Lisbon, Cadiz, Casablanca

Portugal, Spain, Morocco...

I’ve been busy! Three ports in three days, and I didn’t find time to write a blog post about any of them. So in a nutshell...

Lisbon – my mom really liked this city... I didn’t dislike it or anything, I was just not as impressed as she was. We had some confusion regarding where and how to catch our double decker bus tour which kind of started us on the wrong foot. We finally got on it and it wasn’t the best tour. The guide was a grumpy lady and the tour was given in English, Portuguese, and Spanish (thus she didn’t say a lot). We got to see a lot of neat looking things, but we didn’t really have the chance to go in and see any. The ship was only in port until 3:00 so time was a real problem. We tried to call home but the pay phones confused the crap out of us. Turns out my Portuguese isn’t very good, lol.

Cadiz – this was a fantastic day. My mom’s back was really starting to hurt from all the walking recently so she elected to stay on the ship. Chelsea and I wandered Cadiz, and my god did we do it thoroughly. The city is on an almost island kind of peninsula thing that is 1200m across and 1800 long. We walked the circumference of almost the entire thing and cut across the middle, exploring the old quarter thoroughly. We found a renaissance castle built to protect the part of the coast most vulnerable to attack; the building was star-shaped and we were able to wander around all of it for free. We found the cathedrals and gothic and baroque buildings. We found a beautiful beach. We found the ruins of the oldest Roman theatre on the Iberian peninsula – it was built approximately 90 BC. We walked and we walked and we walked and it was exhausting but wonderful. We discovered so much of what turned out to be a fascinating and VERY Spanish little city, which was very cool because we didn’t expect a lot of it. The city had this tourist thing in it... I swear their tourism board has chatted with Ikea. There were lines literally painted on the sidewalk and if you followed them they took you to all the cool parts of town. We followd the yellow line (castles and fortresses) through most of its route and also spent time on the green line (medieval history). It was quite awesome.

Casablanca – the first thing my mom said to me when we woke up this morning was “we’re in AFRICA” which made her very excited. We went into town a little unsure. For the past few days we’d heard experienced travellers who’d been there before and cruisestaff as well, say interesting things about this city. Lots of people don’t like it. They get put off by the radically different culture, the poverty, the way tourists are treated. This didn’t shock me, and I was prepared for it, but nonetheless it was a place so different you couldn’t help but be “culture shocked” to some degree. Vendors walk right up to you and aggressively try to sell you things. You walk around knowing that there is a high rate of crime. Tourists (and it’s pretty obvious if you’re a tourist in this town) get immediately accosted by taxi drivers, vendors, cafe and bizarre owners, “tour guides”, beggars. It is very fast moving (very much unlike places we’ve been recently like Cadiz and Rouen) and they want to put wealthy white visitors right in the middle of it. We wandered a market, and went into a number of shops. They have such beautiful things, especially ceramics, metal work, leather, and art. My mom got a mask. My sister and I each got a bracelet. Lovely stuff. I enjoyed being there quite a bit. It really was like I stepped into another land. The official language is Arabic, but almost everyone speaks French so that was my primary way of communicating. I’m much better at that than I thought I’d be. We spent all of our 600 Moroccan Durhams – the equivalent of 100 Canadian dollars. If we’d had more I bed we could have spent them, but we’re happy with what we got. We also made a phone call to my dad that cost us something like 20 of those durhams. Oh, and some postcards :)

The ship has also been great of course. Chelsea and I each sang at karaoke the other night. We’ve done some line dancing. Seen a couple comedians. Tonight is a singer from London theatre’s west end. The food’s been great. Last night’s dinner was coq au vin. I haven’t looked at today’s menu yet. Should be exciting. Something kind of amusing is that fact that we’ve sailed into another time zone, but the ship is choosing to ignore that. We’re staying on “ship time” and totally disregarding clocks at port. I don’t know why, but I find this hilarious. Last night I watched Iron Man on the Movies Under the Stars screen from a lawn chair on deck. We’ve played a bunch of trivia games, but we haven’t won one yet – the most recent one we were one point away! That keeps happening, sigh. Lol.

Tomorrow is Gibraltar. I get to see monkeys! And it will be a nice break to be able to speak English at port, haha.