Trip to Prague

So my first spring break (yes, we have two) was spent on a whirlwind adventure through Prague, Vienna and Budapest during the week preceding Easter. Our first stop was Prague- Paige and I flew in from Sevilla to meet up with Danielle, who was coming from Rome. The first thing we noticed in Prague were the Easter markets. These are only set up during the week prior to Easter, and they include groups of booths around the city selling traditional Czech food and Easter trinkets. 

We enjoyed looking at the beautiful hand-painted Easter eggs, and eating the spetzel, potatoes and bratwurst from the booths. Our favorite booth was the one that was selling these circular pastries dipped in cinnamon or sugar and/or nuts. They were absolutely delicious- we had several throughout our two days in Prague.

Unfortunately, the famous astronomical clock in the main square was broken while we were there but it was still cool to look at.

On our second day in Prague, we started off the day with a Spider Bike tour of the city. A spider bike is hard to explain, so I will direct you to this link for some pictures so you can vizualize this 7 person circular bike: http://www.prahabike.cz/team-bike-tours.html. We had a great tour guide, and it was a fun way to get a quick historical tour of the city. Then we headed across the river and the Charles Bridge to do some more of the traditional Prague sight-seeing. 

This is not the Charles Bridge, but it does show the castle and cathedral in the background.

This is the entrance tower to the Charles Bridge.

Once we got across the river, we headed up the hill to the castle and the cathedral. There were some great views of the city and we stopped for another homemade cinnamon doughnut, of course. 

Although the cathedral was mostly under construction, it was still a sight to see. It was an interesting to visit a religious monument after hearing from our tour guide that Prague is one of the most atheist cities in Europe (he claimed close to 80% of the population). 

On our way back down the hill, we stopped at the Lennon wall for some photos. This wall was a symbol of hope during the communist regime with messages of love and peace and democracy, often quoting the Beatles. The original picture of John Lennon is completely covered with paint and other expressions by this point. 

We spent our last night in Prague at an International House of Beers before an early Sunday morning bus to Vienna. 

Trip to Morocco: Day 3

Our third day in Morocco was spent in our third city: Chef-Chouen. This is a city in the mountains of Morocco with about 600,000 people. It is the education and shopping center for the surrounding mountainous areas. It was a breath-taking bus ride- I was impressed with our bus driver's ability to turn corners (without guardrails) at full speed without rolling the bus down the side of the mountain. Though I think we came close a few times. 

Chef-Chouen is known as the blue city. Why, you may ask? Because almost all of the buildings in the city are painted blue and white. It gets so incredibly hot there during the summers, that by painting their houses blue it keeps the temperature a few degrees cooler. It is also beautiful to look at:

And, as in the other cities in Morocco that we visited, there were cats everywhere.

The one building that stood out was the mosque in the center of the city. Green is the color of Allah in the Islam religion, and therefore this color was not painted in blue.

We ended our tour at the edge of the city where the people come to the river to do their laundry and fill up their water jugs. 

It was another unique look at Morocco- we had seen two different urban settings, but this was more of a country-type lifestyle. However, it also had the best shopping of the trip. There were knock-off bags, watches and sunglasses, as well as leather products, ceramics, scarves, carpets, jewelry, etc. And all for pretty cheap (if you are a decent negotiator). Unfortunately due to our "rich faces" as one shop owner told me, prices immediately skyrocketed upon seeing us. But I learned a very valuable lesson- there is no better negotiation technique than walking away when in Morocco. Store owners would drop the price by 50% or more if they thought we were going to walk out of the store. Which tells me that they were still making a healthy profit off of our negotiated prices. 

Regardless, we left happy with our purchases at relatively low prices. After a few hours on a bus, a ferry, and another bus ride we arrived back in Sevilla after three eventful but fantastic days in Morocco. I apologize for the length of these three blog entries- I try to keep them short so that they're interesting to read, but I had too much to say! I hope you enjoyed them for the most part. 

Trip to Morocco: Day 2

Our second day in Morocco started off early with a traditional Moroccan breakfast buffet. We had cornbread, cornmeal pancakes, loaves of white bread, croissants and eggs- it was a very heavy meal to start the day but it held us over until lunch. Our first stop of the day was the Atlas Bottling Company plant in Tangier (our second Moroccan city). This factory is one of several Coke subsidies in Morocco. 

CIEE had arranged a tour of the plant for us. To enter the plant, we had to wear these snazzy protective coats that you can see below. I was lucky enough to get a onesie instead of a coat! 

We were split up into three groups- I completely lucked out because I was placed with the Production Manager of the plant. It was obvious that he was the man in charge and he knew the most about what was going on. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any pictures of the bottling process (something about the process being secret...). However, we were able to see the canning process, the plastic bottling process, and the glass bottling machines- they were being cleaned so there wasn't any glass bottling while we were there. 

On the can line, it was an Orange Fanta day. We were able to see the entire process from cleaning the cans, to filling them, sealing on the lids and packing them. Our guide even selected a freshly sealed can for us to taste- it was delicious. On the plastic bottle line, they will filling bottles of Hawaii- a tropical orange drink that is only sold in Morocco. It was overly sweet for my taste, but as I said before- Moroccans love their sugar. We were even allowed to keep a few souvenirs from the tour, as you can see in the picture below:

There is an orange Fanta can and the lid, the label for a Hawaii plastic bottle and a Coke glass bottle, as well as a plastic tube. The plastic test-tube like object is actually what they use to make their plastic bottles. The plastic is heated and put into a mold. Hot air is then blown into the plastic tube at extraordinary pressures so it fills out the mold, which is in the shape of the bottle. It was a really fascinating process to see. We ended the tour with a free beverage of our own. I tried Poms, a Moroccan apple soda, which was also a bit too sweet for me. But overall, it was a great visit to the Coke factory.

Next on the schedule was an exchange with Moroccan students. However, because we happened to be there during their spring break, our group got a trip to the beach instead. Although African beaches tend to be "a mix between garbage dumps and bathrooms" according to our bus driver, we carefully made our way to the water anyways. 

It was nice having a few minutes of free time during a very busy trip. We even took the time to take a group photo:

Then, it was time for lunch. We drove a short way to a beautiful restaurant overlooking the ocean from the top of a cliff- the view was incredible.

The food was also fantastic- another satisfactory meal in Morocco. We started out with a salad, then had Pastilla with fries. Pastilla is a traditional Moroccan dish which has been called Pigeon Pie because it was originally made with pigeons. Luckily, ours was chicken. It was a delicate pastry dough filled with spiced chicken meat and topped with nuts and cinnamon- absolutely delicious.  

The waiters also found us quite amusing. They only spoke a few phrases of English and kept talking to us in Arabic- which none of us understood. They would also have us repeat Arabic phrases to them and them laugh hysterically at what we were saying. It made for quite an entertaining meal. We finished up with cookies and sweet tea, as per usual.

After lunch, we drove to the Caves of Hercules. These caves are symbols of the continent of Africa, largely because of the cutout in the picture below. From the inside of the cave, it is reversed but from the ocean looking in this cave entrance is approximately the shape of the continent of Africa.

Here is the same picture flipped horizontally:

You could say that's a bit of a stretch, but it looks enough like Africa to me! The rest of the cave was interesting as well, but the pictures didn't turn out well. At the cave entrance was a small tourist trap that reminded me a lot of the Caribbean- restaurants, souvenir shops, and cute little boys selling things. There was one boy in particular that was walking around with his donkey. Everyone in our group was taking picture of him with the donkey, which seemed to confuse him a bit. Then he decided it was a business opportunity and began charging one euro for a photo of him and/or the donkey- I was impressed with his business sense!

Unfortunately, we couldn't stay long because we had a very important appointment to keep with my new best friend below. 

How could we go to Africa and NOT ride camels? I rode horses quite a bit when I was younger, but riding a camel is definitely a unique experience.

As you can see in this last picture, they sit down in a very lopsided manner. It was a fun ride- I would honestly like to do it again sometime when I'm not being led around like a child on a pony. It would also be fun to have it last for more than 5 minutes. But for the first time, I really enjoyed it.

At this point, we headed to the actual city of Tangier. Tangier is a much more modern, touristy city. We only had one body guard for the group in this city and we were allowed to go off on our own to shop- I felt entirely safe traveling around in a small group to the shops. I ended my second day in Morocco with an overly successful shopping trip.