Nochebuena

It's Christmas Eve. In Spanish that's Nochebuena. That seems etymologically strange to me. "Noche" means "night", "buena" means "good". The generic-ness of these terms suggests the great cultural significance of Christmas Eve.

Sevilla is as quiet as I've ever seen it right now. When we took the trash out, the main street was deserted. All the shops and restaurants were closed. Normally, it would be bustling:

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The weather was nice today. Low 70s, sunny. We went to a tapas place we like called Zoko for lunch:

This is Laura getting her tuna from the server. He seared it with a blow torch at the table. The food was good. Emily and I even shared a vegetarian dish.

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After lunch, we tried to visit the Torre del Oro, which is free on Mondays, but it was closed for the holiday. Instead, Emily, Rachel and I walked along the river. Laura went grocery shopping. Kathy and Ric went to their airbnb.

Whoever put up the autumn artwork along the river, replaced it with a lovely Christmas tree of macrame and crochet on recycled items like CDs and pop tops:

On our return walk, we stopped at the new mall and wandered around. Laura joined us and did a bit more Christmas shopping.

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In the evening, Laura made a pretty good spread of Mexican food. After dinner we watched a fairly horrible Christmas movie on Netflix called The Christmas Chronicals. Definitely would not recommend.

My cold is tapering off. Rachel, who came to Sevilla 10 days ago with a cold, is having a relapse. Laura, is deep into a cold. Emily, Kathy and Ric are still healthy, but I fear their days are numbered.

Up on the rooftop

 Today we had a guided tour of the roof of the Cathedral which later included a walk-through of the interior. Emily still recovering from a 9-hour time change needed some coffee to get going this morning:

Once she had coffee inside, she was ready to go. Our tour headphones were stylish:

The roof tour is primarily about the challenges faced by 15th century builders and architects when building this giant gothic cathedral. My favorite part of the tour was this area on the roof where carpenters worked out the designs for arches, windows and buttresses. You can see the straight-edge and compass work scratched into the bricks over 500 years ago. Not only did they build these re-usable templates, but they left behind the record of geometric steps they used to create the templates. The original etchings are in black, the white lines are added by the historians that organize the tour to highlight the resulting shapes:

The weather was crystal clear and the parts of the roof stood in stark relief:

The city sprawled below at every turn:

The broad expanse of the roof above the center of the Cathedral:

Rachel took a picture of the group after coming down from the roof. We survived hundreds of steps up and down narrow, steep, spiral staircases:

After the rooftop tour, we went home and had lunch. We almost lost Emily to the couch:

Just to keep Emily moving, we went back to the Cathedral for the interior walk-through. This was the second time for Laura and me, so I only have a couple of pics. This one shows Sevilla from the top of the Giralda (the bell tower of the Cathedral):

After visiting Morocco and getting a clearer understanding of how this part of Spain and that part of northern Africa share a legacy of mixed cultures covering over 1,000 years, I have a new appreciation for the Moorish influences around Sevilla. This ablution fountain is in the courtyard of the Cathedral and is a remnant of the mosque that stood on the spot where the Cathedral now stands:

The sunlight on the Giralda was amazing as we left the Cathedral:

Emily

Today we headed back to Sevilla and Emily arrived. Rachel and I got up early in Tangier so we could visit the Atlantic Ocean. I've spent my entire life in the context of the beaches of the eastern US. Every time I ever went to the beach, I'd look out at the ocean and wonder what was on the other side. Today, I saw the other side for the first time:

We dipped our hands in the water. It was relatively warm-comparable to the water in the mid-Atlantic states in the summer:

Here's the hotel we stayed in. Rachel and I were on the 13th floor:

This was our last view from our hotel room. The morning light highlighting the buildings of Tangier:

After breakfast, we made our way to the ferry terminal. The glass front was pretty with the city-scape behind it:

The ferry ran on time and Ric drove us back to Sevilla. There wasn't much traffic and we made it home by 3:30pm.

We hung around and recovered from our two non-stop days in Morocco. Then, Ric and I went out to get Emily at the Sevilla aiport. The sunset over Sevilla was beautiful as we went to Ric's rental car:

The moonrise in the other direction was equally lovely:

Laura had a great spread ready for us upon our successful retrieval of Emily:

She also managed to do a little decorating for Christmas:

So, long story short, we've successfully gathered for Christmas in Sevilla. Tomorrow we are going to tour the Cathedral.

شفشاون (Chefchaouen)

Dawn over Tangier from the 13th floor was beautiful:

We had to get rolling early to get breakfast and meet the tour guide van by 9am. The hotel breakfast was amazing! The van showed up right on time and we were the only people on the tour today. The rolling hills outside of Tangier as we headed south to Chefchaouen (The Blue City) were green and lush:

The driver stopped at a small cafe about halfway to Chefchaouen. There, Rachel and I befriended one of the ubiquitous stray dogs:

There was a reservoir there too. I took this from a bus shelter along the highway:

 And, this is the actual cafe:

Ric said the coffee was awesome. After about a 2 hr drive up and down many winding roads, we arrived at Chefchaouen and met our on-the-ground guide, Mohammed:

 Chefchaouen is called The Blue City because many of the buildings and adornments are blue:

The blue is actually a legacy of a time when Jewish people populated the town 500 years ago.

Here Mohammed, our guide, graciously allowed a photo:

It almost looks as if he's in a refrigerator. Similar to the Tarifa tour, sales pitches seem to be built into these things. We stopped at this rug/blanket weaver's shop. Here's a loom:

Kathy and Ric bought a couple of smaller pieces. Here are few samples out on the street:

The nooks and crannies, all blue, were so homey:

We broke of Chefchaouen long enough to get this view of the city sloping up the mountainside:

There's a stream/river that comes out of the mountains and flows through town. People do their laundry and hang it along the banks:

Stray cats about here in Morocco too. These two kittens found a great vantage point on a light above the street. Kings of all they survey:

We enjoyed lunch at the Riad Hicham Restaurant in Chefchaouen. The cheese salad was soooo gooood! Our timing was a bit off with our driver, so we kind of hung around outside the restaurant looking dangerous:

We reunited with our driver and he took us to the second stop on our tour, Tetouan. There we met Jamaal, our on-the-ground guide. He's off to the right in this picture of Kathy and Rachel in front of the royal palace of Tetouan:

Jamaal took us around the Medina (market) neighborhood. The buildings here are all state-owned and rented to vendors. We met a leather worker, still plying his trade at 87 years of age. He has been in the same stall for over 50 years. Each green door is a different establishment. It was quite today because Friday is the sabbath for many of these folks:

Jamaal took us to another carpet/blanket vendor in Tetouan. The proprietor took us up on the roof of his building to see the city. As a bonus, the nearly full moon was just rising. Beyond this scene, about 5km, is the Straight of Gibraltar:

In exchange for access to the roof, we politely looked at some of the weavings:

It's beautiful work and hand-made on the premises, but we weren't buying. In a spice shop, I liked this view the numerous jars of spices and the glimpse of the passageway to the interior courtyard catching the late afternoon sun:

Safely transported back to the hotel in Tangier, we closed the day at the hotel bar with Badr tending:

Back to Sevilla tomorrow to see Laura and later in the day, Emily!

Tangier

Today I visited Africa for the first time. We got up early this morning in Sevilla, bade Laura a fond farewell, and headed out. First, we dropped Taylor at the airport for the long journey to SoCal and his family for the holidays. As I write this about 14 hours later, he's changing planes in Chicago.

Ric, Kathy, Rachel and I continued in the rental car down to Tarifa, Spain where we would take a ferry across the Straight of Gibraltar to Tangier, Morocco. We got there pretty early for our 1 o'clock ferry, so we strolled around a nearby fort. This fort has been here in some form or other for about 1,000 years:

The view of the Strait of Gibraltar and the ferry terminal from the ramparts was beautiful in the cool, clear weather:

After checking out the fort, we got on our ferry:

We looked back at the fort (and Spain, and Europe) and headed to Tangier (and Morocco and Africa):

Upon arriving at the ferry terminal in Tangier, we were met (accosted is probably a better word) by a random Moroccan, named Josef, who aggressively wanted to give us a cab ride. We kept our eyes forward and kept walking, but Josef wore us down and we ended up taking a cab ride with him to the hotel. Along the way, he talked up Tangier and offered to arrange a tour of the Casbah (the fort area at the top of the hill) and the Medina (the market area on the lower slopes around the Casbah). He came into the lobby with us. Ric asked the maitre d' about the guy and we were assured that Josef was a legit tour guide. Also, he offered to show us around for $10/person. We figured what the heck? Once we reached an agreement, Josef brought in his subcontractor Hassan for the actual tour:

Hassan was a serious guy, but very nice. He walked us all around the Casbah and the Medina. Everybody knew him. We kind of figured out his game after a while. He would stop in different shops and let the proprietors pitch us. I'm guessing Hassan (and upstream Josef) got a cut of any sales that occurred). Hassan also brought us to a nice restaurant with a rooftop view that was amazing and good food to boot! Once we figure out what was going on, it was all cool.

Here's the view from the Casbah:

Some of the Moorish artwork is similar to what you'd see in Sevilla:

The walls of the Casbah from atop our restaurant:

Our restaurant, we ate on the balcony in the upper left of this picture:

But the inside was also lovely, though I think we were there at an off-peak time. Here, we interrupted a man praying (we had just heard the Muslim call to prayer all over the city):

The food was wonderful. Of course, there was no alcohol on the menu, but the tea was top-notch:

Along the rest of the tour, we were joined by a dog:

She was super friendly and Hassan said that this dog often followed his tour groups. Kathy and I had the song Rock the Casbah by The Clash running through our heads all day, so Rachel took this picture of us under the entrance gate to the Casbah:

Rachel and me posing at the entrance to one of the market areas:

A lovely rug at one of our many merchant stops with Hassan:

The moon visited Morocco near the end of the evening:

Overall, while there was a bit of a commercial aspect to Hassan's tour, he was friendly and knowledgeable, and we got to see a lot of the city that we probably wouldn't have found on our own. This might be a positive review, but I have no idea how to find Josef or Hassan again. But if you run into Josef at the ferry terminal in Tangier and have an afternoon to kill, it's not a bad deal. The lunch ran about $80, the tour about $40. That's 4 people for about 6 hours for about $120. I'd recommend it.