the flip side of that conversation, Hassan took quite a shining to me, and we found him waiting for us outside of our guest house the next morning. He had gifts of jewlery and flowers for both of us. apparently our chatting with him left the wrong impression, and he was in full-on wooing mode. I feel a little bad about that, and have to say that I was a little relieved to be leaving for spain that morning. I´ve already received an email from him, full of hugs and kisses, so, I guess i have to set that straight soon.

so here we are in Madrid. It´s 15c and so i´m a little chilly- i only brought one pair of pants, and all the spanish ladies are looking disparingly at me in my flip flops. we rented an appartment in the old part of town, which is a treat. there is laundry! and separate bedrooms! and there is a nice little bar RIGHT accross the street where the lady who runs the place with an iron fist seems to think that our lack of spanish is charming. heaven.

Madrid hs thrown up some roadblocks though: money and keys. Let me explain:

Keys:
we got two sets of key to our appartment. being safety minded girls, upon noticing that you have to have a key to get OUT of the appartment, we decided to put a set in the door to make sure we could get out if there was a fire or something. So, we leave, with our other set of keys, and at that moment realize that if there is a set in the door, our keys don´t work. we are locked out. and all our of stuff is locked in. Gah.

We called our landlady, who helpfully was only two floors up, and she explained that we were very stupid, but that she would call the locksmith. We retired to the aforementioned bar across the street to wait. we had a beer. (and let me pause here to say mmmm beer. Morocco being dry and all, the beer was tasty!). Then we had another. Then it was 9pm, and the locksmith came to tell me kindly that i was very stupid, and that for him to work about 45seconds of his magic, it would cost us $450. GAH some more. While the landlady says she thinks that the rental company´s insurance will cover that, i don´t know how we will work that out in the limited time we have here, and with the language barrier. It might just end up being a very expensive lesson.

As you can well imagine, we then retired for a few more beer, and our first spanish tapas. Delicious. We had ´patatas con Brava´which are just yummy potatoes in spicy creamy sauce, and more carbs, with a dish of eggs, potatoes and chorizo. it was the perfect comfort food to drown our foolish sorrows in! welcome to Madrid!

Money:
wendy and I have both had all of our bank accounts frozen in the last 24 hours. apparently large withdrawls of cash from ATMs in Morocco twigged as suspicious for someone--i guess i´m glad someone is watching my account. we are in the process of clearing that up, but it has been a drag. the prospect of being cashless here is a little scary!

Today we walked around Madrid and saw the catedral and the palace etc. But I´ll tell you about that later. I hear a bodega calling my name....