Gratitude, day 319.

Ryan Air is cheap but they nickel and dime the heck out of their tickets. If you want to choose your own seat, you pay. If you don't pay in advance for a checked bag, you pay. For every kilo your checked bag exceeds the max weight, you pay. Pretty sure if you blink too hard while checking your bag, you pay for that too.

And not printing your boarding passes in advance costs a whopping €20 ($33ish) per ticket, even when your actual ticket is only $48. No big deal - when you have easy access to a printer. But when you're us...

Our only mission in Meknes today (other than finding corn pancakes and buying another kilo of oranges) was to find a way to print our boarding passes for Monday's flight. Twenty minutes, three very helpful fax shop ladies, two nice hotel guys, one English-fluent copy center gal, and four dirham ($0.50) later, we had our Ryan Air boarding passes. Two copies, in fact. You know, just in case.

Fortunately Meknes is a big city. If we'd had to print something in Merzouga we would've had to go to Rissani - 30km away via a 52 dirham ($6.50) round trip taxi - and it would've taken at least two hours.  (Kinda like when we did actually have to go to Rissani for an ATM because the guidebooks don't warn you that Merzouga is ATM-less.)

Us and our "first world" problems. "I have to go to the lobby to get wifi?" "I have to wait for the water to heat up again before I can take a hot shower?" "I only get one cup of coffee with breakfast?" "I can't charge my iThing on the train?" "I have to print my boarding pass to Spain ahead of time?"

Our first night in Rabat, we went to dinner with a friend and his Moroccan friend. We were talking about where we'd been and the Moroccan friend said he would love to go to Spain, but that it was pretty difficult for him to get a visa.

But when you're us,customs officers just check your passport, give you a stamp, and wave you through.

When you're us, you spend a lot of time figuring out where and what to eat - not when you will eat again. When you're us, if you break a shoelace (or an electric shaver, or a Kobo) you just buy a new one. When you're us, if your current location isn't working for you, you pack up and move on.

You do all of this too. Yes, you.

Obviously, lots of people in this world aren't so lucky. We have seen quite a few of them here in Morocco over the past few weeks. So take a moment to be thankful today, however you choose to do so. Thankful for your next meal, for your countless opportunities, for that printer sitting next to you.

And then help someone out tomorrow, however you choose to do so. We are definitely tipping the karma scale over here - it could use a little balancing.

Shukran.

... but who's counting?

Hours spent on the Merzouga-Fes bus Sunday night: 9 (7pm-4am). It was supposed to be a 10 hour trip, so there's that.

Hours straight that the guy behind us talked animatedly to his friend: 5 (8pm-1am). Patrick is pretty sure they were planning a birthday party. What else could be exciting enough to talk about for five straight hours?

Road bumps encountered: can't count that high. There were also hours where the bus rocked back and forth. Really not sure what that was about.

Hours of sleep we got: 2. In 10-minute increments throughout the trip.

Number of stars seen from the bus window: 8,321,943. At least.

Clarence's last Supr@tours bus ride

(ours too -

can't say we're sad about that)

And while we're talking numbers, days in a row I have worn these jeans: 11... That can't be good.

Tarifa and Gibraltar: last stops before a whole new world.

When you're THAT close to Gibraltar, you kind of have to go, right?

(That was our reasoning anyway. And then we heard there were Barbary macaques. That sealed the deal.)

We took the bus from Tarifa to La Linea and walked across the border (#3 on foot!). The officers shot a sideways glance at our passports and waved us through, and we crossed the active airplane landing strip to town.

first active airplane landing strip crossing

This bizarre UK oasis has its own currency, a downtown of fancy strip malls, and expats everywhere. 

thirty thousand of them, approximately

it also has churros y cafes

at an Indian restaurant

(of course)

We did the £10 Gibraltar tour which included visits to...

• a Moorish castle, remaining fortifications of which date back to the 1100s - although the original fortifications came even earlier under the reign of Tarik-ibn-Zeyad

fun with downward spirals

• "Gibraltar, a City Under Seige" - a bizarre life sized diorama of sorts, set among original buildings from the 1700s and presenting a day in the life during a siege (apparently it was quite boring)

but to keep things interesting

there were floggings

and low rations of food

• the Great Seige Tunnels, a series of tunnels in the rocks created by gunpowder and manual labor, used for fortification during seiges

the tunnels went on and on and on -

pretty amazing

• the Ape's Den featuring those wacky Barbary macaques

oh hai

• St Michael's Cave, a natural grotto intended for use as a hospital during WWII

now it's an amphitheater...

... Pink Floyd played here once

And that's just what you get for £10. Gibraltar is far bigger than we thought, and there is so much more to it (including naturally occurring, man-made, and historically) than we realized.

and here we thought it was just a rock

For another £8 we could've toured more war tunnels but we opted to just explore the trails for a bit instead...

when you go your way and I'll go mine

And we ascended and descended a lot of stairs.

a LOT of stairs

What a strange, strange place, this tiny little rock that everyone fights over. Now we know.

Back in Tarifa we watched the waves and caught the sunsets and decided it would be a great place to visit in the summer.

surf's up

winter or not, sunsets were still lovely 

next time: kitesurfing lessons

oh, and they have a bullring -

ole!

Definitely glad we stayed in Tarifa instead of Algeciras (which Lonely Planet describes as "an industrial town, a big fishing port and a centre for drug smuggling"). Um... no.

Food notes:

• Halal K2 Doner Kebab & Pizza in Tarifa sounds like an odd choice but it was actually quite good
• and the aforementioned churros at an Indian restaurant whose name I cannot locate (just follow the signs!)
• otherwise sandwiches and lots of salad to counteract all the bread
• and we finally ate the package of instant borscht we've been carrying around since Poland

it was just as salty and beety

as we remembered

Lodging notes: Tarifa's Melting Pot Hostel was fine for a few nights. The kitchen could have been cleaner but the guy who worked there was really nice, we had lots of space, and the price was right.

(this was a nice touch)

And it was a five minute walk to the ferry the next morning...

to Morocco!!

Seville simplicity.

Jen had very fond memories of her visit to Seville almost 20 years ago so we stopped there for a few nights before heading south. (In hindsight, those fond memories involve trying to find good sangria, eating lots of churros, and something about a cathedral. But that's beside the point.)

By Seville we were tired of the Euro so in the interest of "free" we walked through a lot of neighborhoods and admired the architecture.

random buildings

random plazas

random narrow streets

We visited the Plaza de España and browsed the intricately decorated city monuments.

this place is packed in the summer -
hooray for low season travel

we played with the "pop art" camera feature

and the "fish eye" feature

and we went back at night too

We sat across from the Cathedral and people-watched for a while.

(is this rude?)

We visited Mercado de Triana a few times and finally decided on chicken chorizo for our pasta.

lesson: less chorizo, more fruit

We took Clarence to visit the Plaza de Toros. Well, from the outside, anyway.

ole!

(see him there?)

On a whim we visited the Convento de Santa Paula. This did cost €3 each but the money went to the sweet nuns so that was fine.

even thought they didn't offer us homemade pastries as advertised,

they gave us helpful tourist tips on Seville

and the artwork was museum-worthy

Food notes:

• we found the churros...

oh yes, we found them

y chocolate tambien

• we also got a tip on cheap tapas at Taberna Coloniales - actually, no tapas are "cheap" but at least we finally had some seafood in Spain...

fried cod, aged goat cheese, cured ham -

totally worth it

• otherwise lots of hostel cooking

Lodging notes: Just to mix it up a little we chose our hostel using our wine-picking technique (by the price, followed by the name) so Feetup Samay Hostel was the obvious winner. It was clean and roomy and they played Radiohead so we'd call it "fine for two nights".

One could easily fill a week in Seville with sightseeing and delicious foods but we were happy to make it an easy, lazy, inexpensive couple of days.

Only one more Spanish town before Morocco... Crazy, just crazy.