The universal language of "stop" - yeah, it's a thing.

Back in the summer of 2013 we drove into the province of Quebec for our Nubian goat WWOOF gig and saw our first "ARRÊT" sign.

(au nom de l'amour)

"Arrêt" and "pamplemousse" are two of the few words I remembered from five years of French lessons more than 20 years ago. I knew that "arrêt" meant stop, and I knew that the official language of Quebec is French, so this sign seemed perfectly normal to me. (Honestly, I was much more amused by the Loblaw signs everywhere. I did admire Quebec's creative method of indicating a four-way "ARRÊT" though.)

We spent two weeks in Wakefield, Quebec, where one street featured the sign below... I smiled every time we drove past it.

Wakefield is the new Portland

It might sound silly but at the time, I didn't realize that stop signs were universal (at least in our journey's universe) - the shape and color were the same in every country we visited. Most traffic signs were easily recognizable too.

Now, I know that it's due to the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals and has been enforced since 1978, along with many other universal traffic signs and laws.

But I didn't know about this agreement while we were traveling. So I naïvely marveled at the common shape and color everywhere we went. From this miraculous revelation (!), I went on to notice that many countries we visited displayed the word "STOP" on their stop signs, no matter what their native language.

(I should note that many countries we visited didn't actually employ the use of stop signs, especially in rural or underdeveloped places where we were simply left to our own devices to get across the street or drive into zipping traffic. But in developed areas of Central Europe, Western Europe and Vietnam, even when the majority of the population did not speak English, the stop signs all said "STOP.")

So then, of course, I started noticing when "STOP" wasn't "STOP." Turns out there are quite a few exceptions, but here are just a few that we saw in our international travels...

Turkey

Morocco

Lao

Thailand

Cambodia (the only bilingual stop sign we saw -

also, possibly the only stop sign we saw in all of Cambodia)

Even the Aussies change up the stop sign now and then. Here's a reminder on the Perth train to reserve the seats near the doors for families:

this sign kinda freaked Patrick out

Universal stop signs and other traffic indicators certainly make driving internationally a lot safer and easier.

They also make this big giant world feel a lot smaller.

And I mean that in a good way...

Welcome to 2015, the year of the goat!

Do you have any idea how excited I was to learn that February 19, 2015 marks the start of the Chinese year of the goat?

(Do you know me in even the slightest bit, and/or do you ever read this blog? If you answered "yes" or even "maybe" to one or both of those questions, you probably have quite the idea how excited I was to learn this.)

First things first. We've seen references to the "year of the goat, also known as year of the sheep, ram."

Now, we mean absolutely no offense to our Chinese friends - it's YOUR culture, it's YOUR year, interpret it however you want.

But for the record - THIS is a goat:

smarter than your average bear

(the goat, not Patrick.. actually, Patrick too)

This? NOT A GOAT:

dumb as a box of nails

(the sheep, not Patrick)

Okay, now that we've cleared that up, we hereby bring you GOATS OF THE WORLD! Enjoy.

cheerleader goat

(Eagle Hill, Alberta, Canada)

regal goat

(Quebec City, Canada)

sweetest goat EVAH in the history of all goats

(Wakefield, Quebec, Canada)

adorable plum-eating goats

(Nemcicky, Czech Republic)

curious goats

(Picos de Europa, Spain)

tree-climbing goats

(Essaouria, Morocco)

shy goats

(Phong Nha, Vietnam)

"whatever, I'm eating" goat

(Sapa, Vietnam)

focused goat

(Luang Prabang, Lao)

headbutting goats

(Pai, Thailand)

goat TV

(Mae Sariang, Thailand)

baby goats

(Pratchum Khiri Khan, Thailand)

first Nepalese goats

(Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)

second Nepalese goats

(Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)

third Nepalese goats

(Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)

fourth Nepalese goats

(Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)

fifth Nepalese goats

(Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)

sixth Nepalese goats

(Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)

seventh Nepalese goats

(Annapurna Circuit, Nepal)

pygmy goats

(Waikoloa, Big Island, Hawaii)

smiley goat
(South Point, Big Island, Hawaii)

Goats were strangely absent from our photos from Portugal, Turkey, Cambodia and Australia. That clearly means that we need to go back to those countries and spread the goat love...

Happy 2015!

Every-day-is-Friday five: songs about places we have been.

We would sing the song for days while in a particular city. Sometimes we sang it for weeks before we visited the city, and sometimes we couldn't get it out of our heads for weeks after leaving the city. (Sometimes this made us want to cry.)

Here are five songs about cities we've visited on this trip, in no particular order... complete with links to YouTube videos so that YOU can get the song stuck in YOUR head for days.

• One Night in Bangkok (Murray Head)
• Barcelona (Builders and the Butchers)
• Istanbul (not Constantinople) (They Might Be Giants)
• Kathmandu (Bob Seger)
• Marrakesh Express (Crosby, Stills and Nash)

And now, as our return to Maryland (and therefore "real life") is more and more imminent, I can't seem to get (Don't Go Back To) Rockville out of my head. Go figure.

What are some of your favorite songs about international cities?

Morocco on $28/person/day.

We did pretty well in Morocco.  It helped that we housesat for almost a week, and it helped that we bought absolutely no souvenirs!  Here's the breakdown with some details...

Initial budget: we didn't have one so let's call it $100/day, $50/person/day
Actual cost: 24 days at $1338 ($54/day, $28/person/day)

(note the absence of an "alcohol" category - 

Muslim/Arabic country!)

• Lodging: $419 - 17 nights at hostels or hotels averaging $12/person/night (most of these were 1- or 2-star hotels which are equivalent to 3-star hotels in the US)
• Transportation: $364 - ferry from Spain to Morocco; trains/buses between major cities (including one overnight bus) and transportation for our day trip to Casablanca; nominal dollars spent on public transportation everywhere
• Groceries: $118 - mostly for our first week housesitting, otherwise snacks for the road
• Meals: $215 - less than $5/person/day, it helped that breakfast was included with our hostel/hotel costs
• Tours: $196 - the biggest expense here was our camel trek; otherwise, nominal costs for admissions to the Saadian Tombs in Marrakech and the ruins at Volubilis
• Alcohol: $0
• "Misc": $26 - Patrick's scarf in Merzouga, a gift for our friends for breaking one of their bowls when we housesat (oops), printing our boarding passes for Madrid, changing money when leaving the country, public toilets

Other fun Morocco facts...

• Cities visited: 11 (Tangier, Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech, Essaouira, Ouarzazate, Rissani, Merzouga, Fes, Meknes, Moulay Idriss)
• Gallons of Berber whiskey consumed: A BILLION
• National parks visited: 0 
• UNESCO World Heritage Sites visited: 6 (Rabat; Archaeological Site of Volubilis; historic city of Meknes; medinas of Essaouira, Fez, Marrakesh)
• Camels ridden: 2

Back to Spain for a few days... and the dreaded Euro!

Gluten-free in Morocco? Naaaaaah...

It's definitely possible to go gluten-free as a tourist in Morocco if you don't mind eating the same food over and over again. Bread is a staple with every meal and couscous is one of their main dishes but given the right willpower you can avoid both. I didn't have such willpower, and I didn't suffer too much as a result (but I do think the wheat here is not as pure as what I was eating in Central Europe and Turkey).

One day I will be gluten-free again.  I will!

Anyway, here's a very long summary of what we ate during our three-week trip - so much of it was so delicious that it was impossible to narrow down! Hostels often offer breakfast but they don't really have kitchens, and hotels never do, so except for our housesitting stay we had to eat lunch and dinner out wherever we went. (World's tiniest violin - I know. Believe me, though, it gets old fast!)

Breakfast

Moroccan breakfasts always seemed to include mint tea (or coffee upon request) and bread. The tea comes super sweet by default and it's rare that you can ask for no sugar... but it's rude to refuse so we partook in a lot of sugary tea.

"Berber whiskey"

(they drink this all day every day

and the higher you pour it,

the more respect you earn from locals)

take note, Starbucks -

this is the best way to serve coffee

(separate and with warmed milk)

Sometimes the food at breakfast was just bread - like in Essaouira when we ate at a "snack cafe" with the locals. We liked this particular place a lot because they were pretty friendly and we always sat in front of the lady making the bread. It was really fun to watch her roll and knead and shape the bread while she chatted with the patrons.

the locals went for bread

drenched in melted butter

(as awesome as that sounded

we opted just for honey)

Sometimes you also got pastries with breakfast. (Because a loaf of bread isn't enough bread??) Sometimes the pastries were plain, sometimes they had a little filling, sometimes they had some sort of amazing peanut glaze. The peanut-glazed were our favorites, and sadly we couldn't find them in the markets so they were rare treats.

And sometimes you got a Moroccan pancake - a thick crepe-like doughy plate of goodness with butter and jam on the side. We really liked those times.

our favorite breakfast spread

at Dar Aliane

If you were really lucky, breakfast also included fresh squeezed orange juice, a hard boiled egg, a small container of yogurt, and a little triangle of Laughing Cow cheese. (Yes, Laughing Cow cheese. It really grows on you!)

for champions

at Diyar Timnay in Moulay Idriss

And let's not forget gluten-free Mr Breakfast corn flakes - our meal of choice while house sitting in Rabat.

must be popular -

ingredients are listed in about 50 languages!

Lunch and dinner
Afternoon and evening meal options were almost interchangeable. The true Moroccan options included gluten-free tajines (chicken, beef or veggies cooked in clay pots) or gluten-filled couscous (with chicken, beef or veggies). These are offered everywhere; tourists and locals alike eat them on a regular basis.

upper: veggie tajine

middle: delicious kebab

lower: chicken couscous with veggies

We tried both of these a few times and found the veggies too overcooked and the dishes too underspiced and overpriced for our taste - maybe because we usually ate them in tourist areas? So we gave up on them pretty quickly.

(As an aside, couscous is also regularly eaten on the holy day, so menus will feature "couscous vendredi" - Friday couscous, chef's choice on how it's prepared. We aren't religious but we really like this concept of "couscous Friday" - or maybe we just like saying "oh boy, it's couscous Friday!" - and we hope to implement this tradition when we get back to the States.)

walls and walls of couscous at the supermarket

Back to meals... Omelettes were commonly offered on menus, and these became go-to lunch or dinner choices whenever possible, just for the no-carb, no-gluten protein boost (and the price - eggs are cheap). With cheese, herbs, or just plain they were always delicious!

And speaking of protein, rotisserie chicken is also huge in Morocco. Lots of cafes feature "poulet complet", a whole roasted chicken with rice, or salad, or french fries, or some combination of those. We never could commit to a whole bird but one day we finally broke down and went for a "demi poulet". We can't be sure that the meat we ate had no hormones, but we can be pretty sure it was free range (pretty sure this is true of most meat in Morocco) and we are definitely sure that it tasted pretty awesome.

1/4 each

rice for her, fries for him

On days when we wanted comfort food, we were able to find pizza or shawarmas pretty easily.

an Italian restaurant in Fes?

but of course

a roadside cafe in Casablanca

Salads were always a nice option, always gluten-free (although I'm not 100% sure about the dressing) as long as you skipped the huge basket of white bread that came with them. Menus typically featured a "Moroccan" salad (veggies with tuna), a "salade mixte" (beets, potatoes, greens) or a "salade nicoise" (greens, beets, egg, tuna). Same basic ingredients but totally different tastes to each.

world's largest salade nicoise

beets beets beets

in the salade mixte

homemade Moroccan salad

at the Berber village during our camel trek

Sidewalk stands offer meat sandwiches that they cook right there for you. We'd been curious for weeks but couldn't get up the nerve - there's always some degree of concern with food safety wherever we go, especially when meat and food carts are concerned. Finally in Fes, the price was right (and clearly listed on the sign) and we were starving, so we took a chance. Those sandwiches were so much better than most of the shawarmas we'd had in Morocco and we regretted not taking the plunge earlier in our trip!

they were so good that

we sent several other tourists their way

A popular side dish is fried potatoes. Obviously Jen avoided these but Patrick was able to enjoy a few servings.

"fried potato grease bombs", Patrick said

(as he inhaled them)

And then there was the soup. Harira, Morocco's specialty soup, is a tomato-based bowl of goodness! It has flour and sometimes pasta, so it's not gluten-free, but the best batches also had chickpeas, lentils, onions, and loads of spices. We dare say the better bowls of harira soup may have trumped some of the amazing lentil soup we had in Turkey. If only the Moroccan tajines were as flavorful...!

homemade by our hotel owner in Meknes

(best soup we had in Morocco)

just add olives and beet juice

and you've got dinner

Speaking of olives - WOW, the olives! They're sold in bulk in the medinas, in the markets, at the grocery stores. They're provided as a light (free) appetizer in nicer cafes and restaurants. You can't get a pizza or a salad without olives. They even come with breakfast! They're perfectly cured and sometimes perfectly spiced, and occasionally a cafe or restaurant will also have a bottle of amazing olive oil for bread dipping.

olives drying in Moulay Idriss

the best part of our Marrakech meal in the square

Drinks

If you can't find fresh-squeezed juice in Morocco, your eyes aren't open. The beet juice shown above was definitely a favorite, but we had our share of orange juice too. In Merzouga we finally broke down and tried "banana juice" and "avocado juice" (what could that possibly mean??) - they ended up basically being a smoothie... A delicious, refreshing smoothie. We miss smoothies.

rows and rows of juice stands 

in the Marrakech square

One drink we only found in the Marrakech square at night was a chai tea chock full of cinnamon, cloves and ginger. If we hadn't gotten ripped off by the tea cart guy we would've gone back for thirds, fourths, fifths of this stuff... so good.

best enjoyed with chocolate cake

Pastries

And then there was the sugary deliciousness. Essaouira was our first exposure to fresh doughnuts, fried right in front of you and then dipped in sugar. About $0.25 each. No picture available - we inhaled them too quickly.

Fes's specialty is a sort of chocolate eclair...

so of course we tried it

(it was awful, really)

In Meknes we ran across a small bakery selling deep fried doughy bits in all shapes and sizes. We started to get just a few, then got a little carried away. The bakery guy just laughed at us and pulled out a bigger container. After the dough was fried the treats were dipped in some kind of simple syrup and sprinkled with sesame seeds. They weren't as tasty as we hoped they would be... which is not to say that they weren't good or that we didn't eat every single one.

heart attack in three, two, one...

Almond desserts are also pretty popular in Morocco. Rabat's kasbah has a small cafe where you can rest and sample terribly overpriced mint tea and almond pastries... so we did. Hey, it was tourist day.

tea for two

Street food/snacks
We've already raved about the Moroccan pancakes but they deserve another homage. Thick and doughy, sometimes with a cornmeal dusting, served with your choice of nothing, honey, chocolate, or Laughing Cow cheese. The first ones we had in Rabat's medina turned out to be the best. They were everywhere, though - perfect for a quick on-the-go snack, a meal, a second breakfast, a post-dinner snack... We enjoyed these a lot.

avec fromage

s'il vous plait

We also found smaller bready snacks in Meknes. Totally filling, perfect with harira soup.

top - tasted like corn muffins

middle - tasted like buckwheat couscous patties (a good thing)
bottom - a sugary corn muffin

As far as non-bread snacks on the road, fruit was pretty widely available in Morocco. We probably bought 20 kilos of oranges, all said and done, and loads of bananas and dried dates too.

Moulay Idriss fruit stand

(there was a whole street of this)

$2.50 for all of this in Fes

(those grapefruits were amazing)

And Patrick finally tried a rare treat that turned his tongue purple in Marrakech. Pulpy, not very sweet, and probably chock-full of antioxidants.

prickly pears in the park!

say that five times fast

The smaller markets mostly featured junk food snacks so whenever we went to the hypermarket we tried to load up on raisins, peanuts, and Jen's favorite:

Moroccan fritos

!!!

So yeah, we ate our fair share of bread in Morocco. It wasn't particularly good bread, but it did the trick. Finding gluten-free options wasn't terribly difficult though, and avoiding potatoes was pretty easy. If you have other ideas for avoiding gluten in Morocco, please leave a comment!