bites

information may be withheld from this post to protect the identities of those involved.

friday was the scene of something spectacular. bevin turned 21, and scared iván away with her girls' night party (we went to 2 bars and everyone got home safely [mostly] by noctilien).

i saw some dolce&gabbana pocahantas couture, and my oberlin pc-ass was offended. i immediately thought of the fact that they were profiting from the objectification of a culture, but then...so did disney.

i have a rather shadowy dark photo of the two phallic symbols of paris (concorde, eiffel).

donatoni was baaaddddd. not enough rhythmic integrity. i am constantly tempted to spell rhythm "rythme" because that's how the french do it.

after jolivet's "chant de linos" what was on the menu? boulez's sonatine for flute and piano. i haven't played it (yet) but i saw cantin do it at palais garnier with pierre-yves artaud. is that his name? the pianist, whatever his name is, the famous one that recorded with susan graham.

my mom lost her purse in the park by cité universitaire the day of iván's concert. i went to the concert, they went to the police and to the hotel to cancel credit cards and put a hold on their bank account...and then iván went back and recovered it from the security people at the park. my hero. 100,000 points. drink (café au lait for us, limonade for my mother, beer for my dad), dinner (pasta for the ladies, red meat for the men) with chilled (blech) red wine, ice cream at that gelato place in odéon (yummm, i had chocolate and mint that looked like a flower, but iván's was prettier and bigger), and then resting on a bench by l'institut de monde arabe.

pâtisserie and a huge gothic cathedral. plus a crazy québecer and a kiwi.

the bus granada-sevilla was...a bus, i bought a book of sudoku before leaving (which i quickly got bored of and dozed off). i sat next to this stylish blonde girl who was reading a spanish magazine with a small translating dictionary..."the client" was the movie of choice for the 3-hour ride, and it was subtitled in english (dubbed over in spanish), lucky for me...not a bad film, susan sarandon and that kid who probably didn't have a career after that movie, and that guy from ER who had cancer played the lawyer's assistant. oh yeah, and tommy lee jones in this hilarious role as a gospel-blabbing DA from louisiana. i was laughing, clearly an anglophone, and when i got out my printed out pdf to walk to oasis sevilla, the blonde girl asked me if i needed help getting there. or maybe she asked me if i was american, i can't remember the exact order of events...

needless to say, she took me on a long-ish walking tour of the city! she is german, from munich, a primary school teacher by trade, in sevilla for some months to learn spanish as well as assist in a primary school to teach kids german. it was about 25ºC when we arrived in sevilla, and she said that i had completely lucked out, that before she left for granada for a week's vacation it had been rainy and not-nice. she showed me some of the major sights and gave me scraps of history...the university, the cathedral, alcázares...it was sunny, warm, not many people on the streets, and i really got a feeling of the city. it looks big in the let's go guidebook, but it's not actually all that spread out.

she was incredibly kind, like lili said later, a kind of guardian angel. i found the hostel quite easily, she pointed me in the direction of the best pâtisserie in sevilla (yum, as i would find out later) and told me to turn the corner. an amazing start to a short venture in sevilla (and the last phase of my trip)!

i checked in to oasis, which i thought at first was closed for construction but they were just working on a building next door, and talked for a while with the swiss guy working there, he thought i was from québec (yes, jonathan, at first i was a bit miffed. i don't have a québecois accent, do i?). basta. i took my stuff up in the elevator to the 2nd floor (also room 6) and unlocked the door to find shirtless jonathan from montréal checking his email on his laptop! (not a girls' only room, i quickly concluded) we chatted for a while and we went down to meet a bunch of oasis-ers for a tapas and flamenco tour (one of the apparently regular nightly events that happen at these oasis hostels. heads up to anyone traveling in portugal - there's an oasis lisbon!).

on the walk i met a couple of australians and a lovely double bass player from milan named alessandra (goes by ale, who i hope has not dropped off the face of the earth). i ate some delicious beef stew and a chickpea dish at the first place and then had chicken curry and a big glass of sangria (mysteriously, my glass kept refilling) at the last place. we got to the flamenco place (la carbonería) a bit too late and were only able to catch their last set. it was a trio of performers: a female dancer, a guitarist, and a male singer. the dancer was tall, intimidating, and had an amazing dress that worked well with her passionate stomping and shadowed brow. the singer had a jaw/facial hair issue - he basically just looked crazy when he sang. he had a rough, gritty voice, that went well with the guitarist's articulations. (correct me here, o michael beharie and justin riberio, for i know not how to explain flamenco guitar)

after sticking around for ale to finish her beer, we tried not to get lost on the way back to the hostel (the streets were deserted at 1 am - strange for spain, as everyone seems to stay out til 6 or 7 am) and crashed. i rose early-ish to get some breakfast in the kitchen upstairs (waffles, toast, delicious chocolate spread, and milk) and also to get ale's contact info (although she rolled out an hour later than anticipated). we experienced a blackout from the waffle iron, although we thought at first it was the coffeemaker. i also met sydnah that morning, who is originally from queens, went to morgan state (pretty local to me), and is currently teaching english à la darcy in a suburb of paris. hopefully we'll prendre un verre demain.

i returned to my room to check out my map and guidebook to lay out a plan for my day and got into a conversation with a rather pasty irish guy who was still in bed in pjs. after having traveled for over a month, this guy was apparently so horny he even went so far as to proposition me right there, in a pretty decent hostel, while i am clearly not drunk enough to consider it nor forward enough to slap him in his half-wakeful state. puke. i bounced as soon as i had a vague sense of trajectory.

i walked around for a bit in town before seeing the massive queue for the cathedral, and i hoped (and was right) that most of the human traffic was due to tour groups. the line moved pretty quickly and despite my lack of student id card (i had locked my wallet in my safe back at oasis) the lady gave me the student priced-ticket. the cathedral was IMMENSE, people, just absurd. i read that it's the 3rd largest cathedral in the world, and the largest gothic cathedral. i have a certain disdain for christian iconography at this point, but this was just impressive. i didn't even bother to listen in on tour groups as i did in alhambra. they had beautiful orange trees in the garden outside.

i was dismayed that alcázares was closed on monday, but i got over it quickly because i had seen alhambra. i tried to find these beautiful gardens down my placa españa that sharonne had gushed about after eating a greasy sandwich and an ice cream from a random place near universitad...i found them eventually. parc de maría luisa. gorgeous. i wrote a postcard to clio there, which i ended up writing too much on and had to wait to get back to france to send it because i had no room to put 2 spanish stamps. i like traveling by myself a little bit because i can find my own chemin, sans souci pour les autres, and be totally in control of my situation. if i make a mistake, it's mine, and if i take time somewhere, it's mine to take. selfish, maybe, but i love it.

i walked down by the river (it must have been 28º or 30ºC) and ignored the one weird guy who tried to talk to me (i don't speak spanish anyway), eventually making my way back up to casa sierpes, a big shopping street not far from the hostel. i looked for shoes (on the prowl for sandals), but no dice. i bought breakfast food at a supermarket (pear yogurt, muesli bars, orange juice) as my flight was leaving at 7h45 the following morning for paris. i located the celebrated pâtisserie and bought 2 pastries, one that looked like a pain au chocolat (to save for the morning) and one that looked deadly and delicious that must have been filled with chocolate mousse. i took everything back to the hostel and ate a pear yogurt and the mousse pastry while recounting to one of the aussies i had met on the tapas tour the story of the horny irishman. blech. who does that?

i was sun-scorched and exhausted by that point, so i crashed for 30 or 40 minutes before meeting 3 washington&lee guys (all shirtless, wearing jeans, having just arrived in spain from the states that day). jonathan was on his computer and told us about the va tech shooting. too strange, especially for these guys who had just arrived from virginia for their study abroad...

monday was paella/sangria night, where everyone ate out on the roof (there is also a small pool) for 5€. ching-min (taiwanese flutist living in paris studying at the école normale) and i talked shop for a while, and i chatted with lili, this totally awesome kiwi teaching at a liberal primary school in zurich. it was a peaceful, humbling end to my amazingly awesome trip.

then it was back to paris early early and the rer back from orly to a less mediterranean parisian view of notre dame with machaut motet nº17 on my mind...

alhambra (for real).

(n.b. i am loosely translating from my let's go espagne book as well as commenting on my own experiences at alhambra in this post)

sharonne and i started with the palacios nazaríes (named for the nasrid dynasty, founded by al-ahmar in 1236 after he fled cordoba and took refuge at al-cazaba [Ar. fortress]), now known as alcázar (royal palace), built by 2 major moorish kings, yusuf I (1333-54) and son fils mohammed V (1354-91). i can't even articulate how amazing it was to be face-to-face with the kufic and cursive epigraphy that we had seen photos of in my islamic architecture class...sharonne has very little background in islam (or architecture), so i was able to point out some of the major elements, though some of the terminology escaped me. i took some photos, but sharonne took the bulk of them as my battery in my camera was running dangerously low, but not even the resolution of a digital camera can capture every dimension of the brilliant stucco work.

we also saw the palacio de carlos V (palace of charles quint), which was actually constructed by pedro machuca, a student of michelangelo. it is considered to be on of the most beautiful edifices of the spanish renaissance, with 2 floors of doric columns. sharonne saw it as a symbol of the blatant decadence of the époque (it is huge and circular, empty, and all in marble, and charles quint didn't even live there), but i think in many ways it fits with the idea that monarchs wanted to perpetuate their memory (and maybe create enormous empty spaces to demonstrate their wealth and power).

the views of granada and the sierra nevadas from the watchtower of alcazaba were incredible. it is said that al-quiada thought about bombing alhambra because it was the last muslim stronghold. the bells were rung (back in the 13th century) to announce imminent danger and also to signal different stages of the irrigation system set in place by the moors.

i know this is a big sin, but i didn't see generalife (the gardens at alhambra). i was tired, starving for some shawarma (the veiled lady at picadilly circus also gave me free falafel on my last afternoon! i think she liked my henna), and my bus left granada for sevilla at 4:30 that afternoon...

tripartite

i dozed in and out of the train ride through the sierra nevadas to granada...the sun helped motivate me to write...upon arriving in granada, i found the right bus with the help of two other hostelers from singapore (i think?) and got off at cathedral. the pdf i printed out from the oasis granada website was pretty simple to follow from there. i lugged my rickety (noisy) small rolling suitcase up the narrow alley lined with moroccan import stores (you could practically taste the incense from 3 feet away) and followed the signs to the oasis hostel! the check-in was easy enough, i spoke to the german woman who i later learned was the head honcho and she said that it was a good thing i made my free call (what am i, in jail?) because otherwise she would have canceled my 2-night reservation alltogether (they were booked solid that weekend).

room 6, bed 6. took the elevator upstairs and met a nice aussie girl named belinda who had been traveling around spain with a friend and had also spent a little time in morocco. she's just moved to london, and hasn't found a PR job yet (so is traveling to put off the unemployment). i was relieved to find that the travelers at oasis were talkative, open, and full of tales traveling adventures. i took the map they gave me and went out walking, caught an alhambra bus (1€) up to st nicolas and tried not to get lost in the windy little corners of albaicín. i regret that i didn't make it up to sacromonte to the caves. apparently they have great flamenco there.

i went back down to the hostel to relax a little bit and caught up with a group that was walking back up to albaicín. the weather was pretty, if a little chilly in the late afternoon, so i decided to go back out with them. i forget the name of our guide, but she loves the phrase "hella" and hadn't heard it our used it in a long time. i took a picture of a garage that had "hella" painted on it in her honor. maybe i'll send it on to the people at oasis granada.

but i digress. in that group i met rick (not greg), a long-haired blonde, tan guy from atlanta georgia (and at that i thought of my aunt and uncle living around there) who has been woofing for the last few months (working for food and accommodation on organic farms in italy and spain, most of which are run by german or english people); paula, an austrian painter and graphic artist from vienna who had left her painter boyfriend behind, in granada to learn spanish; sharonne, a zany non-spanish-speaking, wheat-allergic and lactose-intolerant australian dentist who worked for 7 years after university, saving every last penny to buy a round-the-world ticket and travel for at least 1 year (of which she has completed 9 months) - she spent the winter in canada (started west in vancouver and ended in québec...wouldn't be my choice for a winter!!), 2 weeks in cuba and guatemala each, and got laid up in sevilla for 2 weeks with a terribly sprained ankle; some guy from south africa who's living in london; sam also from australia who has been traveling for a while selling stuff at these big road shows all across europe (people drive really fast on windy roads? i don't really know)...basically, i was kicking it with people living in the moment, seizing life by the horns. i like that aspect. everyone has a different tale to tell.

sharonne and i decided to get out to alhambra early (6:30-ish) the following morning (as i only really had a bit over 24 hours in the granada) as tickets are very hard to come by (they let in around 2,000 people the day of, and people line up for hours to get in in the morning). slept a bit after eating a ton of food at this all=you-can-eat buffet not far from our hostel, i think sharonne consumed at least 4 plates of mixed salads (she eats meat, but finding a rice-based diet is hard to come by across the planet), and walked up the *slight* hill to alhambra and arrived in the queue at 7 am. there were about 50 people ahead of us, and the line continued to build...we were able to get into the 8:30-9 am time slot to enter the royal palace. i was freezing my bum off in my sepia h&m shorts because the sun hadn't risen by 7 am, but by the time we started walking to the palace, the sun had come out and the ground had started to unshiver...

et deux

alors...i feel like a storyteller reading to imaginary children and possibly adults...darcy and i ended up on our last day roaming the streets in search of candles, and instead stumbled upon people hawking henna, so we thought, why not? and both got our hands henna-ed by this woman with stained hands in her living room while she and her family watched spanish soap operas dubbed in arabic. it's fading now, but it was beautiful...it wound up each hand from my wrist to my pointer and middle fingers...we opted out of the black. it was more expensive, and i think is a little too close to the henna muslim women actually get when they get married...

i had decided before leaving for morocco that it would be a genius idea to take a boat, yes, a boat, from the eastern coast of morocco to andalucia (spain). because fez is in the center, and i had booked my flight back to paris from sevilla, i thought it silly to go all the way to tanger on the north west tip, cross the strait of gibraltar, and then have to go all the way through andalucia to get back to granada.

well...it may have been easier to eat the 200€ and fly from fez to granada.

here's how it happened: i bought a bus ticket from fez to nador. 110 Dh, 11 euro-ish for a 6 hour bus ride through the atlas mountains. downside - it left at 3 am. step two = ferry nador- almería. something like 50€, but i had to pay in Dh, in cash. that was another 7 hours of travel crossing the mediterranean. also note that i have not eaten, nor slept much this day. and all the moroccan or spanish people (of which there were maybe 20 or 30) on the ferry looked at me like i had 4 heads and a tail, some white chick wearing a green corduroy hat she bought in sweden to hide her unwashed hair traveling alone with henna on her hands who doesn't speak arabic or spanish. you can imagine.

so i arrived in almería exhausted and deliriously hungry and found the bus station but was AGHAST to discover that the last bus to granada had left a half hour before. i had not taken into acount the 2 hour time difference between morocco and spain. that's right people, next time you travel this way, always pay close attention to subtle things like NO DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME IN AFRICA. oh god, was a pissed. i broke down crying in the station. i think that transcends all languages.

i stayed the night in a pension in almería (hot shower, bed, that's all i needed) and bought a train ticket to granada for the next morning.

next: martha in alhambra!

début de l'aventure au maghreb

i get pissy when i'm dehydrated, hungry, and tired. i think i was all of these things on our day of plane travel to morocco. darcy graciously covered the price of my lunch at the airport in barcelona, and our flight to casablanca was definetely more on time than the one out of casablanca to fez. we saw some extremely trashy spanish people while we were sitting outside of the duty-free shop in casablanca, though this perception may have been skewed by my pissiness. i didn't have any euros, and of course there aren't any atms within the perimeter of the airport, and none of the restos take credit cards. so there i am, sans water or food, pissy mostly because darcy is there to witness my weaknesses while traveling, mais tant pis, there it was. we had to wait to board our flight for god knows what reason, but it was blessedly short.

we got 1000 Dh each out of the atm at the airport after being brisked through security (the scary guy was charmed by my french, and when i said darcy was my friend, he let us through without ripping open our bags) and took a taxi for 45 minutes (140 Dh) to our hotel. along the ride we began to see how geographically morocco fits into those blurrily defined categories of "second" or "third" world. it was intense, and we were only just seeing landscape at night.

we ate dinner at our hotel (named, paradoxically, "hotel fes inn") because we were too exhausted to wander around the new city to try to find a restaurant (and the neighborhood in which the fes inn was located left something to be desired). it was nice actually to just crash our bags (although the room they gave us had an enormous unidentifiable bug behind the bed so we quickly changed rooms) and not have to think about anything. the servers were nice to the point of artificiality, but no matter. we were tired and hungry.

the next day we asked for a map at our hotel (to no avail) and were directed to go to place mohammed V to the office of tourism. we decided to walk there as it was an astonishingly beautiful day. we got lost along the way, and had to ask for directions at some pharmacies, but people in general were very kind and sufficiently clear. eventually we found the small office, grabbed a map (shittier than the large, vague one we picked up at a tourist shop), and by this point were ready to eat. food is incredibly cheap in morocco, you can get a tea or fresh orange juice for 10 Dh (1 euro) and a full menu sometimes for as low as 40 Dh (4 euro for more food than you can possibly eat).

we then set out for the mellah (jewish quarter) and tried to find the old city (none of our maps agreed). the beautiful weather helped motivate us. upon entering the old city walls, however, all 3 disparate maps were rendered useless, and the 15-20 year old boys taunting us with their offers of berber massages and guided tours were tempting but since they tried to swindle us out of cab fare i played the role of cold-hearted bitch at all times. we never asked for directions. darcy can get berber massages from soufiane back home any time she wants.

...continued...

debt (maghreb-ish adventure part 1)

scene: rer b towards charles de gaulle airport
time: roundabout 9 pm

this will teach me and my sense of military time...i arrived just 2 or 3 minutes after the last flight to barcelona boarded out of charles de gaulle on vueling airlines. i thought my flight left at 11 pm, but it boarded at 9 (i switched 22 and 20h)...so i was panicking, and found the next flight out was at 6h45 (early in the morning) on air france, and the very gracious woman at the air france desk got me the last "under 26" price ticket for that flight. i stayed in one of the ultra-expensive but hella convenient hotels right next to the airport, exchanged textos with yvonnick and concluded all he wanted was to baise an anglo, and slept 4 hours before hitting the long security line. i was able to check in pretty quickly with the automatic check-in (i had a paper ticket) and from there things were ok.

upon arriving in barcelona, i caught the bus from the airport to placa cataluña and then the metro from there (my let's go espagne [in french] served me well throughout the trip) to tarragona, the closest stop to calla de bejar (darcy, sandrine [another toulousene swing dancer], and i were staying at a pension there). the spanish schedule seems to start around noon, with brunchy type meal at 1 or 2, dinner at 10, and partying til 6 am. we didn't exactly follow that, because swing dancing takes it out of you!

darcy and sandrine were in the advanced levels of the workshops, and generally had classes at opposite times (darcy would have one in the morning, sandrine the afternoon, so i was able to spend time with both of them, in alternance, each day). we walked around a lot, and i saw the fondacion miró and the picasso museum, as well as the barri gòtic on my own (i loved it for its windy streets, closed shops with graffiti and sunny open windows). la rambla was beautiful, full of vendors and travelers and tapas bars selling sangria and various fried items (food was cheap, but i didn't eat healthily in barcelona).

the swing soirées were really fun, it had been so long since i danced! people of all levels came from all over the world -- berlin, the states, sweden, ukraine, obviously france and spain, ... -- but they were still short some leads and even proved to be cliquish! so just like at the cleveland exchanges i had been to in the past, it paid to be agressive. i particularly enjoyed dancing with sebastien, a quiet, small, bespec-ed parisian that reminded me of daniel from oberlin in his light leading.

for the crazy dance, i wore hot lime green leggings bought at that store near the mediathèque musicale at les halles (-3), a black mini skort with a silver band, huge star hoops, sparkly barettes, and a bright yellow wife beater. i think leads may have hesitated to dance with that. darcy called the outfit "a 12-year-old's idea of a rock star." i also decided to wear my huge sunglasses from h&m inside the metro. i couldn't see anything.

darcy and i left by train from the central station at around 9 am for the airport...

...to be continued...

jolivet rituals and cool air

my first ever contrôle, or partiel, or whateveryoucallit, was a mild success (hasn't been graded yet, but tant pas): the subject was "chant de linos" by jolivet. he gave us 10 points to consider before giving us the first hearing of the excerpt, and from the downbeat of the first bar i was home free. it was the version with strings and harp. i talked about ritual and jolivet's compositional color palette...

iván is intellectually provocative. of this i have no doubt. yvonnick is having coffee with me tomorrow afternoon. i might have to feed him leftover hummus. we concluded at dinner that it's probably too strong for a 9-month-old's taste pallette. she's cute though, that maéva. i played her the solo from "boléro" and thought about the crisp, windy air.

plan for crazy dance at bar"swing"ona: wild stripey tights from the sock store at les halles (to buy tomorrow) and black short skort with a silver band, bright yellow tank top, star hoops and bright glittery barettes bought at pimkie. feel free to ajoute something if you can think of anything else that would make the outfit more tacky.

yahya al-shabih, fatimid cairo, egypt

what i should be looking at. instead i created a flickr account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/parisianmelon/

i miss listening to alison krauss.

a freewrite i composed yesterday after a weekend of late night reflections.

hand on the small of my back wine
stained your shirt fruit salad with
chopsticks gummy obsession emerging
from pockets inevitably squishy from
constant body heat jointed hands fluid
i slept deeply subconsciously imagining
flamenco and a deep tan away from the
harsh words of boys not-yet-grown-up
i am not sick because i am not dying
taxes voting ballots visas contracts papers
the trails of bureaucracy could not touch
your mission does it come with 10 years
6 months of hungarian cigarettes
how to formulate the right thought in
each of your six languages such a virgin to
all of it in many more ways than one
one ear to caceres this argentinian whose
rhythms touched me i never understood
the lyrics never guessed their political
underpinnings assumed their romantic liens
and throaty disclaimers ultimately he
overdramatized the case misread my
interpretation maybe he's right but
the least i can do is give the smooth
blue-eyed harmonica player a shot
idle at a café consider the present a gift
i can never return reimbursement out of
the question ink drying quickly the the
page the scattered drunken drippings
of my incandescent mind though sober
my network connection slowing to a
trickle with six languages do
writing and turns of phrase become
empty and without dubious implication?
jean was right i stick to my borders
théophile bra drew mystical pictures
and scribbled almost illegibly in the
margins his second wife died young
but it barely paused his stream of creative
output she probably never asked questions
or demanded explanation he required
precision of language and intention
i was never quite that lucid my carte
orange guaranteed free public transit
but the time factor was never taken
into account maybe intimacy will
come with the dawn of spring rain
banished come april self-portraiture
a way of immortalizing a moment
a thought an expression that belies
a glimpse of my perplexed sometimes
muddled soul a soft cheap grey
hoodie quest for a clearer path for
someone to "meet me one day on the
street and get me, take me at face
value, and not be blown asunder"
even if once in a cirulean blue moon

bonne fun soirée

friday, all day, shopping for swing shoes and cute going-out-in-fez-and-andalusia clothes in les halles. accompanied by, of course, meredith benjamin.

friday night, soirée at the 5th bar with caro's friends, rue mouffetard. too much drinky smoky for me. not my scene. nice couch surfers though, have to seriously think about joining tea/coffee, because i don't at the moment have a couch on which people can surf. if i move in with kat in new york, we will have to get a futon and join couch surfing. best idea ever.

saturday afternoon, musée de la vie romantique. the collections of george sand. anyone know what other famous literary person she had an affair with? frédéric chopin for sure, i learned that in "impromptu" with hugh grant. there's someone else. cyrille suggested albert camus, but i'm not so sure. i don't think he was the same époque.

karine had the sweetest party for which i for some reason bought almost 2 kilos of super-expensive hummus imported from greece and a mix of delicious strong olives. needless to say, i returned home after a looong walk from the 18th with ivan the 6-language-speaking spaniard with half the olives and hummus. we ate sushi rice, drank ginger pineapple and kiwi lime juice (those are 2 separate juices, they were totally delectable and freshly made) and had fresh fruit salad and/or these other delicious tart-type desserts. even though it was a little chilly outside, the party was so nice, lots of artistic types, a lot of musicians, though i did meet a woman who has a british father doing her doctorate in art history here in paris (?) and works as a professor of "art plastique." she should teach me all she knows.

overall, a fine fine weekend, and the sun has finally come out! i read that the weather will be 60s and 70s-ish in spain and morocco. thursday night it's bon voyage for darcy and martha-she leaves by car from toulouse with some people, i'm flying out of charles de gaulle at around 10 pm and arriving in barcelona at around 23h30, and hopefully i'll find a taxi or somesuch to carry me off to the airport, where i will crash and wake up anew for my first day in barcelona!

the plan is: with darcy, 4 swingin' nights in barcelona, 4 nights in fez (possibly a train ride to chaowen for a day); solo, a boat ride nador-almeria, 2 nights at oasis hostel in granada, 2 nights in sevilla, fly back to paris april 17. true adventure!