downstairs dave your punishment is over/ the story of chefchauen the blue pearl of morocco.
i took it into my heart to stop punishing downstairs dave with my two dead cars in the drive way. actually it wasn't about downstairs dave at all. i was just suddenly ready to clean them out and get rid of them. i'm like that sometimes. i have sudden shifts from not ready to ready with no visible or noticeable catalyst that made me ready. it's like i'm suddenly free from some block, emotional, mental or psychological--whatever and once that happens getting the actual thing done is easy. i cleaned out both cars tuesday night after young womens in the matter of half an hour. the next morning i called a car junk place that i found on the world wide web (btw it was the www's 30th birthday the other day) and today the guy came and gave me the cash and took them away. done and done. now i park in the driveway. now dave's alive soul can rest in peace.
maybe d.s.dave can put away the hose that has been a tripping hazard on the sidewalk all fall and winter long. i have arguments in my head with d.s.dave alll the time. then i catch myself. 'why are you fighting for no reason' i ask myself incredulously. then i laugh to myself and get a life. do any of you have arguments with people in your heads? like just about something you think that someone might say to you, but they haven't said, but then you are arguing against them in your head and getting all hot and bothered about it? no? it's just me? figures.
today caleb and i made the ubc cinnamon buns. hot diggity! cinnamon buns are life.
today i made everyone tell me when they thought they would die. i guess i'll probably die in my 70s. remember this prediction when my time comes.
last night i worked the social. we did line dancing which was fun.i made a dinner to go with the country theme--bbq chicken legs, potato salad and corn. but it wasn't just any potato salad. it was goooooooood. want to know everthing about it???| GREAT! so i used baby potatoes of mixed colours. you know those bags you can buy with blue, yellow and red baby potatoes? those ones. i halved or quartered them while the bacon was cooking to a crispy brittle texture. then i tossed the potatoes in the bacon grease, salt and pepper and roasted them until they were nicely browned. next i fried some purple onion until it was brown and fragrant, chopped some pickles, and sliced some green onion. i chopped up the bacon and i tossed all of the above together in a big bowl. the dressing was made with sour cream because i was out of mayo so that changed it a bit but it was still good. sour cream, lots of dijon, liquid smoke, salt and pepper, red wine vinegar, pickle juice and red pepper flakes. toss it all together and voila! you have the best potato salad ever. i like to serve it warm. and don't forget to not add hard boiled egg. ugh. we also had cookies and cream ice cream and i made hot fudge sauce to go on top. the sauce was good but it pretty much solidified to a chewable form on the melting ice cream. no biggie. i can eat hot fudge sauce in any form.
tuesday night we had spa night at young womens. i got lots of fun face masks. one was gold foil and one was gold dust and one was made from snails and one was made from tumeric and one was black charcoal....we did lip and hand scrubs and nails and i did face massages over in the corner. syster lawrance will never know how her demand one wintery night in stockholm, that i study the chapter on face massage in the swedish massage book that we had in our apartment, then come and give her a face massage, how that has effected many people and their faces over all these 23 years since that time. also my hands are strong. just saying.
let's look at my chefchauen pics. chefchauen is a city built on the side of a mountain in the riff mountains in the north of morocco. they say (and by they i mean travel bloggers, wiki writers and the like) that it was populated by jewish refugees fleeing spain and that these jewish inhabitants painted their houses blue. there are several theories as to why. one is that blue is an important colour in judaism, signifying heaven. another more practical theory has to do with repelling mosquitos? i don't know i thought mosquitos like dark colours. at any rate the inhabitants of the city today still keep it blue and tourists eat things like blue cities right up in our tourist gobs.
anas and i got to chefchauen in a taxi because all the buses were full and it was the only way. our taxi was this little beat up ancient mercedes and our driver was just as beat up as his car. we weren't driving long, and he was in a big fight with his girl friend over the phone. he asked anas to talk to her on the phone to confirm he was driving us to chauen (that's what they call it for short). she wanted to talk to me too, but she didn't speak english so that didn't happen. anyways anas ended up spending most of the ride from fes to chauen listening to the driver's tale of woe as i watched the scenery pass by waiting to hear what it was all about. what it was all about was this woman had several other 'boyfriends' who were apparently married but the taxi driver couldn't leave her. he said it was because she did black magic on him and anas seemed like he was believing him. i was all there is no magic that can make someone stay with someone against their will. anywho taxi guy drove us to the gate of the medina and then he left. the medina is walled part of the old city and there are no cars inside. and a lot of stairs. we started looking for our hotel and a local grabbed hold of my suitcase from anas and started showing us the way really fast and i glared at anas to get my suitcase back and after some grabbing back and forth the guy let him have it. he showed us the way but i think he was hoping we would stay at his hotel. he kept telling us that they wouldn't let us stay together but that's the thing--we had separate rooms.
weirdly the guy at hotel mauritania who was checking us in was also quite unfriendly to us and kept saying we couldn't stay together. we have 2 separate rooms! we don't want to stay together! arg. it was weird. eventually the surly youth took us to our respective rooms on the 4th and 5th floors. he didn't say anything or tell me anything like where the bathrooms were or anything. hmph. worst hospitality in all of morocco. but the room was cute. it was pink and had double bed and it was just little and cute and it had a window to the hall. the hotel mauritania is built with rooms all facing the inner courtyard... like in a square. like i come out of my room and look over the edge of the railing and look 4 floors down to the bottom floor. u dig? the stairs were typical of others that i had seen in morocco. winding wedge stairs of uneven heights. some steps were sooo high and others regular. anas was on the floor above me and his room was blue. the bathrooms were on his floor or the floor below me. the bathrooms were tiny little closets that i could barely fit inside. i called them hobbit bathrooms and i don't know why but they made me laugh. anas had a balcony on his floor that we checked out and then we went to the top floor and out on to the roof were there were lots of places to sit and hang out. just as we were out there the call to prayer started ringing out and echoing from one mosque to another and bouncing off the hills. we were in good spirits despite our unfwendly and unneighbouwwy hotel.
phone selfies of us on the roof top of hotel mauritania.
we went out to explore. this involved us wandering up and down the streets looking for something to eat. we didn't want to eat in one of the tourist restaurants but just between the two of us, that's excactly what ended up happening. before and after that we spent a lot of time taking pics of everything blue...which was, well everything. you see how it was. oh yeah and we managed to have a chauen food specialty... a bean soup cooked in a ceramic tajin called besara
the weather was quite cool in chauen, like between 12 and 15 and it always seemed on the verge of rain and sometimes it did rain. this didn't really bother me, but it was a real bummer for anas who lives for sunny days and can only feel truly happy if it's hot and sunny. i leant him my fleece to keep warm. weird that i had a fleece with me, me being me...but i thought the desert might be cold...it wasn't.
hey! look behind me! everything's blue!
this mural is a painting of chauen on the side of the mountain with the spanish mosque off in the hills beside it just like it is in real life! we met a guy surrounded by kids who was moroccan but strangely had a perfect american accent...like a country soldier kind of accent...i don't know if you know what i mean, but i do. this guy talked to us for a bit and bragged that he knew english better than even me. i took professor umbrage to that.
oh yeah, here's a phone selfie:
my first cat in the blue city.
don't you want a blue door with little wild flowers grow on it's awning? don't you??
and more cats just sitting around being photogenic.
we noticed people all walking out of the city and up this trail along the mountain side, and we followed them and we passed many sellers and one lady who tried to put a placemat in my hand and a man who had an ostrich...i was really tempted by the ostrich. i just wanted to look at it. but i knew if i did he would want me to pay to take a pic with it and i didn't want to do that. ostrich caught me looking at him as he ate out of a food bowl on the ground and he lifted his head through his legs and out the other side and peered back at me. i feel like if we only had a chance we would have had a connection. so anyways we figured out it was walk to a spanish mosque and since it was almost dark we decided we would do that the next day. and we returned the way we came. this is what the city looked like from there.
we were keeping our eye out for the oft instagrammed spot but i never found it. but i didn't care too much. everywhere was frankly quite instagrammable. we feasted our eyes and hearts on all the blue.
on this day i changed to runners because the cracks in my heals had turned deep and painful and bleedy and every step in my sandels up the hills and stairs cracked them even wider. wearing my runners really helped.
just a little blue door in a little blue nook, no big deal.
just after we met this bonanza of cats it started to rain and hail and we huddled under a door way to wait it out.
grooming interuptus...
cat bum
the spanish mosque... our hiking destination. fluffy clouds and green hills.
ok, so anas was worried about what if it rained while we were walking to the mosque and i was, all then we get wet. we can't live our life worrying about some rain. we gotta take chances! so we ventured out. every once in a while we'd look back and take a pic of the view..and so i have a lot of those... this is a pared down version, mkay. it never did rain and the sun came out and it was a marvelous adventure that made me happy on john's birthday.
if you look hard you can see the wall that surrounds the city and the start of the walk and the ostrich. just kidding you can't see osty, but i see him in my heart.
a closer view of the city and the wall and the gate to the outside. the wall goes straight up the mountain.
the clouds were so drama.
do you tire of these? we're just getting started pal. anas and i call each other pal. "hey pal,..." "yes pal?" that's how we talk. we're pals.
ok so this lady was there in this odd get-up and i asked anas to go stand down the path and i was taking a pic of him and i got her as well. truth be told i was hoping to. but she was not fooled. she made a big fuss about getting out of the pic and that i should give her money and i was all "i'm taking a pic of him!" but anyways i wish i had socks like that.
from afar it doesn't look as blue as it does in the streets. i think sometimes they only paint the bottom half of the buildings blue.
lovers on a stroll down a mountain.
mr bear unhappily in some cacti overlooking the blue pearl of the riff mountains.
mr. bear rest aloft a bush...
the mountain wild flowers. old ladies and girls were making flower crowns and selling them to the people as they walked by.
almost there.
and we made it. this is the view of chefchauen from the mosque. the mosque was built in the 1300s.
jump time. i got weirdly annoyed by anas' jumping at first. i don't know why. he wasn't jumping to my jump standards. lolz.
nice bum where ya from. i'm from canada, thanks.
anas asked a man to take this pic of us. he turned out to be from the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints and from salt lake city but he didn't quite get the right angle, but i forgive him. he made sure to tell us his daughter wasn't mormon.
can you tell how happy and sunshine in my soul i am from this adventure?
i see you and your selfie. later this guy asked me, in the international language of gestures, to take a pic of him with his phone and i did.
the path kept going into the countryside. i kind of wanted to keep going and see where it went but i didn't.d but i did venture out to a big tree and you can see anas coming to find me in the distance.
on the way back we saw these sheep grazing on the mountain side. i managed these pics before a boy who was watching them shoed them away angrily.
sorry but the clouds were so epic over the spanish mosque.
we ate again and i had pastilla which i forgot to have in fes. it's a fessi found. pidgeon and cinnamon pie. but the one i had was chicken. it was good. we had besara again. and we went back to the hotel. anas was tired but i wanted to explore more and he was a good sport to go back out with me. this time we went a different direction than we had before.
see the bottom rug? it's of the wall that surrounds the city and you can see the top of the city's mosque. (not the spanish one)
maybe i sped walked to catch up to this cute little old lady with a cane and snuck her pic. maybe i did.
dyes...
we went higher and higher and higher and we met some kids playing in the street and i'm pretty sure they were making fun of me because anas wouldn't tell me what they were saying as they laughed and pointed at me. i didn't care. i'm sure i did look funny, huffing and puffing. the sun was getting lower and lower in the sky and was pretty much setting...
when we realized that we were at the top of the city.
and the wall was so close. i booked it up to the top gate as fast as i could. i wanted to get there before the sun fully set. anas was very surprised at how fast i was going. he was nervous because he heard voices and he asked me if i wanted to turn back and i looked at him like he was crazy. no way hosea.
this is the top gate. the men we heard paid us no attention. and we saw the sun set over the valley.
and there's that mosque we hiked out to. it was a day full of walking.
the next morning we left early and headed for the bus. it was the beginning of the end. the bus would take us to casablanca where we would spend the night and i flew home the next day. and that, more or less is the story of chefchauen.
maybe d.s.dave can put away the hose that has been a tripping hazard on the sidewalk all fall and winter long. i have arguments in my head with d.s.dave alll the time. then i catch myself. 'why are you fighting for no reason' i ask myself incredulously. then i laugh to myself and get a life. do any of you have arguments with people in your heads? like just about something you think that someone might say to you, but they haven't said, but then you are arguing against them in your head and getting all hot and bothered about it? no? it's just me? figures.
today caleb and i made the ubc cinnamon buns. hot diggity! cinnamon buns are life.
today i made everyone tell me when they thought they would die. i guess i'll probably die in my 70s. remember this prediction when my time comes.
last night i worked the social. we did line dancing which was fun.i made a dinner to go with the country theme--bbq chicken legs, potato salad and corn. but it wasn't just any potato salad. it was goooooooood. want to know everthing about it???| GREAT! so i used baby potatoes of mixed colours. you know those bags you can buy with blue, yellow and red baby potatoes? those ones. i halved or quartered them while the bacon was cooking to a crispy brittle texture. then i tossed the potatoes in the bacon grease, salt and pepper and roasted them until they were nicely browned. next i fried some purple onion until it was brown and fragrant, chopped some pickles, and sliced some green onion. i chopped up the bacon and i tossed all of the above together in a big bowl. the dressing was made with sour cream because i was out of mayo so that changed it a bit but it was still good. sour cream, lots of dijon, liquid smoke, salt and pepper, red wine vinegar, pickle juice and red pepper flakes. toss it all together and voila! you have the best potato salad ever. i like to serve it warm. and don't forget to not add hard boiled egg. ugh. we also had cookies and cream ice cream and i made hot fudge sauce to go on top. the sauce was good but it pretty much solidified to a chewable form on the melting ice cream. no biggie. i can eat hot fudge sauce in any form.
tuesday night we had spa night at young womens. i got lots of fun face masks. one was gold foil and one was gold dust and one was made from snails and one was made from tumeric and one was black charcoal....we did lip and hand scrubs and nails and i did face massages over in the corner. syster lawrance will never know how her demand one wintery night in stockholm, that i study the chapter on face massage in the swedish massage book that we had in our apartment, then come and give her a face massage, how that has effected many people and their faces over all these 23 years since that time. also my hands are strong. just saying.
let's look at my chefchauen pics. chefchauen is a city built on the side of a mountain in the riff mountains in the north of morocco. they say (and by they i mean travel bloggers, wiki writers and the like) that it was populated by jewish refugees fleeing spain and that these jewish inhabitants painted their houses blue. there are several theories as to why. one is that blue is an important colour in judaism, signifying heaven. another more practical theory has to do with repelling mosquitos? i don't know i thought mosquitos like dark colours. at any rate the inhabitants of the city today still keep it blue and tourists eat things like blue cities right up in our tourist gobs.
anas and i got to chefchauen in a taxi because all the buses were full and it was the only way. our taxi was this little beat up ancient mercedes and our driver was just as beat up as his car. we weren't driving long, and he was in a big fight with his girl friend over the phone. he asked anas to talk to her on the phone to confirm he was driving us to chauen (that's what they call it for short). she wanted to talk to me too, but she didn't speak english so that didn't happen. anyways anas ended up spending most of the ride from fes to chauen listening to the driver's tale of woe as i watched the scenery pass by waiting to hear what it was all about. what it was all about was this woman had several other 'boyfriends' who were apparently married but the taxi driver couldn't leave her. he said it was because she did black magic on him and anas seemed like he was believing him. i was all there is no magic that can make someone stay with someone against their will. anywho taxi guy drove us to the gate of the medina and then he left. the medina is walled part of the old city and there are no cars inside. and a lot of stairs. we started looking for our hotel and a local grabbed hold of my suitcase from anas and started showing us the way really fast and i glared at anas to get my suitcase back and after some grabbing back and forth the guy let him have it. he showed us the way but i think he was hoping we would stay at his hotel. he kept telling us that they wouldn't let us stay together but that's the thing--we had separate rooms.
weirdly the guy at hotel mauritania who was checking us in was also quite unfriendly to us and kept saying we couldn't stay together. we have 2 separate rooms! we don't want to stay together! arg. it was weird. eventually the surly youth took us to our respective rooms on the 4th and 5th floors. he didn't say anything or tell me anything like where the bathrooms were or anything. hmph. worst hospitality in all of morocco. but the room was cute. it was pink and had double bed and it was just little and cute and it had a window to the hall. the hotel mauritania is built with rooms all facing the inner courtyard... like in a square. like i come out of my room and look over the edge of the railing and look 4 floors down to the bottom floor. u dig? the stairs were typical of others that i had seen in morocco. winding wedge stairs of uneven heights. some steps were sooo high and others regular. anas was on the floor above me and his room was blue. the bathrooms were on his floor or the floor below me. the bathrooms were tiny little closets that i could barely fit inside. i called them hobbit bathrooms and i don't know why but they made me laugh. anas had a balcony on his floor that we checked out and then we went to the top floor and out on to the roof were there were lots of places to sit and hang out. just as we were out there the call to prayer started ringing out and echoing from one mosque to another and bouncing off the hills. we were in good spirits despite our unfwendly and unneighbouwwy hotel.
phone selfies of us on the roof top of hotel mauritania.
we went out to explore. this involved us wandering up and down the streets looking for something to eat. we didn't want to eat in one of the tourist restaurants but just between the two of us, that's excactly what ended up happening. before and after that we spent a lot of time taking pics of everything blue...which was, well everything. you see how it was. oh yeah and we managed to have a chauen food specialty... a bean soup cooked in a ceramic tajin called besara
as we wandered back we were deep in talk about life and how people can spend too much time on fb and the internet and it wasn't meaningful at all and we bought treats and sat on a ledge and talked about life and love and purpose and all those deep things.
the next morning we got up early to to the bus station to buy bus tickets for the next day because i was freaked out that the same thing would happen to us as did on the way there. and when i looked online it looked like there were barely any seats left but i couldn't buy online unless i was moroccan and i was not moroccan. so we took a taxi down to the bus station and proceeded to wait over an hour until someone come to open the ticket office. meanwhile guys who were trying to sell tickets to their bus company kept going in and out and eyeing us, especially me, and i could not shake that hyper nervous feeling. but finally a guy came and he sold us 2 tickets, which i'm pretty sure were amongst the last ones. once that was done i felt better and caught a taxi back. it was now pouring rain. when we got out of the taxi we waited the rain out in a store. one thing about chauen, is they are not so pushy with sales. they let you browse their stores without jumping on you with ultra sales tactics. and many people we met told us this very thing, in case we didn't notice it ourselves. when the rain let up we found a little hole in the wall breakfast place that locals frequented. it was basically a counter with lots of bakery goods and then on each wall to the side, a little counter with 2 stools each and just a little spot for people to stand when they were ordering. i knew it would be my last full moroccan breakfast so i went indulgent. i ordered a big chocolate croissant on steroids, a chocolate yogurt, msemmin with cheese and honey ( flaky flat bread with many layers and they put different yummy things in it) and then i saw this amazing drink, just as anas was ordering me a plain old boring orange juice. "no no no! i want ...that--" i said with glowing eyes pointing at the fanciest drink which turned out to be called zaza. it had purreed avocado, strawberries, bananas, chocolate drizzle, and rolled up cookie straw. it was delish. anas got one too.
after my last breakfast we went back to the hotel for some down time. we both fell asleep. and it rained really hard. we could hear it pounding down. when i got up i went in search of anas. i knew the rain had gotten him down in the dumps. i cajoled him into leaving to do some more wandering adventures. so out we went.
if you look hard you can see the wall that surrounds the city and the start of the walk and the ostrich. just kidding you can't see osty, but i see him in my heart.
this is the top gate. the men we heard paid us no attention. and we saw the sun set over the valley.
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