Another day, another country..

I remember when we started telling people that we were going to take a year out and go travelling, how most people say things like “Wow!  You’re so lucky!” or “I wish I could do that” and we would smile and agree.

Human nature being what it is, once we get into the swing of things and we get into a bit of a routine, things start losing their gloss.  Like the shiny new car  – after a month of admiring it, it becomes a means of transportation.  The beautiful home you designed, decorated and slaved to afford becomes the place where you watch tv, put your feet up and have a roof over your head.

All nice things; all worthwhile and enjoyable but after a while not as exciting.  Travel is no different.  Unfortunately, one of the downsides of long term travel is that it becomes your everyday.  Yes, we’re travelling to exotic locations and seeing amazing things but we’re also schooling four children, shopping, doing laundry and finding a place to sleep – it’s everyday life for us now.  The gloss of those amazing sights wears off.  Yes, I know!  It’s a travesty!  Believe it or not, some days we’ve had to force ourselves to leave our room and go out and look around a new city.  It’s like anything, you have to remind yourself how blessed you are to have such amazing opportunities and make the most of everyday.

After our sidetrack to Morocco, we were planning on taking the ferry across to Spain and working our way north.  Here’s an insight into the exciting day we had moving continents.

We always try to have a decent breakfast so that we’ll be able to skip lunch.  This is for two reasons:  1.  Don’t know if we’ll be able to source something for lunch and 2.  it’s way cheaper to survive for 6 people on 2 big meals a day and a snack in between.  We decided to lay into the buffet breakfast at the hotel in Tanger before heading off. 

On a moving day, we can be packed and out of a room in about an hour if we take our time.  I think the fastest we’ve ever done is about 10 minutes but generally it’s about a half hour to an hour. 

We left our lovely Ibis Hotel on the outskirts of  the city and headed for the bus stop on the opposite side of the main road, around 9am to catch transport to the port to get our ferry.  We didn’t have any intention of catching a bus but wanted to get one of the taxis, whose drivers were sitting smoking on the side of the road but they all want to charge you outrageous prices so we were playing it cool – “No thanks – we’ll catch the bus” etc etc.

Eventually, Paul got the price he was happy with and we all piled into the massive old Mercedes Benz that makes up just one of the fleet of cream coloured taxis. 

On arrival at the port, we knew we had to take a shuttle bus to the “new” port.  A man opened the taxi door for us and ushered us into a waiting room with other shuttle bus customers.  Within about 10 minutes, he was back again telling us our bus was here and as we went to put our large backpacks into the luggage hold a man in the bus company uniform took the bags from us and put them in himself.  Naturally, the bag man wanted baksheesh,  and then the “bus is here announcer man” also wanted his tipsy.  They weren’t happy with what they go (are they ever?) and while Paul stood outside making sure nobody stole the bags, I got in the bus with the kids.  15 minutes later we were still sitting, waiting – the bus was not turned on so there was no air conditioning – we were melting, but eventually got underway for the 45 minute drive to the new port.

The new port passenger terminal was quite big and very well organised (particularly when compared to what we were used to in Greece, where there are no passenger terminals and nobody seems to know what anybody else is doing).  We did the usual routine:  xray check all our bags to get into the building; show our passports; show our tickets;  passport control checks;  try and spend the rest of our Moroccan Dirhams on snacks as per our skipped lunch theory (see above);  show our passports again;  xray checks to get out of the building; show our tickets and passports again and then finally get on another shuttle bus to take us to the dock.

We’re standing on the dock watching the ferry come in and prepare for the trucks and cars to board.  Finally, foot passengers (about 10 of us) are motioned over to the border police for yet another passport check; up the gangway for a ticket check; another passport check and then finally we are on board.

On Greek and Italian ferries, you take your bags with you and plonk them down in the lounge so that’s what we did.  Apparently, not the done thing in Spain.  We were rudely told that no bags were allowed, this was a first class lounge!  “Fine.” I said,  “Where do we put them?”   The attendent looked at us like we were the stupidest people on earth and said “I don’t know.  One moment I find out”. 

I was starting to think she was the stupidest person on earth, after 20 minutes of standing around waiting for her to turn up again and tell us where to put our nasty bags.  Eventually, she returned and waving her hand in a very absent and generalised way, said “Down there”.

We had no idea where “down there” was but stumbled off in the general direction to find the same man who had checked our tickets, at the same place and never said anything about our bags.  Finally, they were stored away satisfactorily and we returned to the lounge and spent the rest of the two hour journey catching up on blogging and playing our DS’s.

We soon caught sight of the Rock of Gibralter and were coming into port. Welcome to Spain!  We weren’t overnighting in the port town of Algeciras, so after going through the whole passport, xray thing again in reverse, we were spat out into the bright sun hoping to catch the train to Seville.  We had been led to believe that the train station was not far from the terminal (wrong!) and that it was the cheapest way to get to Seville (wrong again!).

After asking for directions a couple of times, let’s just say we knew we were back in Europe (people don’t give a damn and it’s very different from developing countries where everyone falls over themselves to help you first).  We did find the bus station eventually, as well as a sign over the ticket window CASH ONLY.  We needed a stack of Euros and quick.

Paul went outside to see if the taxi drivers lounging around outside were up for some directions.  “Oh yes, it is very close.  Just go up here, around there, turn left, right, yada, yada, yada..”  He paid one of them to drive him there.. and in a few minutes was back again, Euros in hand ready to buy the tickets. 

As is typical in Europe, the ticket seller was sitting completely behind glass and you talk to him through a microphone and speaker system.  He was though, having a very animated conversation with a co-worker and doing a brilliant job of ignoring of us all standing there looking at him expectantly.  We looked, he talked and so it went on until Paul couldn’t stand it any longer and said in a normal voice ”Excuse me?”.  He continued to chatter away, so Paul said a little bit louder “Excuse me”.  Still no response, so this time he shouted into the microphone “EXCUSE ME!!”  Ticket seller turned slowly and glared at us, gave us the required tickets and then calmly returned to his conversation.

We found our bus and five hours later drove into the Seville bus station. Once again we were spat out into the sun, this time the setting sun as it was around 7.30pm.  Now to find our rooms for the night.

We followed the instructions in the email we had received from our hostel to walk around 2km from the station – past some amazing city gardens and fountains, the massive cathedral and the Moorish architecture we would learn makes Seville special.

The hostel was a converted house of about 6 floors with maybe 2 or 3 rooms per floor.  Our room had 3 bunk beds crammed into but we did have our own bathroom which is an absolute bonus.  By the time we had checked in and got everyone through the bathroom it was around 9pm and we had to find some food.

Luckily, there were a number of restaurants around the place, so we ducked into a tapas bar.  We had no Spanish and no idea how the whole thing worked but managed to order some drinks and some prawn tapas which were delicious.  We weren’t quite full though so found a pizza restaurant and each got a slice of pizza before heading back to the hostel, exhausted.

By the time we got everyone through the shower and into bed it was around 11.30.

A typical travelling day over for 6outofoz…