Reyes Magos

Sooo I know that the Christmas season has already passed, at home and here in Spain, but just for the sake of posting about stuff that is cool around town and what we're doing, I wanted to share this little diddy.

Jussssttt before we left for Morocco, Spain celebrated their Christmas equivalent, Los Reyes Magos.  Even though they kinda, sorta, but not really celebrate Christmas on the 25th as well, Los Reyes Magos is the big winter holiday.  All the little Spanish kids write letters to the 3 Kings telling them what they want for "Christmas" (I mean Reyes Magos) and of course if they've been good boys and girls, they get their presents!  It kind of makes sense that the 3 kings/wise men bring the kids gifts instead of Santa Clause because I don't remember baby Jesus getting a visit from a big fat guy in a red suit...  who knows? maybe one of the wise men was fat and wore red? We'll know one day I'm sure.

 ???This is normally where I might put a picture of something I thought was funny and photo-shopped a picture of Santa Clause with my face in the Nativity scene but I found it to be too tedious and I wasn't sure if it would have been sacrilegious or not... so instead here's a pic from photo booth???

The 6th of January is full of presents, food, Spanish treats, parades, and lots of crappy candy.

There were lots of parades going on around town the day before and I missed out on the candy, so Emma and I knew we had to see the big parade on the 6th!  We walked around town for an hour or so in search of the parade, didn't find it, and went home for a quick break....  THEN.... when we went back out for a second try, we saw tons of kids walking in the opposite direction with bags fullll of candy!!  We missed it!!!!

The mobs of people walking past us, taunting us with their bags of candy.

We stumbled upon some great new areas for taking walks while in search of parades.

Making of a good scary movie.  This is also a good symbol of how we felt having missed the parade...

This is us being cheered up even though we didn't find the parade..... Thanks to our self timer, we could cherrish these moments forever.

JUST KIDDING.....  we really thought we missed the parade, so we headed to the grocery store "El Corte Ingles" to pick up some dinner and when we came back outside, we stumbled upon this massive mob of people filling the streets.  We couldn't have made it home even if we tried. 

These "shepherds" look like they need to be put down..... as in the same way you'd put down a zombie.

The floats of the parade weren't your typical Christmas floats, even though there were a few "middle eastern" themed floats with several big floats reserved for the 3 kings.  You won't find and Frostys or Rudolphs here... but below you will find some of our favorites from the night!

Alice.

Pirates and Mermaids.

maybe a Harry Potter float???  or aliens/rockets/tinmen

Memoirs of a Geisha.

It's crazy how frantic people get when the candy throwing starts.  Pictures don't do justice to the 40 yr old men crawling around on the ground and elbowing us in the face multiple times to get to that cough drop.
But we were soooo happy to be going home with a raw chicken and tons of menthol candy!!!!!! (and a pack of cheetos and some weird fruit chews)

Taking home the candy!

We wondered why we saw people with grocery bags on their shoes...........

The streets were sticky for a good 2 days.  and my shoes were for about 5..

Morocco:: deux

The day before we left for Spain, we took a short day trip about an hour outside Marrakech to the Ourika Valley.  We wanted to take a sweet camel ride into the desert and go on a 2-day, 1-night excursion, but who knew the actual "desert/sandy" part of the Sahara desert was 10 hours outside of Marrakech....  so we settled for an hour into the mountainous part of the desert.  We liked it.

We visited a few Berber villages, saw 1/2 a waterfall, several dromedaries (not camels),  haggled for rugs, visited a donkey market,  and relaxed in the nice weather.

Berber village in the background.

I see a dromedary toes.......... get it?! klasdjfklasmnvuiaejrkfdm

Emma could pay 15 Euros to ride one for 15 minutes.  But we can do that at the county fair...  for free.

friends.

 Earlier when I said we saw 1/2 a waterfall, I meant that I flush more water down the toilet sometimes than what this waterfall trickles down.  When we booked the tour, our transportation AND tour guide were both "included" for a flat rate..........  He seemed nice and reasonable and I even told the man, in exact words and kind of joking but not really, "Now I better not find any surprises at the end of this trip and have to pay more when I get to Ourika.  I am paying XX amount and that's it...." He laughed and reassured me that he gave me the best deal he's got....

Sooooo when we got to our destination, the tour guide said if we paid 4 Euros, he would take us to this waterfall.....  "transportation AND tour guide included" probably meant we had a guide, but that didn't mean he would take us anywhere for free...   haha needless to say, we didn't go to the 2nd waterfall that was further up the mountain for 4 more Euros.  We decided to explore ourselves.  Take that.

The faucet/waterfall.

Me scaling the waterfall.  And blending in with the rocks.

The donkey market.  The only place in the world where donkey's trade and buy stocks.  hehaw.

My broker here tried to get me to invest in some mutual funds, but he ended up being a jackass.  Hehaw.

Snow in the desert desert.

On our tour, we ended up being the only Americans.  There were Canadians, Germans, Australians, Spaniards, Brits, and many other people who spoke three times as many languages as we did.  It's definitely great getting to communicate and share with a gazillion other cultures, even though Canada doesn't really count.

Emma and our friend from Germany talking about life.

Me probably looking at some kid using the bathroom in the creek next to me... 

Our last night we took a few more laps around the Medina central square in town to mark the last few things off our list.  We ate some tanjine, kabobs, and snails!  We even saw an underage, free-form boxing match between two 7 yr olds.  I might have tripped up a few old ladies too with the mounds of nuts.  I thought they might have been following us...

What a joy it would have been to knock these over......... until next time, large mounds of nuts.

Snails are a delicacy here in Morocco, as well as Sevilla.  We haven't tried them in Sevilla b/c they are not really in "season."  Who knew?  But we definitely had to try out these guys as an appetizer for 50 cents!! 

The top half is the best part.  The bottom half might have been poop.... oh well.

MMMMMMMMMmmmmmm!

They were really punching each other.  Hard.

Dancing in the streets.

We can never get away from them.  She's the cat lady.  Even in the airport.

She named him Miel (honey) awwwwwww.  Good thing he didn't have a ticket to get on our plane.

Morocco!

We got back to Spain about a week and a half or so before school started back.  Soooo we took advantage of our time off and we decided to make a quick little trip over to Marrakech, Morocco which was just a short hop, skip, and jump away from Sevilla.  We took a one hour flight on what is practically a bus with wings called Ryanair and arrived in Marrakech around 1 on Friday January 7th.

Marrakech is one of the most interesting places we've ever been!  It's by far the most unique.  First of all it's in Africa and part of the largest desert in the world (besides Antarctica but that doesn't count)!!
Second, I think it has some of the worst salesmen in the world.

Right off the bat our taxi driver from the airport to the town center initially gave us a 100 dirham (about 10 Euros) flat rate for 3 people....  right when we got out he wanted about 160..... I smell a liar...
It's ok though because we all know where liars go... back to the airport to lie to more people.

Marrakech, known as the "Red City," was a great little trip, but the first day took a little getting use to.  The city is filled with crazy vendors, tons of colors, snake charmers, people with monkeys, awesome food, and people looking to make money off of you every chance they get.  

Getting off the plane! We were told they spoke French and that doesn't look like French to me.

Our first task once arriving in Marrakech was finding our riad/hostel.  If you are lost, you can pay some little kids a few dirham to help you find your way around all the streets that seem to have the same name..... or no name at all.   But we are cheap skates and wanted to find it on our own simply for the adventure of course....  We didn't find it on our own.  We ended up asking a street vendor 3 times where our riad was and he gladly showed us.  FREE of charge!

On the roof of our Riad

Chillin in the 70 degree weather!!!!

The inside of our hostel/riad.  How did that crazy little deer get in here??

Street life in Marrakech is crazy.  Emma and I are relatively passive people, especially when dealing with all the street vendors and shopkeepers in town...  at least the first day we were there.  At first we were nice and appeased all the people asking us to just look at there stuff and insist 345987 times that we buy something, shouting out prices at stuff I definitely didn't want.  You know it's bad when the seller has to say "Come take look!  It's free to look!"  Wellll duhhh it's free to look.  I'm not going to pay you to look at this rug inside your store that I'm not going to buy and that I can see from the other side of the street just as easy..  I guess I'm just a little bitter.

But it is fun to simply get lost in the souvenir maze known as the souk! There are hundreds of little shops and you can literally get lost for hours just looking at stuff.  There is a spice souk, leather district, dye district, mason district, or practically any type of district of souvenirs you might want!  Emma and I wandered around for 4 hours.

In other news, they have awesome fresh squeezed orange juice and millions of fresh spices and herbs!  More fruit and nuts than you can shake a stick at!  There were times during our trip where I wanted to just roll around in the mounds of food or simply knock it over for the immature, childish side of me to enjoy.  Orrrrrr if someone was chasing me, I would knock off the nuts and the person chasing me would slip on them and land in some sewage....jeje

Freshhh.  and Crazy eyes.

A glass of OJ is 5 cents! boyah

Mounds of nuts everywhere.... Great for tripping up bad guys.

My new favorite game... that nobody ever wins.

One of hundreds of mosques.

The Medina at night

One exciting thing Emma did (but we don't have pictures....) was go to a "hammam."  A hammam is the most basic form of a "spa" you can get.  It's where tons of women of all shapes and sizes sit in a sauna-like room and scrub each other.  Her and a very nice 50 yr old Scottish roommate from the hostel went to the nearby hammam for a nice scrub down.  Emma basically stripped down to her undyroos while a 4 ft, 140 year old woman scrubbed down Emma's body with black soap and a rag that basically peels all your skin off.  It was basically a glove made of sandpaper.  They then washed her hair and finished up with about 20 kisses to the face.  Emma said it was one of the coolest experiences she's had, and definitely one of the most cultural/bonding experiences with the people of Morocco.  I wonder though.... how do they do it at the Men's Hammam?....

This picture would have cost us if we didn't buy a scarf....

Crepes au miel.

Emmie and Wesley.... heheheh heehaww

rugs everywhere.

Hitting up the dye district where they make scarfs and stuff. and charge tourists for looking at them...

more mounds of things.

Try to order on that menu...

Three of these pictures above cost money.  I learned if you don't want to be hassled for taking pics, you've got to give them your rate up front.  My rate is 5 cents for a picture of whatever animal you got.

Scarfs.

This is one of 2,345,987,289,345,761 pictures that Emma took with kitties while in Morocco.

French fries??

This guys electric bill is through the roof.

Our day trip to Ourika up next!