An action-packed four days has just been spent on a whistle-stop tour covering bits of southern Europe and a little bit of northern Africa with good friend Peter (who took the pics you see on this page). We hired a car and tried to cover as much ground as possible.
Being just after the Easter weekend and after Semana Santa in Spain, Seville Zoo was eerily quiet, almost to the point where it looked close. But we’re glad we checked whether they were actually open and not just maintaining the place (it was that empty). An interesting look around. They have dinosaurs!
Not on our planned itinerary, we also went to Faro in Portugal that evening for a quick look around by the sea (I told you we really covered the kms!) I enjoyed the relative novelty – for a Brit – of the time zone change whilst driving. Portugal is on the same time zone as the UK. Much of Spain is to the west of the east coast of the UK but is on Central European Time presumably to be in sync with its French neighbours and other key places nearby, but Portugal’s timezone matches its geography.
The next day we were in Seville and the UK overseas territory of Gibraltar. Both really nice places of course but I think Gibraltar was a highlight for me. This small corner of home in the Med is a mixture of interesting and beautiful, with enough quirkiness to tick the boxes for me. We drove in and out, so experienced the full set of passport controls on both sides. There’s something quite cool about red postboxes, UK shops and signs, an airport runway you drive across and views across to Africa all combined together in this tiny nation.
Speaking of Africa, that’s what the next day was about – a ferry trip across to Tangier in Morocco. The ferry ride was interesting (with passport control, a really interesting mix of people, some taking what looked like their worldly possessions with them and brilliant views of two continents) and this little taste of a different continent was a great day out, with a walk around the town and a relaxing afternoon on the modern beach being essentials.
One of the most expensive parts of the day wasn’t anything actually in Morocco, it was a phone call I had to make to get a faulty washing machine fixed back home. The 20 minute argument because the engineer had already been out three times was eye-wateringly expensive. I did not dare switch data roaming on! Why am I mentioning my domestic affairs? Just something to factor in to your costs.
We almost didn’t get back though… we’d read (on the ferry confirmation e-mail I think) that Morocco was two hours behind Spain, so we set watches accordingly (no data turned on so the phones couldn’t update the time – see above). When we got back to the ferry port we were wondering why all the clocks were an hour ahead. It turned out (you probably see where this is going) that they were right and we were wrong. As a result of this we just missed our booked ferry but thankfully they let us on what we think was the last one of the day. On the ferry we discovered that a fairly recent decree had changed the timezone or the start date for Daylight Saving or something like that. We weren’t used to this sort of messing with the time!
After returning to Europe, the week’s trip was pretty much finished off with a quick walk from the ferry area down to Tarifa Point, the southern-most point in mainland Europe, to see where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean. Just in time for sunset – it was a long day.
