Traveling North

I had the good fortune to spend last weekend up north in Durham with some other Fulbright friends. Natalie from Napa now lives in Durham, which is a beautiful university town, and unfortunately she has to head home to the states after Christmas because she's on a half-year exchange. So we decided we had better venture north to visit her straight away. After a full week of teaching, I rushed off to the tube to get to the train station, where I caught a train to Milton Keynes to meet up with Rebecca, who has a car and planned to drive us the four hours up to Durham. I'm not usually a huge fan of long car rides back home, but being in a car has become such a novelty to me now that I was quite excited at the prospect of a mini road trip. Rebecca is a fabulous driver--you'd think she'd always been driving on the wrong (I mean the left) side of the road. We had fun on our drive, catching up with each other, sharing stories of half-term holiday trips, and watching the crazy road signs. We also quickly learned that the closer you get to the north of England, the more excited people get about the north, and that excitement comes through on the road signs, which all began to say in huge block capital letters "The NORTH."

We arrived pretty late Friday, but of course had to stay up even later chatting with our friends Natalie, Jessica and Christy. There's always so much to catch up on and so many stories to tell! The next morning we got up and set out on a nice walk through the cool fall weather to check out the town. I had heard Durham is quite posh, as it is the home of Durham University, one of the top universities in the country. And posh it was! It's a darling little town, set against the backdrop of the lovely northern England landscape and a massive cathedral and castle. We checked out some of the cute shops (duh!) on our way to the cathedral, then spent some time exploring the inside. We even climbed to the top of the tower, all 325 steps! The view from the top was amazing and well worth the huffing and puffing and moments of slight panic I felt occasionally as I realized I was trapped half-way up a tiny, winding tower of stairs.

Walking down to Durham from Natalie's house. That's the cathedral in the background.

The town of Durham is very cute!

Durham Cathedral

The cathedral's door knocker is famous because the cathedral was a place of sanctuary for many criminals and people in trouble who would run up to the massive cathedral doors and knock for safety. 

Harry Potter fans--does this look familiar?

Several scenes from the first two Harry Potter movies were filmed here.

The view from on top of the cathedral tower.

Breathtaking! 

Feeling on top of the world! 325 steps is a lot of steps!  

After our tower climb, we were all ready for lunch, so we set off for a nice cream tea, which is my favorite kind! :) I had a nice berry herbal tea, and washed it down with mini sandwiches, a scone and a chocolate eclair. They sure know how to "lunch"in this country! After gorging ourselves, we continued to walk around the town a bit longer, but by 4 o'clock we were already starting to lose our light, which meant touring more would be kind of tricky. Generally when we all travel together, we are go-go-go nonstop all weekend. But this weekend, we decided to chill out at Natalie's house with take away dinner and Harry Potter DVDs (which we picked up during ourw nice long stop at the giant Tesco-- which is like a Fred Meyer--in Durham). We even did a little coloring in a Christmas coloring book I found at Tesco. It was divine!

Here's some sights from our afternoon walk:

The next morning, we decided to take Rick Steves' advice and go check out a living history museum near Durham called Beamish. We weren't sure what to expect, really, but none of us were disappointed. Beamish is one of those cute little recreated towns with people dressed up in different roles. Rick said the best way to get the most out of Beamish was to interact with the workers, so that's just what we did. We really enjoyed chatting with the dentist, the maids, the banker, the automobile shop man, the newspaper man (my personal favorite) and just about everyone else we could find. But mostly we had fun taking a million pictures and just being silly together.

This is one of the little busses that takes you to the different parts of the Beamish museum

On the bus!

The museum is set in the most lovely countryside

The Beamish town center

At the museum, you can walk through all the different houses and shops. This is a nursery room. 

A bit of South London followed me up to Beamish! The neighborhoods on this wagon (Clapham and Brixton) are were I live and work in London! 

The print shop at Beamish

The "publisher" is making us some newspapers

The old schoolhouse

Look, I'm a teacher in England!

We also visited the Beamish farm, where this little chicken guy scooted out through the fence to go explore.

He started running down the hill when he spotted this couple...

"Are you my mother?" I think he wanted a little snack. :)

We also met this lovely big pig who was oinking and eating and snuffing around. 

I think I could easily live in this sweet little cottage.

I'm gonna be so sad when Natalie has to go home!

At about 1 p.m., it was time for us to part ways, which is never easy. While the others headed off to catch their trains, Rebecca and I began our four-hour trek home, back to The SOUTH.

Rebecca, the fabulous driver!

Headed South. Here's an example of one of some of our favorite signs. See the blue sign on the left with two slash lines? It's counting down the exit. There's another slash sign a little further up, right before the exit. The signs actually begin with three slashes, then count down to one, then you can exit.

The Rain in Spain...Wait, What Rain?

The English school system has this brilliant calendar that allows a week-long break (and sometimes two-weeks) every six to eight weeks. This does mean that we will end our school year MUCH later than back home (July 19!) but for now, I'm just going to enjoy the breaks. For the first "half-term holiday" as it's called, I headed off to the southern coast of Spain with three other Fulbrighters--Natalie, Jessica and Susan. I'm so glad we planned this trip back in August because with all the grey, cold weather, we all needed a little break to the sun. And sun is what we got--most days! Our hotel was called the Sunset Beach Club and it's in a little town called Benamaldena in Costa del Sol, Spain. It's just outside of Malaga, which is a major British holiday hot spot. We actually all thought we were going to Malaga until we arrived and the cab driver dropped us in Benamaldena. No worries, though, because our hotel was great, our view was divine, and we loved our little beachy town.

View from our balcony.

The Sunset Beach Club

Toes in the Mediterranean Sea! (The black top left corner is my shutter not opening. My little camera has gone kaput)

Susan, Jessica and I on the beach waiting for Natalie's flight to get in.

First sangria of the trip

Benalmaldena boardwalk

We arrived Saturday night and then spent Sunday exploring Benamaldena, checking out the shops, walking on the beach and of course tasting the local sangria. We also had a fun dinner of tapas. Then it was off to a small village in the hills called Mijas. We all really loved Mijas because of it's gorgeous architecture with white buildings built right into the hill sides. The little narrow streets wound up through the hills, and it really reminded me of the pictures I've seen of Greece, as well as the movie "Mamma Mia." Among the highlights of the day were posing for photos wherever we could, having an authentic Spanish coastal lunch of fresh sole, finding some exciting new treasures in the shops that we just couldn't live without, and then accidently stumbling into a wine museum that turned out to be a wine tasting shop. Score!

On the city bus to Mijas. It was a slight adventure, but we made it just fine.

Mijas shops

The woman at the hotel leisure desk described Mijas to me as the "white village made out of the hills." She was right!

Susan, Jessica, Natalie and I. The town of Mijas looks down to the ocean over a huge hillside. It's incredible!

I rode a donkey!

So did this little guy! Made me miss my Pippy girl! 

You can kind of tell how high up we are as you look down to the coastal towns and the sea.

An old church dedicated to the patron saint of Mijas.

There are little stairways throughout the town, inviting you up for a little exploration.

Having a pop-around-the-corner Mamma Mia moment (in the wrong country)

'

The "wine museum" where we tasted some lovely Spanish wines (and bought a bottle or two). 

The next day was Tuesday, and we decided to be totally adventurous, so we booked a day tour to Morocco so that we could visit the African continent. We knew traveling to Morocco on our own wasn't the safest idea, and although we were somewhat close, it was still a bit of a haul. So traveling with a group was the best plan. We got up very, very early Tuesday morning and caught our mini tour bus for a 2-3 hour drive south along the coast where we then boarded a ferry to the city of Tanger in Morocco. It was seriously one of the most interesting (and slightly bizarre) days of my life. Our tour was a whirlwind of cheesy tourist traps, but because we got to see and do so much, none of us really minded. I don't know what I was expecting, really, but I was surprised by how middle eastern Tanger was. We saw camels, a snake charmer, a belly dancer, ate a meal of couscous and meats, went shopping in a bazaar and even visited a spice shop and persian rug shop. I think these photos might give you a tiny taste of what we saw:

On the ferry to Africa!

When we got off the boat, we got into another weird little mini van, then drove up the hills to this place...

Then they stopped the van and had us get out and see the camels. It was odd, sad and depressing. These are two baby camels who didn't seem too happy to be part of a road-side attraction. This photo is taken from the van, in the rain, which is why it's so crappy.

Then they dropped us off in the city and we did a nice walk through the old, narrow streets with our two tour guides.

This is our main guide, teaching us something I've forgotten (oops!) but check out those crazy electrical wires!

The grey behind/below us is the Atlantic Ocean meeting the Mediterranean Sea. How cool is that?

We also stopped to see a snake charmer who had a huge cobra!

I jumped way back at this point. Gross!

The streets of Tanger have lots of neat archways, tile work, and tons of stray cats.

This street was much more ornate than most we saw.

Our first course of lunch.

There were random cats running around the restaurant...slightly sketchy... 

Main course for lunch. That's couscous with chicken, cabbage and carrots.

She's blurry but that's the belly dancer who performed at lunch.

Then it was off to the "rug demonstration" as the guide called it, where the man tried to sell us a bunch of gorgeous, out-of-our-budget carpets.

So we headed downstairs to the bazaar for the cheaper stuff to haggle some deals.

And our last stop was at the spice shop where this man (who Jessica nicknamed Dr. Spice) sold us all sorts of goodies.

Throughout the day, it was raining quite a bit, and these men were always following us trying to sell us stuff like this cool umbrella I got for a whoppin' three Euro. What a bargain! Too bad I couldn't fit it in my suitcase to bring back to London.

We also met these two Canadian couples who were so nice and funny. The eight of us watched out for each other all day, and we really enjoyed their company.

We decided not to let any sand gather at our feet, so the next day, we took another day tour to Seville (or Sevilla as they call it). It takes about three hours on the bus to get to Sevilla, which is the most lovely city! The buildings were gorgeous, the architecture amazing, and we had a nice tour of a few local attractions, including the cathedral. The Sevilla Cathedral is the third largest in the world, and it's also the burial site for Christopher Columbus. After our tour, we had a couple hours of down time to wander around, grab some lunch and of course, purchase some treasures. Then, it was back to Costa!

Sunrise in Costa del Sol

On the bus for our three-hour tour...to Sevilla!

At the gorgeous Plaza Espana

Yay VDT Tours--who got us successfully there and back to Tanger and Sevilla

A Christopher Columbus memorial

More cool, narrow streets...but a little bit prettier than Tangier :)

This is the palace, which we didn't go in

The palace

Seville Cathedral

Christopher Columbus' tomb inside the cathedral

Such a beautiful city

Doesn't it look like you're in Epcot Center at Disneyworld in their little 'Spain' or something?

The Golden Tower, another Sevilla landmark

The next day, we were pretty tired, so we did a little shopping and wandering, then Jessica and I took a long walk along the beach with our shoes off and feet in the sea. We had a lot of fun combing the beach for more "treasures" picking up our favorite pretty shells, stones and beach glass. When we finally made it home, we found Natalie at the pool and joined her there for some good late afternoon sun. After a while we all decided to head up to the room to change and then check out the hotel's two for one happy hour. Woohoo! All four of us definitely enjoyed happy hour and we had a lot of good laughs together.

Another tough day in paradise 

Friday was our last day in Spain, so we decided to again stay kind of close to the hotel. We had a lazy morning then took the bus to the next town up the beach--Torremolinos. This is another one of those cool towns built up through lots of narrow streets and staircases. After lunch on the beach we wandered through the shops and took lots of photos. Later that, we celebrated Natalies birthday with a traditional Spanish treat: churros and hot chocolate (to dip the churros in). It was way more fun than birthday cake!

Torremolinos 

Torremolinos

Saturday morning, we woke up early to a gorgeous sunrise, as if Spain herself was ready to wish us farewell with one final bright morning. We were all kind of quiet as we packed up our things and got ready to head back to our new homes in our new countries, but there to break the almost silence was the occasional joke we cracked or story we'd tell, reminiscing about our crazy week. We've already had so many adventures, both in our schools and in our travels. I can't wait to see what's going to happen next!

Sunrise on our final morning in Spain