Seven Days, Seven Ports, and Too Many Tour Guides!

I know that it's been a while and some of you have been demanding an up-date. This will be short one as its been a long week (I know! It's rough being on vacation!) and while there is a lot to share the alarm is going off at 5:00 am tomorrow. When the bell tolls tomorrow it will be for me and it will signal the coming end of my latest adventure. Of course Cam's wedding is in just over a week and as his "best gal" I'm sure I'll be dragged into yet another adventure.

When I last left you we had just finished a magical day in France (I don't know if I mentioned the submarine or not - cannot remember - but I've included a photo for those of you who like that kind of thing!) and were setting sail for Barcelona, Spain.  We only had four hours in this port and so we defaulted to our standard activity - the City Tour Bus! This turned out to be a brilliant decisions as we got to see amazing views of the city (wholly craps it is huge) and most of the architectural sights. We drove through the botanical gardens were looked really interesting and saw the gondola that covers much of city (I'll do that if I'm ever there again), drove past the main olympic stadium, so many old buildings that they started to blend, and of course some of Goudi's work. Mom is convinced that he had to be on LSD when drawing up the plans! The buildings (see pics) are interesting but seem to come from a Tim Burton movie rather than something that occurs in reality! People were mad for them and everywhere you turned around you could by posters and cartoon replicas (which often seemed more real than the actual buildings! On a side note - when you spell check Goudi the word gaudy is one of the suggestions. We only saw two of his building and didn't go by his most famous castle which looks like something that would be built at the Parksville Sandcastle Competition! I totally recommend you googling him if you are not familiar with his work (I wasn't).

Our other great adventure for the day was to walk to La Rambla which was reported to be a great pedestrian shopping area...in reality it was a crowded area of folks selling the same tacky tourism products with the highlights being the street performers (who largely consisted of folks in costumes acting like statues) and the market that was filled with breads, meats, veggies, and chocolate! I don't have pics of the chocolate (and I ate what I purchased there) but I do have some of the other aspects. Warning - the Spanish apparently eat parts of the animal that we typically don't or at least ones that don't typically sell in open markets!

These hot peppers and garlic made colourful streamers for the people walking by. I would have loved to bring some back but I was already pushing the "too much stuff" limits so thought better of it!

The fruits and veggies we've seen in all the markets have been amazing - it makes me happy to know that I'll be coming home at the start of the summer produce season. Of course it sounds like there hasn't been too much sun and warmth at home so perhaps I'll have to wait a bit longer. Now for the picture that I was warning you about - if you look to the left side of the photo you'll see the largest pigs feet I've ever seen. Of course you'll have to stop looking at the sheep heads that are on the right of the photo first! This was an interesting site and I have to tell you it made me do a triple take before I was actually able to fully process what was looking at me while I was looking at it!

Okay - remember to look at the pigs feet!

Once we left Barcelona we set sail for Tunis, Tunisia which is where I hit my limit for tour guides...we did have one more tour after this but I used my ipod to drown out the guide on that one! Tunisia is in Northern Africa and is over 90% Muslim - the cultural contrasts between it and Europe were astonishing but it was equally different from Ghana which reinforces the problems with viewing "Africa" as a country rather than the continent that it is! We found the people to be very welcoming and from all accounts this is a very progressive Islamic state. Anyway - this was another really short stop so we took a tour of the local Medina (market) where we thought that we would have an opportunity to shop. In reality we visited a carpet shop (which was cool but at $3000 Euro I wasn't in a buying frame of mind!) and an essential oil shop. This was definitely the highlight of the trip as the guy was very funny and the oils smelled amazing and were pretty inexpensive. Of course the shop owner was also able to replicate all the major perfume brands so we could have bought gallons of Channel #5 but decided to limit ourselves to other more exotic scents! They were even selling an essential oil that was apparently Tunisia's answer to viagra!

After leaving the Medina without being able to shop (a bit of a sore spot) we headed to a local "blue and white" community - all buildings are painted white with blue shutters and awnings, no idea why but they are! This is were we were to do our shopping - not a local market but a tourist zone...you guessed it, prices when up! Mom and I looked into a shop but decided that a cold drink and shade were a better option! The picture is the what was left after I devoured the most amazing chocolate crepe ever! I decided that it would have been impolite to lick the plate clean but it was a close call!

Okay - this one was longer than I expected but the next three stops were pretty amazing so I'm going to wait until I'm a bit more refreshed before writing them. After Tunis we visited Malta, Sicily, and then Rome! Of course we've also spend the last couple of days in Genoa so there's more to share about that adventure too! I imagine that jet lag will be nasty so it may take a couple of days after I get home to post the rest but I'm uploading pictures from the whole trip so you'll be able to check them out. Hope you are enjoying the blog.

Ag