A Trip to Morocco

We took a trip to Morocco. It was a pretty good time!

Hiking to Las Morcillas

This is not a post about walking from one tapas bar to another in search of the yummiest morcilla (blood sausage). This post is about a hike I took to see the abandoned village of Las Morcillas in the mountains north of Almería city. José María, one of the history teachers from the high school I work at, is a hiking enthusiast and wanted to share this hike with me. It was pretty beautiful.

As we drove into the mountains, I was amazed at how quickly the elevation was rising. The Sierras around Almería are not the gentle, green mountains of the Oregon coast, but steep, desert mountains.

This building hold a natural spring (with really nice water) and marks the trailhead!

Jose Maria told me that I was the king of the world. I think I look a little more "tele-evangelist" than "DiCaprio," but whatever works. right?

We decided that we would be adventurous and find a new path to the village. It was pretty steep, but it reminded me of my days as a scout, bushwhacking through the White Clouds and the Tetons.

It was pretty steep in a couple spots.

Once we got to the bottom of the canyon, it was a pretty easy hike, except for the thorn bushes that were all over the place. If I didn't know better, I would say that the bushes were out to get me.

With the trees changing colors, it finally felt like fall.

As we hiked, José María explained to us that the village we were going to see was abandoned in the 1970s when the Spaniards and the Germans put in a large telescope on the top of the mountain directly south of the village. The government wanted to make sure that there was no light pollution, so they bought up all of the villagers' houses and the majority of the villagers moved to Barcelona.

All of the houses are about the same size because everyone was just as poor as everyone else.

The upper levels of these houses are living quarters, the lower levels are for the animals (and outhouse activities).

The houses and roofs were all made of the same stone.

Every time you needed water, you would have to carry it up from the stream in the valley.

José María explained that the people who lived here were primarily subsistence farmers, growing wheat on small parcels of terraced farm ground. Many of the people in this village also worked in iron mines on the other side of the mountain.

This platform is where the villagers would thresh and winnow their wheat.

These people lived a hard life. Being in the village reminded me of watching Luis Buñuel's Tierra sin pan in the library at Utah State University on a cold January night at the urging of my regional folklore professor. I joked a little that I felt like I was walking through an abandoned Appalachian village.

Living in Las Morcillas would be a hard life, but it is in a beautiful place.

As we hiked around the village, I found a lot of pot shards and a little horseshoe. My hiking companions told me that I must have had some good luck for finding a horseshoe. I would need more luck if I was going to avoid those darn thorn bushes.

Sometimes it is nice to see the view out of someone else window.

The whole hike was pretty amazing. I was lucky to have a local guide who knew the valley, knew the history, and also knew how to remove thorns from my face.

The observatory that caused Las Morcillas to be abandoned.

At the end of the day my pedometer had reached 14,552 steps. I made it home in one piece, saw some beautiful sights, explored some vernacular architecture, and got some good exercise. It was a successful day.

Post Script: The whole time we hiked I had the first couple of lines from Becquer's Rima LXVI stuck in my head...

¿De dónde vengo?... El más horrible y áspero
de los senderos busca;
las huellas de unos pies ensangrentados
sobre la roca dura;
los despojos de un alma hecha jirones
en las zarzas agudas,
te dirán el camino
que conduce a mi cuna.

¿Adónde voy? El más sombrío y triste
de los páramos cruza,
valle de eternas nieves y de eternas
melancólicas brumas;
en donde esté una piedra solitaria
sin inscripción alguna,
donde habite el olvido,
allí estará mi tumba.

It's a real downer, but a pretty one!

Madrid

Madrid is a grand old city. It is beautiful, sprawling, and far from Almería. We knocked a lot of things off of our bucket list in Madrid; we even knocked off some items that we didn't know were on the bucket list.

We took a night bus from El Ejido to Madrid. We had to rush to make it to the bus station in time to make our 23:00 departure, but once we were on the bus we had the chance to relax and try to get some rest. Thank goodness for podcasts, but sleeping on a bus is pretty difficult.

Madrid by the early morning light

We arrived in Madrid at 6:30 am and walked like zombies through Madrid's South Bus Station. If you need to go to the bathroom, the South Station is probably not the place you want to go. But the Atocha train station has good pay-to-go bathrooms (.60 euro for a relaxing, clean and modern space, new age music, and toilet paper is well worth it to me).  From the Atocha Station, we went to a cafe near the Reina Sofia for some croissants and fresh orange juice.

We sat around until the Reina Sofia opened and then took in the majesty. We were in heaven with the Dalí, Miro, Man Ray, Lorca and Picasso. It is one thing to study modern Spanish art, and another thing entirely to be in the room with the pieces. We spent a surprisingly long time enjoying Man Ray's Indestructible Object. We wandered into a room with original drawings by Lorca. Where does that ever happen? The Reina Sofia is a dream world.

Nothing like some outdoor art.

The Reina Sofia is also home to Guernica. People will tell you that Picasso's Guernica is absolutely amazing, that it is breath-taking, that you must see it before you die. People are right.

People, however, don't tell you that you will be super dehydrated in the Reina Sofia and there are no drinking fountains. You also can't bring water in. Just a friendly heads up: go in well hydrated and if you need to, there are little alimentación stores nearby where you can get a cheap bottle of water to chug.

After we finished up at the Reina Sofia and exited through the gift shop, it was time to check into our accomodations in Lavapiés. Lavapiés is a bustling multicultural area near the center of the action in Madrid. We tried out AirBNB for the first time. It worked out pretty well! Our host, Ricardo was a real asset to us as we got to know the city.

Apparently when we got to Lavapiés, we stepped into the X-Men section of the Marvel Universe.

A fringe benefit of staying in Lavapiés is that there is no shortage of Indian restaurants. And they have employees aggressively offering tables to the people passing by.

From Lavapies, we headed via the Metro to Puerta del Sol. Abby had to remind me that they were in the Heart of the EU's third largest city (soon to be second, goodbye London) on a holiday weekend and that they had just entered the plaza that Rick Steves calls "Spain's Times Square." I was overwhelmed by the number of people. In my defense, I grew up in a farming town of around 4,000 people. So we got some photos and got out of there.

Braden playing it cool near the Oso and Madroño.

Abby playing it even cooler even nearer to the Oso and Madroño.

Abby and the cartographic center of Spain!!

From the Puerta del Sol we walked up to the large Corte Inglés. The Corte Inglés is a large chain of department stores in Spain (you might recall that we spent the better part of our first day in El Ejido in the Corte Inglés). We have some married friends in El Ejido that met while they were working at the large one in Madrid, but we weren't there to see where they had fallen in love. We were there on a higher mission: Dr. Pepper.

To most, this looks like a regular grocery store aisle. But to us, it was American Heaven. 

"If you love Dr. Pepper so much then why don't you marry it?" "Because I can't be married to both of you."

The top floor of the Corte Inglés has imported American foods and a great view of the city, which we enjoyed for a minute. But we were there for the sweetest nectar from the gods, which we enjoyed on the steps of the Cine Callao City Lights.

After a nice dinner, Abby and I decided that it we ought to take advantage of the fact that we were in a place with a movie theater and watch an American movie. We saw Dr. Strange in English, with Spanish subtitles. It was a good watch, and with a movie that visual I was glad I didn't have to read subtitles the whole time!

On Sunday morning, we walked up and down El Rastro, a very large open-air market with clothes and antiques and jewelry and lots of lots of people and some street performers.

This was definitely worth half a euro.

You can't tell, but he's sticking one of his scissor-fingers down the back of my shirt.

Abby had read on the internet that it is good luck to say hello to the statue of Eloy Gonzalo while you are at the Rastro. The Edward Scissorhands performer was standing right in front of the statue and we totally forgot to say hello to Don Gonzalo. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to make another trip to Madrid!

After making a few purchases in the Rastro (Abby found a cute scarf and a turquoise ring for 1 and 12 euros respectively), we continued on our busy Sunday schedule. We headed over to the Biblioteca Nacional to grab some selfies with Spain's literary heroes and to see the museum. They had a temporary kid friendly exhibit about Miguel de Cervantes and a really interesting permanent exhibition detailing the history of media and knowledge storage. It is a real gem of a museum, but anglophones be warned: the wall text is only in Spanish.

Abby the librarian in her natural habitat.

Omg, it's a celebrity. Act natural!

Lope de Vega!

Cervantes wrote a short story about talking dogs. Naturally we had to try on the masks.

From the Biblioteca Nacional, we went literally around the block to the Museo Arquelógico Nacional. The MAN is a world-class facility. It has amazing artifacts from every culture that inhabited the Iberian Peninsula, running the gamut from Prehistory on.

This sphinx must have been sculpted on a cold day.

These Eye Idols are from Almería and they are mesmerizing. 

This is the Lady of Elche. She's beautiful.

Arabic Astrolabes make my day.

Braden thought this Maria was fascinating. Mary literally has the Passion of Christ in her chest.

We got free entry into the MAN because it was a Sunday. We arrived just before noon and therefore only had two hours to enjoy our visit, which was a real shame. We were practically running through the "Egypt and theNear East" floor. If we had it to do over again, we would have found a way to spend more time there.

After we were kicked out of the MAN, we went to the Cafe Gijón for lunch. The Cafe Gijón was a meeting place for Spain's literati before and after the Civil War. Braden was looking forward to eating where Federico Garcia Lorca had once eaten and chatted. But then we looked at the prices on the menu posted outside the door and Braden decided to just get a photo and find somewhere else to eat.

Grand indeed.

After a pleasant lunch (we were very hungry after having our Gijón dreams slashed), we made our way to the Retiro park. The Retiro is Spain's Central Park. Sunday afternoon in the park is the perfect combination of relaxation and fun. We saw buskers, magicians, and people in non-licensed Disney costumes. The Reina Sofia has a free exhibition space in the Retiro, which had a very interesting pile of chairs in it. We really wanted to rent a boat row boat and relax as we rowed ourselves around the rowed ourselves around the large rectangular reservoir. The price was right, and we are just the type of hopeless romantics that would love that sort of thing, but the line was just too long!

Wouldn't we have looked adorable paddling away on one of those little boats?

We stopped by the Crystal Palace, but we couldn't go inside.

If I were the king, I would have a hard time giving up this view to the commoners.

Monday morning, we woke up in time to only wait 40 minutes to get into the Prado. Had we followed Rick Steves' advice, we could have bought our tickets at the Reina Sofia on Saturday and skip the line. Oh well, There are worse things in the world than waiting in line to see some of the marvels European of art.

Goya watches over the long line to see his masterpieces

We developed a great system: each of us chose a painting, studied it, read the wall text and then reported to the other. It was so fun and broke down the museum monotony that happens after your first hour in a museum. Our highlights from the Prado include seeing Hieronymus Bosch's works, including The Garden of Earthly Delights (and learning about a ton of other great Dutch painters), Goya's Black Paintings (and his other works too), Velazquez's Las Meninas and a ton of his other royal portraits, and El Greco's work in person.

After the Prado, we went to the Circulo de Bellas Artes to enjoy the view from the roof. It was 4 Euro each to get to the top. That might be 2 Euros too expensive, but it was still a good view.

Madrid!

That evening we headed to the Cathedral de Almudena, a handsome twentieth-century Neo-Gothic cathedral. The pop-art stained glass windows really tie the whole place together. Braden has now been to two capital city cathedrals, Almudena in Madrid and the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral. 

The Cathedral

The colors were fantastic!

We snuck out of the cathedral as the Mass was starting and headed back toward the Puerta del Sol for some window shopping and more sight seeing. We happened to pass the Church of San Gines and Braden just happened to notice some writing on the wall. We had found ourselves at the church where Lope de Vega had been baptized and where Francisco de Quevedo was married! What a find! 

We took a photo to prove it!!

Tuesday morning was our last morning in Madrid. We took advantage of the opportunity to eat churros and chocolate at the Chocolatería de San Gines. It is just right around the corner from Lope de Vega's Church. And it stood up to the hype!

Can you tell how ready for chocolate and churros we are?

Next, we decided to tour the Royal Palace. It definitely exceeded expectations. How could we not be impressed with a palace that even has a room made entirely of porcelain? We enjoyed the royal family's collection of fine clocks, the table where King Juan Carlos I signed the law making Spain part of the EU, and the royal crown. Abby was very impressed that the royal family has the only complete Stradivarius quartet. I almost fainted when I found myself in the same room as a first edition Don Quijote.

Braden has always wanted to meet Wamba (good old "Big Paunch").

"Abby, how big do you think this building is?"

"It's this big!"

No big deal, she's just on the other side of the chain. Rebel.

This is a big deal.

We were pretty impressed with the throne room.

Guys, the point is that the palace is very beautiful!

 After the Palace, we decided we could squeeze in one more thing before we had to catch our bus. So we went to the Temple of Debod. The Temple of Debod is one of four Egyptian Temples outside of Egypt. Abby has seen Debod and the one at The Met in New York, so now she just needs to see the one in Amsterdam and the one in Italy. Debod was gifted to Spain by the Egyptian government for helping them save other temples threatened by the Aswan Dam. It was really cool.

A little Egypt away from home.

 We decided we wanted to see the inside, so we hopped in the back of the line. They only let 15 people in at a time and each person can have 30 minutes in the temple if they so choose. So we bided our time. We waited in line. And waited. About 2 hours later, we saw the end in sight. We were 20 people from the front, but then we had to abandon the line in order to make it to the bus in time! I wanted to stay for five more minutes, but Braden convinced me that not missing the bus was more important than seeing the inside of the temple. So that was a real bummer.

The line was not cool.

As we went by bus back to Almería we felt very thankful to have seen so much of Madrid. At one point we looked out the window and both of us thought for an instant that we were back in Idaho, somewhere between American Falls and Pocatello. Sometimes life has a funny way of reminding us how lucky we are to go to the places we go and to be from the places we are from.

Goodnight Spanish countryside.

Here is a map of the places we visited: