Días Españoles: March 2011

Hey everyone. Last weekend my roommate and Joe and I went to London. Another great, perfect, amazing weekend. London is a great city, very busy, and full of history. Our weekend started with a good, old, traditional, English breakfast....it wasn't very good. After that we went on a walking tour of London. We saw the London Eye, Parliament Building, Big Ben, 10 Downing Street, Trafalgar Square, and of course, Buckingham place (wish you could have been there Mom). We were staying with a friend of mine from SLU for the weekend, who had taken countless tours our London with other guests. So he was able to give us a complete tour which was really nice. That night we went out to Piccadilly Circus, is London's Time Square and not a circus. It was very fun and enjoyable. It was so nice to be in a place where people speak English. The next day Joe and I woke up early and took a train to Leeds, about 2 hours train ride away, from there we took at bus ride to a small town to Wetherby to see Joe's close family friend, Rose. Rose is a very sweet 70 year old woman, who Joe has know for a very long time. Rose gave us a tour of the great town of Wetherby, a quiet town that was smaller than SLU's campus. It was great to see the simple town in England. Rose took us to a pub and then made us lunch at her house. She was so friendly and I definitely won't forget her. After Wetherby, we made our way to Newcastle and followed Charlie's directions to the ice rink just in time to see most of the game. The game was great. The fans were very enthusiastic and it was great to see how much they loved talking to Charlie after the game. That night Charlie showed us around Newcastle and we took the first train back to London in the morning. Thanks to Charlie for being a great host. Back in London we went to the Regent's Park area and artsy neighborhood called Camden Town for dinner. It was an amazing weekend. London is definitely some place I need to go back to at sometime in my life. Still have a great time here and I can't wait to see you again. Enjoy the pics

-Benjamin

Big Ben and Big Ben

huh...I didn't know there was a wedding coming up

Go Vipers

Chuck

Hey you, we went to Morocco last week (perfect time to go to North Africa right?) It was crazy, definitely the most different place I have ever been. So we arrived at the Madrid airport on Friday afternoon, we were about to go through security and my friend, Joe, realizes that he printed out the wrong boarding pass. We then realize that our plan is going to board in 15 mins and the line to print out a new boarding pass is way too long and so Joe missed our flight and we assumed the entire trip. The trip began with us getting off the plane and 20 minute taking a bus ride to the center of Marrakech. So we get off the bus in the center of town, and into this super chaotic town square with people everywhere and everyone seemed to be selling something. Since there we're a group of 14 completely lost and obvious American kids with our Northface back packs and digital cameras, all of the street vendors swarmed us and tried to get us buy their knickknacks. Eventually, this kid said he could walk us to our hostel. The hostel was very nice and would have been impossible to find if not for this kid. Marrakech was wild. The center of the city is this huge market where everything pretty much everything is for sale, it was like the town in Aladdin. There are street performers that blow fire, snake charmers, a guy walking around with a monkey, its crazy. And you can't take a picture of anything or someone will make you pay them. Our night in Marrakech was very interesting. We mostly just shopped and haggled with the street vendors (every price is negotiable in Morocco apparently) We didn't see any protests or riots, but it was something I will never forget .

The next morning we woke up early to meet or tour guide who would be taking us around Morocco for the next 4 days. At first we couldn't find him, but eventually we were able to track him down and found him in the center of town. From Marrakech, we drove south through the Anti Mountains, stopping along the way for pictures and lunch (side note: Joe Merrill should not go on this drive for motion sickness reasons) Eventually, we stopped at this old Moroccan village, where over 20 films had been shot, including Gladiator and Lawrence of Arabia. That night we stayed at a hotel in a valley, very cool. The next day we went on a tour of this tiny town in the middle of nowhere where we were introduced to this guy who gave us a demonstration on how Moroccan rugs were made and the symbolism behind them. Everybody bought rugs. I cant wait to show everyone mine. That afternoon we arrived at another small town where everyone got camels. We rode the camels for a couple hours out to this 150 meter high sand dune. Naturally, the boys wanted to run to the top for the sunset. It was impossible, running up hill in sand is exhausting, we basically had to crawl half of the way (it didn't help that we took the steepest route to get to the top) But once we got to the top, we realized it was all worth it because the view was amazing (see pics). That night we camped out under the stairs and woke up the next day to watch the sunrise while we rode our camels back into town. Then we did some more driving, stopped for lunch in this town that probably had less than 50 people in it. After that, we drove to another town, got more camels and rode them to this really authentic camp in the middle of the desert for our last night's dinner and a drum circle. However, the biggest surprise of the trip came that night at dinner. All 14 of us were all sitting around the table in this little tent when Joe, my friend who missed the flight, walks in to the tent! It was amazing, apparently Joe had gone back to the apartment, contacted the tour company, explained to him his problem and they helped him to get on a different tour that could drop him off at our camp for the last night. He did get to see a riot on Saturday night in Marrakech, which he said was pretty scary. The next morning, we rode our camels back to the town and drove straight to the Marrakech airport. A great weekend, A great experience.