After traveling all over the world by every method except a long bus tour, I decided to try one for these three countries. I booked this 17 day tour beginning August 20, 1999 with Trafalgar Tours. I went with my friend Peter whom I first met in 1975 when we were both stationed in Germany. My two priorities on this trip were to see the Prado Art Museum in Madrid which is one of the top three art museums in the world and the Alhambra in Granada.
After the long trip from California to Madrid (and not sleeping for about 35 hours), I took a local bus to the Prado as I did not want to take a chance and miss seeing it. I saw a self-portrait of Albrecht Dürer (one of my favorite artists) and one of my favorite paintings: “Garden of Delights Triptych” painted by Hieronymus Bosch around 1505. I spent about 15 minutes looking at it trying to determine what type of drugs they had back then to cause him to create such a bizarre painting. I think you could study it for an hour and still not see all the details. All the Spanish masters such as El Greco, Velázquez and Goya as well as the Italian, Flemish, German and Dutch masters are represented there. I think I’ve been to all of the greatest art museums in the world now.
The next day we met the rest of our group of 42 people and headed for Toledo which is a walled city known for it’s steel products. I’m not much into shopping but I like to buy one nice object from each country so I bought a steel dish inlaid with silver, 22k and 24k gold there. We visited the synagogue (now a museum as the Jews were forced to convert or leave). The Moors, Arabs, Jews and Christians all lived together in relative harmony in Southern Spain at one time so their influence is seen throughout the area. Too bad that’s not true today.
Next stop was Grenada at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and the Alhambra. The Alhambra walls are covered with Islamic art which has intricate geometric patters. Islam forbids portraying people, plants or animals in art so the geometric patterns and script from the Koran are everywhere. We also saw the entrances to the cave houses of the gypsies who live in the mountains in Granada.
On to Torremolinos or “T-Town which is the official fun capital of the Costa del Sol. This was a nice rest stop and I walked several miles along the beach which reminded me of the French Riviera.
The next day we took the ferry from Algeceriras, Spain to Tanger, Morocco passing the Rock of Gibraltar. We picked up our guide Yamani who would be with us the whole trip in addition to the local guides in each city. We drove on to Fez making our first rest stop in Morocco which I think shocked some of the people on our tour. The tour director Philip told us this would be the worst place we stopped at but some people who had never been to a Third World country weren’t prepared for the Moroccan toilets. Without going into detail, I’ll just say they’re different than ours.
Our hotel in Fez was like a palace with a huge pool. This was in stark contrast to the Souks (markets) in the old Medina (city) which contains over 9,000 streets and 80,000 shops. I think we walked through about 6,000 streets. It was a real assault on the senses. The streets were very crowded and narrow. I tried prickly pear from one of the vendors and bought a jalaba (what the local men wear) from a guy on the street after some severe haggling. We saw the tannery which smelled awful and went to a Moroccan rug store. Whenever one of our group purchased a rug, they would announce it and everyone would applaud...kind of like a timeshare experience. I was the only one they didn’t pressure (they must have known I wouldn’t buy one). The Medina was an incredible experience - it was sort of like being in an Indiana Jones movie. Along the way, there was a boy and a girl who kept saying: “to your left”, “to your right”, “watch your step” and “watch your head”. At the end of our walk, when the boy was waiting for his tip, I told him Yamani told us not to tip them as they wouldn’t go to school. Without missing a beat, he told me he was on vacation! When Peter tried to talk to him after not tipping him, the boy threw up his hands and stated: “I don’t speak English!”.
I went to my first optional tour in Fez - dinner and a Moroccan show. Of course the belly dancer picked me to dance with her first but several others had to get up too. It included all the wine we could drink and by the end of the show, our group was feeling no pain and having a blast.
The next stop was Marrakech and it’s famous Djemma el F’na Square with it’s palm-readers, acrobats, camels and snake charmers. As soon as I got off the bus, a guy draped a snake around my shoulders. The snake was pretty listless - probably from the heat. We also saw the Casbah there.
I went to the optional dinner/show called the Fantasia in Marrakech. The best way to describe it is the Thief of Baghdad meets Disneyland. It was a huge complex holding over 2,000 people. We had dinner in a tent and several groups of singers and musicians representing different tribes of Morocco came around and performed at each table. After dinner consisting of Moroccan food, there was a show in a large arena which included horsemen, a belly dancer and even a flying magic carpet. Of course there were only tourists there but I thought it was worth seeing.
We next drove to Casablanca where we saw some very expensive houses, the old Medina and the Hassan II Mosque with it’s 200m-high minaret. It is the second largest mosque in the world - the prayer hall covers 22 acres. That night a bunch of us went to the Hyatt Hotel bar where they have posters from the movie “Casablanca” and a really bad lounge singer singing Elvis songs and “As Time Goes By”. I had a $6 beer there.
The next day, we drove to Morocco’s capital Rabat where we saw the Mausoleum of Mohammed V. His son Hassan II who ruled since 1962 died a little over a month before we arrived and his body was also in the Mausoleum. Someone sits there and reads the Koran for 24 hours a day for 40 days until the King’s body is interred and then it is read for only 12 hours per day. This was the city where President Clinton walked the entire funeral procession driving his bodyguards crazy.
It seemed like almost everyone got sick in Morocco. Some people thought the bottled water at one of the dinners was the culprit. They suspected it was really tap water because it tasted different but I drank it without any adverse side effects. Maybe I drank enough wine to kill any bad stuff.
We headed back to Tangier (watched “Casablanca” on the bus TV) for an overnight stay and took the ferry back to Spain. We spent 2 nights in Seville. Seville is where Columbus set sail on the Gaudalquivir River for a 40-mile trip to the Atlantic Ocean and a voyage to the unknown. We saw the incredible gothic Cathedral built in 1401 (the largest in the world), which was built on the site of a mosque that was badly damaged in an earthquake. Inside the Cathedral is the “real” tomb of Christopher Columbus (they have the papers to prove it). I climbed the 34 stone ramps which were designed for horses of the Cathedral’s Girada Tower for a spectacular view of the city. At night I took an optional tour to a really good Flamenco show.
From Seville, we drove to Lisbon, Portugal. Peter and I tried the subway there and we ate at a Brazilian restaurant called Porcáo which means “Big Pig” in Portuguese. For about $20 U.S., you get an incredible salad bar and then they keep bringing 14 different kinds of meat on skewers and cut it onto your plate. When you can’t breathe anymore, you flip over a little sign that says “náo obrigado” (no thanks) and then you order dessert. It reminded me of the Carnivore restaurants in Africa except there weren’t many tourists at this place. After that we hit the nightspots of the Dockers area. We saw the Belem Tower and the Monument to Henry the Navigator on the city tour.
The next stop was Fatima, Portugal where three young child shepherds saw a vision of the Virgin Mary on May 13, 1917. The Virgin reappeared on the 13th of every month until October 13 when thousands witnessed fireballs raining down from the sun. Twice a year, over 100,000 people come to this site for a pilgrimage.
It was then back to Spain and the city of Salamanca. A bunch of us listened to musicians in the Plaza Mayor until the wee hours of the morning there. I also smoked my first Cuban cigar. Cuba can keep ‘em as far as I’m concerned!
On the way back to Madrid, we stopped at a really picturesque walled town called Avila. It is encircled by 2 km of fairy-tale 11th-century battlements punctuated by 88 towers and no less than 2,500 niches suitable for sentries or marksmen. This was probably my favorite stop on the trip.
Back in Madrid I ordered one last Spanish meal which turned out to be lamb brains with garlic...hmm good! As they say in Texas: “gonnaeatthat?”
The weather was great the whole trip and we had a really fun group of people on the tour. We had people from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South Korea and the States. I don’t know if I’ll ever take another bus tour as they can be tough and I’m used to a more adventurous type of travel (which can be tough in a different way). We logged 4,200 km or 2,600 miles in 15 days of travel on a bus that is not designed for tall people, and the 6:15 - 7:30 AM wake-up calls were not easy after staying out late (in Spain and Portugal they don't eat dinner until 10 or 11 PM and then party until 4 or 5 AM.). These type of tours do have many advantages though: everything (rooms, bags, most meals, etc.) is taken care of for you and you can see and do a lot in a short period of time. Also, you get a much better group rate on really nice hotels. Our tour director Philip was excellent - he really paid attention to detail. This was the first major trip I’ve taken that really went off without a single hitch and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Trafalgar Tours to anyone thinking about this kind of tour.