Gwan's Year in Review - 2015

Can it really be time again for me to reflect on the year that's been? I think it's a fact of getting older that the year seems to fly by but simultaneously it must be going super slow since things we did back in spring seem like half a lifetime ago. Last year was another year of change - new job, new apartment, new country, so this year is...

2015: Finally a bit of stability

That's right, a whole year (and more) in the same job, same city, same apartment. That might not seem a huge achievement, but let's see, since the first time I moved to Europe in 2006, I've lived, at least briefly, in Prague, Moscow, London, Northern France, Chamonix, Wellington, Auckland, Nice, Tours, Metz and Brussels, and I think this is the first and only year since 2012 where I haven't moved at least once. Jules moved in here, and we're planning to move when my lease is up next June, but still. This year at least, I stayed put.

It was a busy year. Before Jules moved here, we aimed more or less to take turns, one weekend in Brussels and one in Luxembourg, so adding in quite a few holidays and long weekends meant that I was fairly frequently home only one weekend of the month or so. Which could be exhausting at times, but kept us out of mischief.

Last year I divided my travels into trips abroad, and "domestic" trips, in which category I included Belgium, France and Luxembourg. This year I can't really count France as a domestic trip any more, which leaves less to work with, so I'll divide it by longer trips and weekend breaks, with a little bonus section for the glories of Belgium.

PS I took literally hours writing this, putting the photos in, all the links etc. and then AFTER I published it I went back to tinker with some of the spacing and so on, and I managed to delete the. whole. thing. And there was no "undo/back", it just went blank, AND I managed to unpublish it as well. Thankfully I found online a tip to go into feedly and pull it off the RSS feed, which worked, but that's why the formatting is wonky. But thank Christ I at least got all the text back. This might be the final straw with me and Blogger though!

Onto the award portion of the review - 

Best proper holiday

• I kicked off the year's travels early, with a trip to Marrakesh, Morroco with my friend Liz in January. My overall impressions of the place were, um, not great. The constant badgering and cat-calling got old pretty fast, and while we saw some nice museumsand palaces and enjoyed some winter sun, there wasn't really any "wow" moment that compensated for the general experience of harassment. It was just after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, but I didn't feel unsafe in anything except a gender-based way, but the sad events of the year might make me even less likely to want to visit in future (I know Morocco isn't Tunisia, but honestly there's nothing really coming up in the pro visiting column for me right now). Still, at least I've been there, done that, bought the lamp. 

• We spent Easter at Lake Constance/Bodensee, Germany, via Freiburg and a three-star lunch at the Auberge de l'Ill. Freiburg was super charming, I was sorry we didn't have more time there, but the drive through the Black Forest via Titisee toUberlingen was stunning. While in the area, we saw some beautifully frescoed old churches on a very rainy day on the island of Reichenau and finally got a bit of sunshine in the chocolate-box-cute village of Meersburg. 

• The really big trip of the year was our two weeks in Albania and Macedonia in June/July. Without giving anything away, this really was an amazing trip. I blogged about it at great length, so if you missed anything, start here and there's another dozen or so posts for you to enjoy. There was plenty of history and culture along the way, but what really stuck with me were the stunning landscapes, whether it be the"white city" Berat, stacked up on a hillside (the photo above is an old church on top of the hill), the gorgeous sandy beaches of Himare and Drymades, the Roman ruins of Butrint, the Blue Eye spring, stunning river and mountain vistas on the road toKorce or the amazing red roofs of the lakeside city of Ohrid, Macedonia. All this in a country not (yet) too touched by mass tourism and still as cheap as chips. We loved it.

• After spending the rest of the summer at home, in September we crammed in another longer break with an awesome road-trip to the South-West of France and back. On the way, we drank wine and saw the sights in Beaune, visited the Cathar castles ofCarcassonne, Montségur, Peyrepertuse (pictured above), and Quéribus, saw the picturesque small town of Lagrasse, stopped in at Albi to check out its beautiful and imposing cathedral, drove past and over the viaduct of Millau, and ate a lot in Lyon. If you have only time to do one thing, definitely go see Peyrepertuse. Just look at the amazing views in that photo and imagine how much better it is in real life!

And the winner is...

Not much room for suspense here. Our French roadtrip was great, but we had an absolutely fabulous time in Albania and Ohrid, I really can't recommend it highly enough. Go before everyone else does! On second thoughts, maybe I should keep it as my little secret... Go to Morocco instead ;)

Best short break

• Our first real weekend away of the year was our anniversary trip to Champagne, France in mid-March. We had a Michelin-starred lunch in Reims, enjoyed a spot of light wine-tasting in Hautvillers and again in Epernay and toured the de Castellane domaine. I think my favourite part was taking the scenic route from Reims to Epernay. Almost makes me wish I were the cycling type!

• Our next long weekend wasn't until late May/early June, when we took our traditional annual pilgrimage back to Tours, France for the Vitiloire wine festival. On the way, we took our first trip to the stunning château Chambord, well worth a detour. I feel a bit nostalgic looking back on this trip. My sister has come over, often with friends, several times for the wine festival, and I know she won't be there next year as she's moving back to New Zealand (exciting!) With that and the fact that a lot of my good Tours friends have also moved away (Caro will also be gone in NZ), Vitiloire next year just won't be the same...

• Still, there was some time to catch up with family this year, with not one but two trips to London. I've seen quite a bit of London over the years, but there's always more to explore and revisit - we saw an Escher exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, went to the British Museum, Natural History Museum and the National Gallery, and still had some time for shopping, and most importantly, eating and drinking with family and friends.

• My Tours friends and I, now being scattered throughout Western Europe, try to find the time to catch up together a couple of times a year. This year, Liz, Mel and I met up in Bordeaux in October (how nice to have the convenience of a large airport on my doorstep). Relaxing was higher on the agenda than sight-seeing, but we highly recommend the Maison des Vins where you can taste great wines at a great price in a very salubrious atmosphere - just make sure you come early!

• My last little trip of the year was to Edinburgh, to visit my friend Caro and spend my birthday weekend in style. I loved the shopping, enjoyed the Edinburgh Dungeon and a free walking tour, and had a weekend full of warmth, friendship and laughter. (Dear God.) Couldn't have asked for a nicer birthday, and the weather was even good some of the time!

And the winner is...

This is a tough one! I do love a weekend break, maybe even more than a longer holiday since they can come around more often and bring a special little bit of sunshine to everyday life. I could really name any one of them, but perhaps because it's fresh in my mind I'm going to give the nod to Edinburgh.

Belgian delights

• Remember back when it was cold? I shouldn't jinx things, since the current winter temperatures are about what winter is like back home, and it suits me just fine. But on a very cold and snowy day last December (so, yes, 2014, but after last year's roundup), we visited the Reading Between the Lines church in Borgloon, which I have to mention here because it's such a beautiful spot, it doesn't deserve to fall between the cracks of 2014-15. 

• Sticking close to home, I have to give another Belgian shout-out to the spring delights of the bluebells in the Bois de Halle/Hallerbos and also the famous Royal Greenhouses at Laeken. At Easter, we also stopped by Luxembourg to check out the traditional Easter fair at Nospelt which revolves around clay bird whistles.

• In May, we took a daytrip to Bruges, where unfortunately my suggestion to take the train was unheeded and we got stuck in some awful traffic. We saw some pretty/interesting things at the Memling Museum but overall the impression was: Bruges on a holiday weekend, never again.

• By contrast, somewhere I think is seriously underrated and I'm surprised I haven't been back to yet is Mechelen (Malines). There were so many interesting sights we didn't have time to see in our brief morning visit - the cathedral with its belltower you can climb up, the deportation museum and the De Wit tapestry workshop, to name a few. But the city is also great just to walk around, particularly its floating river walkway and grand place. It's so close to Brussels too - we really have to pick a sunny day sometime soon for a return visit.

• I should have called this "Benelux Delights", as I'm going to sneak a bit ofLuxembourg in here. (Talking of Benelux, we haven't managed a trip to the Netherlands yet, will have to remedy that next year.) We visited the castle ofBourscheid on a beautiful June weekend and were wowed by the stunning views of the surrounding countryside, traveresed by the river Sauer. 

• I'm a very lucky girl, and this year I got to go again to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa Francorchamps. The unpredictable gods of Belgian weather really smiled on us this weekend, and we had the most perfect sunshine to finally see Lewis Hamilton win. Going General Admission was a different experience, one with added stress but also added fun finding different spots to take in all the action.

What's next?

I expect next year's travel will mostly consist of short trips, since Jules is in a new job and can't get a lot of time off. Short trips except, of course, our month+-long sojourn in New Zealand next February/March, which is really coming up right around the corner! I really want to go to Georgia and Armenia, but it's looking like it won't be next year, due to the difficulties in getting time off. I need to get them under the belt in case it goes all war-ry again though - I'm so pleased I went to Ukraine back in 2011, although not so happy that I didn't make it to Crimea. I think a compromise for a shorter-haul trip might turn out to be Iceland.

I got promoted recently, and officially start my new job in January, so that's something to look forward to. And as mentioned, we will probably be apartment-hunting once we get back from New Zealand. My current apartment has been good to me, but it's a wee bit too small for two people, particularly the half-size fridge. Definitely not looking forward to a move, but kind of exciting to start dreaming about our new home.

Hope 2015 has been good to all of you, and I wish everyone a very Happy New Year 2016!

Boxing, chocolate and tombs: Marrakech days three and four

I'll try to wrap up my last two days in Marrakech this time. On Tuesday our first port of call was the Bahia Palace, built in the late 19th century by one of the Sultan's Grand Viziers and dedicated to one of his wives. As with the Museum of Marrakech, it seems like there's going to be more to see than there actually is. As with all the other buildings we visited, the elaborately-decorated walls and ceilings are beautiful, but there wasn't anything else in there to see.

The courtyard of the Bahia Palace - hard to photograph due to all the greenery

Ceiling in the palace

More ceiling

So again, it was pretty early when we left the palace and set out for the Saadian tombs. First we stopped off in a shop where I wanted to buy a little present for Jules. In another of those trademark magic Marrakech moments we've all come to know and love, Liz and I had a whispered conversation as to whether the shopkeeper was watching porn on his laptop. We couldn't see anything, but some of the noises going on where a little explicit. In the end, we decided it was probably a sex scene in a movie rather than porn, as the background noises changed to something else, but it was still a bit dodgy.

For some reason, we still persisted with the transaction, and here was my chance to bargain. There are no price-tags or anything, so I just fixed an idea in my head of how much I wanted to pay and was surprised when the guy's opening offer came in well below that. I still bartered him down a bit for form's sake, but I didn't bother pushing too hard. It wasn't until after we left the shop and Liz remarked I'd given in easily that I realised it was actually ten times what I thought I was paying. D'oh! You'd think I'd be able to keep in my mind a (rough) exchange rate of 1 euro to 10 dirhams, but apparently not.

We then proceeded to get pretty lost in the Mellah and Kasbah neighbourhoods trying to find the Saadian tombs. One guy was very insistent that we turn left down a certain street, but with the help of a map, we were sure we should go right. Right turned out, as he had said, to lead not only to a dead-end but also a large refuse heap. And then we had to go back past him to get out again, giving him the opportunity to say "I told you so". Ironically, however, he was *still* lying about the way to go - the tombs were actually hidden away back the way we came.

The 12th Century Bab Agnaou gate, near the Kasbah mosque and Saadian tombs

The Kasbah mosque

Me, rocking it

First, a quick lunch break at the trendy-looking Kasbah café directly opposite the tomb entrance:

Lunch

Liz and me at lunch

I was a little obsessed with the storks we could see from the roof terrace

View from the roof terrace where we had lunch. The Saadian tombs are back there

And then on to the tombs themselves. Again, smaller and less interesting than you might have thought, but with some pretty decorations. They date to the 16th century but were only rediscovered and restored in 1917. About 60 members of the Saadi Dynasty are buried here, although there certainly aren't 60 tombs on display.

Inside the Saadian tombs

Now home to kitties

The 'room with the twelve columns', the most beautiful of the tombs, houses the grave of the sultan's grandson

Shortly after taking this photo, this turtle totally bailed off the side of the tomb and then tried to style it out by eating grass with his bum sticking up in the air

Full disclosure, this is where it gets mildly embarrassing. Remember how before I said we stumbled across a supermarket selling Galaxy chocolate out near the Jardins Majorelle? Well, we just saw the little bars they keep by the checkout to tempt you with, and for whatever reason, we just grabbed one milk and one caramel bar each. (I don't know what Liz was thinking, I'm pretty sure I just didn't want to grab a hundred bars and look like a massive pig in front of an actual thin person.) But when it came to eating the chocolate back in the hotel, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth that we missed the chance to get more. So it was that we ended up spending a pretty big chunk of the rest of the day trekking back out to the suburbs to go in search of more Galaxy chocolate.

Remember that Simpsons episode where Homer sues the all-you-can-eat seafood place and then Marge breaks down on the stand describing how they drove around looking for somewhere else to eat and finally went fishing? Yeah, it was pretty much like that.



(Can't find the whole clip, unfortunately.)

We walked back into the city from the supermarket, in the Guéliz district. This was where we got the most hassle, and it was even more disturbing when the guys were following us because it was just a non-descript suburban area with no clues as to where we were or where we were going. Eventually, though, we did end up back walking through the souks to Jemaa el Fna. We ended up in one shop where the guy had a whole wall of photos of famous people who had visited his shop. For some reason, the three he pointed out to us in particular were John Major, Jimmy Carter, and... Michael Stipe. Well, why not?

By the way, as well as being stalked by random men, everywhere I went in Marrakech I was also stalked by shoe-shine men. They ignored Liz's trainers of course, but were drawn like catnip to my admittedly slipshod boots. They would clap their brushes together and call out to you, starting out with the innocuous call of "shoe-shine, shoe-shine" but then progressing on to "your shoes are dirty!", "you need to clean your shoes!" which would just crack Liz and me up. It was true, my shoes were dirty, and I'm a disgrace to my family. But I wasn't about to get them shined in Marrakech where the next minute they'd probably end up filthy again. It did have the effect of making me buy some shoe polish for once in my life when I got home though!

Nut seller in the souks

As evening drew in, we grabbed a drink on a terrace with a great view of the square down below. As night falls, it gets ever livelier, with everything from acrobats to amateur boxing going on, and best of all, being up on the terrace means you can watch it all without being accosted or having to cough up money for the privilege.

View of Jemaa el Fna from the roof terrace (roof terraces are big there)

At night you could really see clouds of smoke rising up over the square

A taste of the atmosphere in Jemaa el Fna (sorry, they get pretty blurry when Blogger compresses them, but it's mostly for the general noise and so on):

Acrobats performing in the square:

The amateur boxing match - which lasted about two minutes, as opposed to the hyping of the event which was about twenty. Liz and I had much discussion about whether one of the fighters was a woman. I think yes, on video evidence, right? I'm not sure who won, but the whole thing seemed a lot flailier than a professional bout.

Liz went home early on Wednesday, and as I said, I'd had enough of the hassle by then, so I spent my day getting a massage in the morning (the woman spent a disappointingly large proportion of the time massaging my legs - outside of a sports massage, surely everyone just wants back? - and threw in a bit of gratuitous boob-touching, but otherwise it was okay) and then just sitting in the sun on the terrace at the hotel, reading and drinking wine. Frankly, I needed a bit of R&R (and sunshine!) at this stage.

Action donkey shot from when I ventured out in search of food

A glimpse of the mountains behind the markets on my last full day

Then on Thursday, it was time to wend my way home, not too sorry to see the back of the place, as you will have gathered, but with lots of stories to tell!

In the souks: Marrakech day two continued

When we had finished with the madrasa and museum, we decided to do some more intensive wandering around the souks.

The souks are mainly semi-covered (remember what I said about shade in the last post), so although you're sort of outside, you won't catch a lot of sun spending a day moseying around in them. The souks were historically divided into different specialities, such as the tanners' souks, wool souks, jewellery, spices, lamps, etc. We definitely did notice different concentrations in different areas, but there are also many places, especially nearer to the main Jemaa-el-Fna square, which are just a random mishmash of all sorts of things. Most of the time we were either lost or just wandering around with no real purpose, so although over the course of our time in Marrakech we ended up walking past some of the same places several times, I couldn't really tell you where anything is in relation to anything else.

I mentioned the insistent "guide" trying to get us into one of the tanners' yards in my first post - you can see why I wasn't really too keen to go in to one of these places in sandals (big mistake), especially since the yards are apparently literally full of dung and urine and rotting carcasses and chemicals.  For once I was glad that I had a horrific cold, but even so some of the smell got through.

Peeping into a tannery

Looking on TripAdvisor, it seems we actually got off lightly - it's full of review after review of people who say they were bullied into taking a lightening-fast "tour" of the tannery before being pressured into buying overpriced goods or tipping way over the odds for their guide. So yay for the impractical sandals!

Leather drying in the sun

Ironically, we did actually want to at least look at some handbag shops, but they seemed really thin on the ground - it seems they are hidden away inside the tanneries, the better to strong-arm tourists into after they've had their "tour".

A spice shop aka "Berber pharmacy". I didn't want to touch the spice pyramids, obviously, but I think they're just thin layers stuck on to a cardboard cone or something

After we had seen the tannery area, we ended up outside the medina and walked around the city ramparts for a bit trying to get a good view of the distant snow-capped Atlas mountains. I would have liked to take a trip out to them (they are about 60 km away) or at least go somewhere where you could get a proper view of them, but Liz didn't fancy it and, although I had a full day by myself after she went home, I couldn't be bothered joining an all-day group excursion by myself. Still, we did manage to get glimpses of them throughout our trip, with these being the best views. (Unfortunately, my plane home flew first over the mountains to Agadir, with apparently spectacular views out of the other side of the plane from me.)

Once back inside the medina, it was time for lunch. This was probably the only really tasty/memorable meal we had in our entire trip, unfortunately. I'm not sure whether the food really is bland, or they just make bland food for tourists, but you'd think with all the million spice shops they're always trying to drag you into, the food would have a bit of flavour!

Yummy bubbling hot kefte/egg tagine. I bought a kefta spice mix at the spice shop above, so I'll have to see if I can recreate something along these lines. It's apparently called a Kefta Mkaouara.

Fortified by our tasty lunch, we returned to the souks in search of lamps. Actually, I don't know if either of us actually was in search of a lamp, but we both ended up getting one, after an epic negotiation by Liz. Liz is an amazing negotiator, who manages to do it with good humour and a smile. My only job in these situations is to shut my mouth, since we both know I'm the weak link who is liable to crack at any moment and blurt out an offer higher than the asking price. First up was picking the lamps, which took a long time in itself before we settled on two - I wanted one of the big rectangular ones, like I'm sitting next to in the photo below, whereas Liz went for one of the tear-drop shapes. Negotiations started out at 3000 dirhams for the two, about 300€. After a long, long, negotiation, we eventually ended up walking out with two lamps of the same style but a smaller size for 550 dirhams, or about 55€.

I lost patience with it - honestly, I don't know how long the whole process took, but easily an hour - and just said I didn't care, I didn't want a lamp any more, but Liz, bless her, kept going for the two lamps. The guy at one stage offered her lamp at x dirhams and mine at about 3 times the price, since he obviously found my lack of enthusiasm offensive! But we finally got there in the end, and everyone seemed happy with the outcome. The guy approvingly referred to Liz as a "Berber woman" - funnily enough, this wasn't the only time this happened at the end of a negotiation. I guess they have a reputation for being tough operators, unlike your average Western tourist. This was one of the occasions where we were having a laugh and a bit of banter with the guy and it did feel like we were being treated as equals, which admittedly is not exactly a high bar, but just to put that in there that not everyone we met came across was a horrible sexist. Liz then got them to rewire the lamps for us (to put in cables with on/off switches) and test them with lightbulbs to show that they were working. And refused the suggested tip for this service! Definitely a lot more backbone than I have!

Happy the negotiations are over!

It still works!

By the way, on the way back to the hotel there was another little incident I forgot to mention in my first post. This guy physically bumped into me like three times within the space of a few seconds in the crowd in the Jemaa-el-Fna square, which I thought was weird. And then when, a minute later, he somehow circled back around and bumped into me again, I definitely knew something was up. I told Liz what had happened, and we saw him circling around the back of some stalls and walking towards us again, so I pointed and said that's the guy. He saw this and, realising we were on to him, disappeared. The only things of value I had with me were my camera and wallet, zipped in an inside pocket, which I checked on. Liz suggested he might not be after my possessions, which didn't really make me feel better about things. So anyway, another dodgy little memory of Marrakech...

After all that, it was good to retreat to the roof terrace at the hotel with a bottle of wine. We brought a few bottles over with us in our suitcases. You can buy alcohol at the supermarket and at a couple of bars (which always tried to get us to come in for a never-ending "happy hour") but other than that, not so much. It was actually really weird sitting down to dinner without being able to have a glass of wine, and, without sounding like an alkie, I could have killed for a nice glass of rosé while having a long lunch on a sunny terrace...

Mmm, Chinon