Mom and Sis visit Spain! And Rae too!
Trip Start
Feb 09, 2007
1
28
35
Trip End
Aug 13, 2007
Malaga, Torremolinos, Gibraltar, Tarifa, Morocco, Marbella, Spain
Monday, June 4, 2007
May 19th, as soon as Elise was done with exams and home from Cornell, she and Mom got on a plane to come visit me in Spain, yay! It was so great to see them and finally have some visitors from home. I picked them up at the airport and brought them to their hotel in Torremolinos, which is a town right outside of Malaga. They were really worried about the language barrier, but most of the towns along the Costa del Sol are infested with "guiris" (Spanish slang for foreigners) during the summer so I don't think they had any trouble finding other people that spoke English. I hung out with them at their hotel Saturday and Sunday before heading back to Malaga for class.
While I was in class on Monday, they took the bus out to Nerja to enjoy the lovely beaches there for the day, and I met up with them in the afternoon to tour through the caves. Tuesday, I was stuck working all day, and it was kind of crummy weather so they took advantage of the shopping in Malaga - two malls, a department store and the "centro" or downtown district which is full of shops and restaurants. Aunt Linda would be jealous. Wednesday they hung out by the pool in Torremolinos before meeting up with me in Malaga for dinner. Thank goodness for the train stops across the street from my apartment and across the street from their hotel. It definitely made transportation much easier.
Early Thursday morning, we all headed to Gibraltar for the day. An odd mix of Spanish and British culture. We took a little self-guided tour around the city before joining a van tour to take us up the Rock. We walked through some caves and also a tunnel built to shoot cannons from during war back in the day (WWI i think?). But the best part was definitely the Apes' Den. They were brought over from Morocco awhile ago, and now they're fed pretty well since they're a huge tourist attraction and that's one of Gibraltar's main sources of income. John, they guy who was driving our van tour had names for all of the apes and brought along a ucp of peanuts to get them to jump up on your shoulder. You have to be careful though because they'll pickpocket you if they think you have food, and they'll bite if you try and pet them. One actually it me because it was on my shoulder and i lifted my arm to try and keep him from falling, but apparently he didn't like that.
After the day in Gibraltar, we took a bus to Tarifa, which is the southernmost point in Europe. We went to bed really early, and got up the next day for another day trip - this time to Tanger, Morocco. We took a ferry from Tarifa straight to Tanger and hopped on a bus tour. Normally I'm not a fan of being such an obvious tourist, but I've heard from a lot of people that trying to see Morocco without a guy with you is a bad idea. So after getting on the bus and driving around the city for a little while, Sis and I went for a camel ride while Mom took pictures. We walked around the kasbah and had couscous for lunch mmmm. Our tour guide took us to some random shops to hear presentations about rugs and spices. We also attempted to go shopping, but the sales people are extremely pushy so we got tired of that really quickly and sat down for a glass of water instead.
The next day, Saturday, was supposed to be our time to tour Tarifa, but the weather was awful. It rained all day, yuck. We hopped from store to store along the main street waiting for it to clear up, but it didn't so we had lunch and caught an earlier bus back to Malaga. After dinner in Malaga, I took them back to the airport for a sad farewell. I wish they could've stayed longer, and that Dad could've come too :-(
After that it wass back to school work. I just finished up my classes and my first final is tomorrow. Yikes!
Other visitor news - yesterday I was in Marbella for a rugby tournament, and I got to see Rae! Rae graduated from Cornell a year and a half ago and used to play rugby with me there. Now she's moved to London to work, and her team came down for the tournament. The tournament was really bizarre because it took place in Spain, but everything was British. One of the British clubs organized and promoted it so there were only about 2 or 3 Spanish teams there. Even the refs were British and didn't speak a word of Spanish, which made it difficult since either I or the other American on the team had to translate all of the calls for everyone. And they made me captain for the day since I could actually understand the refs and the other team captains. It was a lot of fun though, and great to catch up with Rae.
