FIFTY-SEVENTH
DAY
MOORISH
MACARENA
November
9-10
I was in
Malaga in 1967. We (Donna and I) had
come to Spain to tour. It was my first
trip abroad. We started in London then
to Paris and finally to Spain. I
remember staying at the Palace in Madrid.
It was so beautiful and the top of the line. In Seville, we rented a car and drove to
Cordoba and then to the Alhambra and finally on to Malaga and
Torremolinos. A few rather great
memories remain in my mind. The mosque
at Cordoba was a tremendous architectural treat, the Cathedral at Sevilla was
big, the Alhambra with its incredible gardens, the difficult drive down from
Granada to Malaga. What a rich
experience for 28-year-old neophyte traveler from Lima. At that time although it was a busy port,
Malaga was poor and dirty. Torremolinas
was the new resort town, just being built; Marrebella was somebody’s
dream. Today the town of Malaga is
600,000 people with lovely shops, clean streets and a bustling port. While Kim went to the Alhambra, I took the
city tour. It was supposed to include
Tapas. We took the usual little tour
around in the bus and made our first stop at the fort overlooking the city;
underneath the fort there is a footpath that leads to an elegant palace still
inhabited by the Governor. He did not call
up the hill and invite us in. Picasso
was born in Malaga but didn’t stay long. Nevertheless, the city has both a
Picasso foundation and a museum that was a gift of his grand daughter
Christine. How many Picasso museums can
you see? This one has lots of his later
work. Let’s see. I have been to the museum in Paris, the
museum in Antibes, Barcelona and now Malaga as well as the countless hours at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York before Guernica moved to Madrid. His work
remains among my favorites even though Monet, Matisse and Van Gogh have moved
to the top of my list. The Tapas places
were not very good, but it was fun to walk the streets of the pleasing old
city. I was not panhandled and the
streets are very clean. While it’s not
as thrilling as San Francisco they know how to take care of their town. The weather has cooled down and a light
jacket is necessary, but the day has a wonderful blue light that makes taking
pictures a pleasure. As a connoisseur of
cathedrals, I would give this one a B-. Still, it is very big. We finish and I finally skip a lunch and wait
for Kim to come back from her 9-hour tour.
She loved it and continues to drink in all of the sights and sounds of
our trip. We find that our Spanish is
terrible when we go to the Internet place and have trouble telling the guy how
much time we want. It costs about 1.30E
to use their terrible equipment for an hour.
Thanks for all your cards and letters, it is our way of not being
homesick to keep in touch. I am hoping
that when we get to Lisbon, our hotel will be wireless and we can send our blog
out along with better answers to various E-mails. While we are under no hardship being away
from home for a long time, it is sort of disorienting. Staying in touch is one way of keeping our
balance.
Riding
the evening tide, we sail for Africa and there’s a fancy outdoor BBQ on the
pool deck. After dinner Kim and a couple
of the other hotties take over the dance floor for some line dancing. The cabin boys put on quite a show and Kim
and her pals stay right with them with a classic Macarena finish followed by a conga line. I coolly stay on the sidelines because I
can’t dance. I have never admitted that, but my childhood piano teacher called
my Mom to tell her that he couldn’t give me piano lessons and he really needed
the money. Oh well, you can’t have it
all. Maybe I should have practiced.
Our most
exotic port is Tangier. In the Northeast
corner of Morocco, it is a town of about 800,000 people. This must be the quintessential North African
town, dirty, smelly, and interesting.
Our guide today is a devout Muslim, Yosef. His English is great and he leads a superb
tour. There may not be much here, but the
Atlantic meets the Mediterranean right at Tangiers. The tour is formulaic with a strong finish in
the souk. This place makes Marrakech
look like New York. Fortunately, we are
able to find a shop with some things that we like. We bargain hard and win yet again. We have won a lovely Aquamarine necklace that
life would not have been worth living without.
Lucky us, the tour ends, thank God.
We get back to the ship intact, wallets still in pockets, and Allah be
praised, the Kasbah lives to fight another day.
With
Gibraltar on our right, Spain straight ahead and Portugal to the left, we leave
what at the least is an interesting old port town. We know little about Portugal but will know
too much tomorrow.
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