August 2009
8 posts
so that happened...
Picture this:
Nora and Hester are sitting on the floor of their hotel room, packing for their next destination in advance. They have one more afternoon in Fes, and then it is on to Marrakesh. Their train tickets are bought, first class, and they are ready to go. They talk about how they have not hated each other yet, and how their trip has been relatively free of disaster.
We should have kept...
You will see random Qs
… becquse they are where the a is on english keyboards.
So we made it to Fes!
So it is goodbye ham, hello lamb, as we enter into morocco. We spent 1 night in tanger after crossing the ferry. All of the guidebooks made Tanger sound like a super scary place, but we didn’t think so at all. Although we are, of course, badasses from new york, it wasn’t that. Everyone was super...
Africa on one side, Europe on the other
Tarifa is about as far south as you can go in Spain. It has a beautiful beach; an easy ferry to Tangier; and forts and monuments to the Reconquesta; The towns name comes from the famous Arab general Tarik. As usuual, many of the homes have patios and fountains. You can still see the walls of the medina or old city. The town and its people are sunbleached and relaxed. The coolest part is...
July 2009
64 posts
Who loves Washington Irving? The Spanish do!
All throughout our trip we´ve been seeing plaques that annouce that Washington Irving stayed in such-and-such a place. We thought how random that the Spanish would care, are they obsessed with the legend of Sleepy Hollow? Now we have learned that he wrote several Romantic histories of Spain, America, and Columbus. Some credit Irving with spreading the myth that medieval Spanish thought the world...
The Spanish love of ecclesiastical statuary is...
We saw the Granada Cathedral today. Hester, being Hester, helped a little old lady on her way to mass. The little old lady was delighted that Hester was American and said that our president was soooo handsome and that the Spanish could “just eat him up.”
The Cathedral had a very graphic statue of Santiago, also known as St. James, crushing the Moors, by standing on a Moor in full...
Is the Alahambra worth it?
When we went to see the Alahambra, it was over a 100 degrees. Tickets for the morning sold out a week ago, so we went in the heat of the afternoon. It is expensive. It is crowded. You get there an hour early to wait in a series of lines. The audioguide is by a guy pretending to be Washington Irving. He said the words delicious and luscious a lot. Was it worth it?
Totally.
The Alahambra is...
hester is dumb
… but you knew that.
Although many have attempted to make her into a more computer literate person, she is still bad. I don´t know how to flip photos on tumblr so you don´t have to tilt your head. If you know, will you send me an email?
Look a pretty door! And another! Look at all the...
… says Hester as she photographs.
The afternoon was consumed with Córdoba’s most famous edifice: the Mezquita. The original mosque was built on the site of the Visigoth Church of St Vincent. At its apex it could hold 40,000 worshippers and their prayer mats – by far the largest mosque in the Muslim world. The size was astounding – rows upon rows of double arches, supported by recycled...
You all know what a mikvah is, yes?
… said our tour guide to us and group of confused Danes.
Yesterday morning was la manaña de los judios. We visited La Sinagoga, which is one of three synagogues left on the Iberian peninsula. It was small, but the plasterwork, which bore a strong Moorish influence, was intricate and pretty. Across the calle des judios was Casa Safared, which exhibited artefacts from the Córdoba’s extinct...
Were the executions next to the rose garden?
Cordoba is lovely, but the Internet service is not. We are going to have to wait on pictures, or even long entries, until we hit Granada (tomorrow!)
It is very hot here, of course, but much less humid. It is being baked, rather than being steamed. Hester has developed an unfortunate obsession with translating centigrade to Fahrenheit. One imagines this is very annoying, but Honora isn’t letting...
