Travellin’ Man

After we got to Spain, we paid a little extra for a third tour down to Morocco in North Africa. Jen had really wanted to go and had even dyed her blonde hair jet black before we left because she heard blonde women were kidnapped down there. We took a ferry from Gibraltar across the sea to Morocco. We had a great time. We were harassed heavily by the street vendors and purchased a bunch of trinkets. Our tour guide told me that I could get 4 camels for Jen even with her black hair. It was tempting, but what could I do with 4 camels. One of our last stops was a rug store in which a one eyed sales person convinced Jen to buy two camel hair rugs for roughly $850 dollars. She lost her credit card, so she borrowed mine and then, because she didn’t trust them to ship them to her house, made me carry the rugs back with us. They smelled as bad as you would expect camel haired rugs to smell.

While in Spain, we also ordered a Eurorail pass over the phone to the States because it was cheaper than buying it here. We didn’t have a real plan other than I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower in Paris and Jen wanted to see a school in Salamanca, Spain, that her mom went to when she was younger.

The morning that we left, we went down to our buffet breakfast and stocked our bags with rolls and fruit and then we took a bus to Malaga. At the train station, Jen used her Spanish speaking skills to get us sleeper cars for the overnight train to Paris. Whatever she said or did made them separate us into men only and women only cars. She was stuck in a train car with a mean lady with a young child who warned her she needed to be quiet and not disturb them during the night. She was bummed out and I kept her company for as long as I could trying to cheer her up and entertain her with shadow puppets until I had to leave.

Meanwhile, in my train car were two young men from Argentina. We had a blast. Running down the length of the train to the bar car, buying a bunch of those little alcohol bottles, flirting with the girls in other train cars. They loved the fact I was an American and wanted to know my thoughts on the music they had.

As soon as we hit the Spain-France border the train stopped. There was a strike going on in France and we were forced to take a brief bus trip to another train. Jen was woken in the dead of night. The two guys and I barely even got to bed. Jen was jealous of our exploits, but what can you do?

When we got to Paris, we had breakfast with my new friends and then we parted ways. My goal was to see the Eiffel Tower. The smart thing to do would be to go to the place we were staying first. Instead, we took our bags with us. We were too cheap to buy the Eiffel Tower tickets that took the elevator up, because climbing up in the scaffolding was part of the fun of the Eiffel Tower. It quickly lost its luster when our bags became heavy. Even still, I loved it!

Afterwards, we went to the Louvre. That place was massive, and toward the end we just raced around to the things we wanted to see. We tried the hidden camera trick with our video camera as we tried to find the Mona Lisa. After all our effort, we got there only to see people taking flash photography.

For dinner, Jen made me try escargot. She did not partake, claiming it was because she was a vegetarian, but I think she just didn’t want to eat snails (even though she claims she had tried them before).

From Paris we Debated whether to head East towards Germany or Back towards Spain. I figured I would never go back to Spain again if I went to visit Europe, so we opted to head back towards Spain. First we stopped in Salamanca. On the train to Salamanca we met a young man from Brazil. Actually, he was sitting across from us and Jen kept yelling out to him “He likes you,” as she pointed to me. She thought it was funny because she didn’t think he understood her. It turns out he did know some English. He knew English well enough to communicate with us quite easily. Later Jen started to use slang just to confuse him like using the term ‘Phat’ and such. We liked him well enough and he was en route to visit Portugal. We opted to join him. It would be great to have a travelling companion that spoke the language. That night we stayed at a youth hostel and he snored big time.

We spent the day in Salamanca and took a late train to Coimbra, Portugal. However, while waiting at the station, our friend became ill and spent most of the time in the men’s room. While waiting and periodically checking on our friend, we stated talking to another Brazilian who spoke English. It turns out he was an English teacher in Brazil and came to Spain to study Spanish. Now he was planning to visit Portugal. We had him join our party. Jen tried the same antic talking in slang with this guy, but this time it didn’t work. He immediately shot back a response in a heavy New York accent. He then informed us, he studied English in ‘The Bronx’. I was impressed. It was fantastic having a translator while we toured Portugal. From Coimbra, we took a train down to Lisbon and did a little site-seeing/touristy things.

<p class="MsoNormal” style=”line-height: normal; margin: 0in 0in 10pt”>After saying goodbye to our new friends, it was once again time for Jen and I to travel solo. We continued back to Spain and saw Seville.

On our last train back to Malaga we became a media circus, drawing the attention of all the people in our car. Jen started flirting with a girl on my behalf. At first I wasn’t happy, but at least it wasn’t a guy this time. I actually hit it off really well with the girl, despite the language barrier. Her name was Concha and she was really cute, She had given me her address to write her, but alas, it would never have worked out.

Finally, we returned to our home base, tired but full of memories from our adventure.