School In Our Jammies

Setting out sans our local tour guides this morning, we hoofed it to the Reading train station and purchased off-peak tickets to Bath Spa. We’re here for the night, ensconced on the top floor of the Henry Guest House, with this view:

Bath (say it “ahh” – Baath Spaa) is famous for its 2,000-year-old baths constructed over hot springs — the only ones on this island –upon which the Romans “took a bath” for 400 years or so. Then, they left. We were impressed, not only with the baths themselves, but with the discovery and excavation of them centuries later. Plenty of Roman ruins here, for sure.

See the pretty green water?  Signs said no drinking!  No touching, either!  But, tastes were available at the end of the exhibit. Hmmm…

As for those layers of history, the Roman statue in front of my hubby wasn’t there originally, but added much, much later after the excavations.

But, that’s not all.

Bath Abbey hosted the coronation of King Edgar in 973, back when it was much bigger and the “religious capital” of Britain. This version was constructed in 1499. It’s still pretty, and not very small:

After strolling through the baths and the abbey, the Blue Dot charted our course for The Henry.

Inside, we retrieved our room key from an envelope on the entry table and climbed three flights of narrow, twisty stairs to our itty-bitty room. So tiny I can’t get a decent picture, but comfy and historic — CIRCA 1726 — it has sloping floors and angled door frames.  Also tea, biscuits, coffee, shampoo.  Although we have yet to see the proprietors, there are some pigeons on the next roof. Presumably we’ll make contact at breakfast?

The abbey bells are pealing, the sun is low, and my hubby is asleep. Tomorrow we’ll hop the train back to Reading and pack for Edinburgh.

Our morning began with French press coffee in the flat and a couple of hours of chatting about stuff before Jessica and I looked at the clock and said, “Whoa!”.  At this, I woke Jim who thought I was mistaken when I told him it was 9 a.m. and we’d better get going.

Going we did, to one of the “chain” restaurants in Reading (“they’re all chains”, says Jasper) called “Bills” for breakfast at 10 a.m.  People:  if Bill’s is a chain, we should all invest.  Occupying an old mansion house with creaky wooden floors and a cottage-ye feel, Bill’s served us cappuccinos and a tasty meal.  Then, we walked out the door to the Reading Minster, as the church bells chimed away.

The service used scripture from Acts about Peter being told not to preach in Jesus’ name, and also the end of John about Thomas who doubted Jesus’ resurrection.  The Vicar brought a very straightforward, sound message about faith, and we enjoyed our time there with Jessica and Jasper.

Then, this:

Stonehenge from the motorway, folks.  Jim and I winced all the way there and back each time a car passed us on the right, especially on those narrow, English country roads.  Ahem.

The visitor’s center is behind them.  Next, sheep and cows.  We chose to walk the mile-and-a-half to the stones, through fields and along the “cursus” — a 1.7 mile, ancient racetrack (?) which predates Stonehenge.  We wanted to see sheep, and we did.

Oops, those are cows.  The sheep look like sheep, with numbers spray-painted on their buns.  You’ll have to check Jessica’s Instagram post for them, I guess.

Well, my horizon is crooked and the pic is overexposed.  Lightroom will fix that, eventually. Doesn’t it look like we’re all alone at Stonehenge?  We’re not, but I loved the way visitors were kept way, way back from the stones so we could get good pics.

Jim is touching a rock at the visitor’s center.

After Stonehenge, we drove back to Reading, intermittently wincing and napping, to Jasper’s flat.  He cooked us Cottage Pie for dinner, which was so delicious after a day in the cold. (New thing we learned:  Cottage Pie is made with beef; Shepherd’s Pie is made with lamb — duh.)

Okay, now we sleep.  Tomorrow Jessica goes to work, and we catch a train to Bath.  We’ll stay the night, walk around those Roman ruins, have tea in the Pump Room, and maybe take a sip of the mineral water.  Or, maybe not.

Thanks to the Queen of Welcome Signs and Baskets, and her Lovely Fiancé, we are now lounging comfortably in Reading.  In just a few minutes, we shall walk to dinner nearby and eat Greek.

We are jetlagged and loopy, but these two took us on a fresh-air walk through Reading to wake us up and show us some ruins.  Afterwards — or before? — we got our photos taken in a wee booth, took those to the train station to acquire our “Two Together” Railcards (yay!), and ate a couple of Percy Pigs to keep me going until dinner.

These three are Elizapeck, Wooliam, and Rabbeck.  Chocolate, natch.

We have been briefed, and apparently we’ve passed the test.

Uh, oh.  Jim’s asleep on the couch behind me.  Plus, it’s almost time to walk to dinner, so I’ll stop for now.

Tomorrow is Sunday services in the church building where the wedding will be, and then Stonehenge.

Until then…

1. We have a final iteration of The Itinerary:
2. Jim sliced and diced our three volumes of Uncle Rick’s books (London, England, and Scotland) into chunks of relevant text to conserve luggage space.
3. We’ve watched through all of Downton Abbey, The Crown, and several BBC Masterpiece Mysteries.
4. I meant to, but failed to reread Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott and James Herriot.
5. We know how to correctly pronounce “scone” (no long “o”), “slough” (“cow”), and Edinburgh (Pittsburgh).
6. Thankfully, Jessica alerted me to the notion of “bespoke” this and “bespoke” that, so now I hear it all over the place.
7. That’s an exaggeration.
8. We have special rail cards.
9. Well, that’s not true, either. We have train tickets which assume we have special rail cards, therefore we shall acquire the cards prior to boarding the train or…I don’t know what will happen, but we won’t let it.
10. Nope, not packed,
11. It’s only Thursday.
12. Jim mowed the lawns, we sent out grade reports, we arranged with Kind Neighbors to feed Scout.
13. In preparation for our 9-hour, overnight flight, we’re sleeping in the car tonight.
14. Not really, but it did cross my mind.
15. We have hotel reservations, Airbnb reservations, train tickets, but no assigned airplane seats. B.A, much as I love them, charges a hefty fee for those until 24 hours before take-off.
16. I’ll be watching that countdown clock this evening; you can bet on it.

We leave Melilla this afternoon for Madrid, where we’ll spend one quick night and then board a plane for home.  Yay!  Here are a few pictures from this little city where you can walk anywhere but everybody owns a car.

Here’s the fort.

Pretty, yes?  Each time we’re here I wonder why this isn’t more of a touristy place.  Like, where are the coffee shops?  Gift shops? Benches to sit and gaze at the Med?  Don’t know, folks. (Once, four years ago, we attended a medieval festival up here, which was fantastic.)

The beach is popular.  We’ve strolled down via the wide sidewalk and back via the sand.  We’ve also sat on the numerous benches and watched soccer practice in the sand, volleyball practice in the sand, swimmers and sail boarders in the water, freighters, ferries, and an occasional cruise ship.  No refugee landings like last time, though.

Like mainland Spain and other hot places, Melilla residents take a siesta mid-afternoon.  Everything closes for nap time:  the hotel café, cafes along the beach and by the park, grocery stores.  Those of us from non-siesta lands must remember these things or go hungry.

Also like most of Europe, Melilla residents eat their dinners late.  Night before last we decided to eat on the “terrace” for a special BBQ, which opened at 9 p.m.  Naturally we were HUNGRY by then, but it was worth the wait.  Not quite understanding the menu, we picked something that looked like BBQ meat and were not disappointed.  (Israel buddies – remember the “meat restaurant”?  Our platter was mouth-watering and we ate the whole thing).

So, off we go.  Today we’ll fly Madrid; tomorrow to Dallas to Vancouver, BC., then Amtrak home on Monday.  (Then off to Whistler to cheer IronBaum Jessica.)

Last Sunday’s big adventure was for me to drive to the “Sunday souk” in a town called Ait Rouadi, about eight miles away.  Initially Jim and S had planned to wander through and maybe see some familiar faces from the last time we were here with our team, because that’s the best place for men to greet their friends.  The plan was modified late the night before when two of S’s male relatives said they’d love to come along with me driving, so for the second day in a row this lady got to drive the truck to a souk.

Five people could not fit inside the cab, naturally, so three of the men rode in the back while I drove us the eight miles straight up the highway and parked, thankfully, on the side of the road in a great spot. Here, cars and trucks parked on the right, mules and donkeys on the left.  Perfect.

Unlike Saturday’s souk, this one was much larger and set off in a special area where cars didn’t go.  As we entered beneath the concrete arch, my first inclination was to whip out my camera — but then my second inclination was to maintain course and speed and call as little attention to myself as possible.  Also unlike yesterday’s souk, there were women here!  Not many, but enough to make me feel a bit less conspicuous.  (According to my lady friends, however, only women “from the other side of the highway” go to souks.  Not them.) 

Would you like to know what you can purchase at a souk?  Sure, you would.

First, though, if you’ve not been here before, your idea of a souk may come from Hollywood – rich purple and red fabrics draping awnings, gold tassels waving in the breeze, a background of exotic flute music, calls of shopkeepers across narrow streets.  Modify that picture with a few layers of dust. Subtract the rich fabrics.  Subtract the music. Add three times the number of shoppers.  Make them men.  This, plus several mules and the smell of fish, will be more realistic.

Besides the obvious “farmers market” wares, which were beautiful and fresh – tomatoes, eggplant, watermelons, potatoes, onions, peppers, garlic – you can buy fish.  In fact, you can buy lots and lots of fish that look like sardines and taste delicious right off the BBQ or out of the frying pan.  You could also buy squid, or bigger fish.  These also are all fresh.

If you need a new stainless-steel teapot, you can get one of those.  Also, a platter to serve your couscous on, plastic cups, batteries, a new mattress, gym shorts for your son, Bic lighters, bags of peanuts or charcoal, or a new donkey basket.  If you buy more than you can carry back to your car, taxi or mule, you can pay a young man a couple of dirhams to cart your stuff in his squeaky wheelbarrow.

Oh, and let’s say you’re celebrating your daughter’s engagement or the birth of your new baby, and you need a sheep to feed 200 guests. You can buy one at the souk!  If you’ve come in a taxi, no worries:  the driver will heft your live purchase into the trunk, shut him in and then drive you both home in time for the BBQ. 

Besides buying stuff, souks are the place to see your friends, particularly if you’re a man. Remember – ladies from our side of the highway don’t go to souks.  Unlike the men who meet in Gig Harbor Starbucks, men here greet each other with exuberant hugs, back slaps, and cheek kisses.  “Abdul!  I haven’t laid eyes on you for a week!  How are the watermelon sales?  What’s your take on the troubles in Hoceima?”  After shopping, you and your man friends can gather at a coffee shop and drink mint tea and chat some more.

We, the four men and I, found a coffee shop after our trek through the souk. (Jim and I hadn’t purchased anything, but our friends bought mint and checked on the price of tomatoes.) Another joined us, and because the coffee shop wasn’t serving coffee this day, we drank mint tea. 

And then, I drove us back to our house and our dog.

This from last week when we didn’t have enough wifi to post —

I woke up filled with apprehension this morning because we were scheduled to visit a Friend and his family in Imzzouren, and I am the designated driver here.  We have had a truck for the last few days, specifically for this occasion, and M had drawn us a map while we were still in Fes.

The thing about hand-drawn maps is that they make the journey look too easy.  You see the ink line indicating a road and some squares representing landmarks (such as ‘bus station’ or ‘shell of a building’), and you zero in on those.  What you don’t see are the other features surrounding the bus station, school, mosque, or all the numerous other shells of buildings until you’re smack in the middle of a sizeable city going the wrong way.

Before we left home, Jim had studied the hand-drawn map, his paper map, and the mapsdotme map on his phone, trying to make all three maps match.  They did not. Of course, the hand drawn map was ‘not to scale’ which we had assumed, but still he could not make the three or four roundabouts correspond with the two or three roundabouts on the other maps.  Armed with these cloudy directions and trusting the Lord, we set out anyway.

The gas tank was on empty, so our first stop had to be a gas station which, thankfully, was just a few miles away in Agdir.  Our Prius selves were a little surprised to have paid sixty dollars for a tank, but we did and were on our way again.

After having driven briefly through the Fes roundabouts the week before, I was relieved to find those from AK to Imzzouren nearly empty of traffic.  As usual, Jim was a great navigator, telling me to “drive straight through as if the roundabout wasn’t even there” or “exit at the second right”; advice I followed happily and soon we were approaching the city.  I say “city” because that’s what it was – not terribly large, but larger than AK and certainly not the blank white spaces on M’s map.  Streets in these parts are narrow and always lined with parked cars on either side, and if the driver ahead decides he needs to stop and let his passenger out or holler to his friend the butcher about acquiring a chicken for tonight’s tagine, he just stops.  When that happens, you can wait your turn and then drive around him, or drive around him without waiting your turn if the car behind you honks a few times, or perhaps honk at him yourself but how rude is that?

Speaking of rude, I’ve discovered, after my two recent driving experiences in Morocco, that things go best if I avoid eye contact with pedestrians.  If I look them in the eye, or if they catch my eye as they’re stepping into my path, I’m inclined to flinch or apply the brakes.  This is a no-no.  It’s best to assume that the pedestrians know their lives are in mortal danger and will time their pace accordingly, therefore I do not slow or stop for them.  Even for moms.  Even for moms carrying babies and ushering their wobbly grandmas alongside. 

Hand-drawn maps and GPS maps on iPhones have one important feature in common:  neither can predict when a souk will suddenly appear upon the road you are traveling.  This happened to us today, and besides the downtown Fes roundabouts, I think souks are the very worst places to have to drive in Morocco.  Souks are weekly markets where local farmers, fishermen, butchers, sellers of imitation “Crocs”, and a host of other entrepreneurs gather on both sides of a teeny-tiny street to peddle their goods, one that would be for only one-way traffic in places like Albuquerque or Silverdale.  Instead of blocking the souk area to traffic, city officials allow cars to travel in both directions and park wherever they like.  Or, make K-turns.  Jim and I debated briefly the feasibility of turning around and going out the way we had come in – others were doing so – but decided that if we hugged the bumper of the taxi ahead we would come out the other side eventually.  During the drive, we got some help from souk shoppers in negotiating a few particularly tight spots.  The gendarme was helpful, too, making an oncoming delivery truck skootch over just a tad so we could make a left turn.

We made it through and out the other end unscathed, but then could not locate ‘bus station’, ‘mosque’, ‘school’, nor the ‘empty shell of a building’ so Jim called our Friend, who put his English-speaking daughter on the phone.  She didn’t understand where we were, so after a few minutes and the help from a passing couple, Friend said to wait right there and he’d come get us.   He did, and we followed him right back through the souk the other way and finally to his house.

Tomorrow’s adventure – by the grace of God– is for me to drive Jim and three men to THE OTHER SOUK.  We shall, my dear husband assures me, park way far back and walk the rest of the way.

Hello friends.  We departed Morocco yesterday morning and are decompressing in Melilla, Spain, for a few days.  Now that we’re back in the land of automated McDonalds kiosks, cruise ships and abundant wifi, I can catch up on blog posts.

We are thankful that dear boy was transferred to a children’s hospital in Rabat, and that his chemotherapy treatment has finally begun.  Continue to pray for his healing, and for God’s peace and comfort upon his family during this difficult time.

Melilla is an interesting little place: an autonomous Spanish city on the coast of North Africa.  It has a nice beach, which is packed this day with sunbathers,  sail boarders, swimmers, kayakers, volleyball players and dog walkers.

There is a pretty park with a fountain, which is in front of us.  (We never know where to look when doing the selfie thing):

Also, Melilla is famous for its “modernist” architecture:

And the fort, which we’ve enjoyed in the past and will probably walk to tomorrow.

We miss you all…

This from one who rescued us after six taxis IN A ROW refused us a ride to the hospital to see our people.  We’ve taken taxis to the hospital at least three times.  But, nope.  Not today.

However, the Lord had a better plan and it was for us to meet sweet people and have fellowship in a shady corner praying for a little boy who is very, very sick.

I haven’t posted in a while because it’s difficult to write when emotions are high.  Things have settled down a bit, but we’re most likely leaving Fes on Monday so this may be it for a week or so.

Thank you for praying for E, and please continue.  He was feeling better today, but has a long road ahead.

Jim and I skipped out on the Groundhog Day breakfast at our hotel for the second morning and went for the coffee shop down the block.  The coffee is great, and so are the omelets.  Then, since we don’t usually go out to the hospital until early afternoon, we killed time walking along the “Champs-Elysees” of Fes, which was lovely —

Then to the store to pick up supplies for the family, then back to the hotel for a nap.  We had needed to add two more nights to our stay here, but the reception desk said they’d have to charge us 800 dirhams/night ($80).  (Unless, whispered the lady, you call this number in the morning and get your original rate..)  Didn’t quite understand what was going on, but also we weren’t looking forward to trying to explain the situation over the phone.

But, yay for bookingdotcom.  Got it, online, way way cheaper.

I was going to write about the street beggars who accost cars at stop lights and our shock when a group of  little entrepreneurs washed our dirty windows. At a stop light…they were quick and professional and we happily paid them dirhams.

And about the stranger who wanted her picture with me, the American lady.

Or the other one who talked to me very earnestly for a long time in Arabic.  Apparently she wanted to come home with me.

But, I’m tired, so I won’t.  Heh.

Thanks for reading.

Happy 4th from the fishbowl, friends.  Tonight let’s talk about coincidences, shall we?

First was the event with the Hanoot owner.  We asked if he had any bread, he said no.

Second, there were the little kids begging in front of Carrefour.  Like medina merchants, they are cute but aggressive, kissing Jim’s hand, calling me “madame”, asking that we share our groceries or give them dirhams.  One day we bought two extra baguettes and handed one to a girl and the other one to a little guy.  Without missing a beat, he then circled around and asked me for some water to go along with his bread.  Sorry, kiddo.

And thirdly, as I related in yesterday’s post, we were involved in a missing child incident.

Little incidents that we barely remember, these aren’t even worthy of a blog post. Except that, the day after each happened, Mohammed mentioned it in class.

He explained how to better ask for fresh bread at a hanoot.

He suggested that when approached by “the children begging on the streets, you ask them ‘are your parents still alive?’”

And today, as we were leaving class, he starts telling us about a lost child incident that happened last weekend to some friend of his son’s.  Whaaaatttt?  Coincidences?  Eh?

In other news, which is probably not related but who knows – it’s getting super noisy around this hotel and I’m looking forward to some peace and country quiet.  Last night was the worst – doors slamming in our hallway, guests arguing and yelling in Chinese (?), tapping through the bathroom walls.  Ugh.  Sleeping is not happening, friends.  Thanks for your prayers!

Be safe and don’t miss my potato salad too much.

I’ll leave you with a pomegranate: