Our first post!

Well, here we are on blogspot...we succumbed to the pressure and joined the bandwagon. I decided to make our first official post pictures from our most recent trip to Spain and Morocco since I hadn't posted them yet on our other (soon to be former) site. To give you a quick summary of our trip, we flew into Barcelona in July, where we had 2 full days before we rode a night train down to the southernmost tip of Spain. From there we rode a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar into Tangier, Morocco. We then jumped on a train to Fes, where we finally arrived at 3am. We spent time wandering the narrow streets of this medieval city, taking in the sights and sounds of the markets and vendors, and drinking mint tea with some locals. After a few days we rented a car and drove south for about 8 hours to the Sahara desert. Luckily we got there at around 5pm, because at mid-day the temp had reached over 120 degrees. It was still hot enough for us though, and we left at 6:30 for a 2-hour camel trek into the desert, led by a couple Berber guides. We got caught in a sandstorm that was something like in the movies The Mummy or Hidalgo. It was pretty intense for a while, but definitely a unique experience. We ate a delicious dinner prepared by our guides, and spent the evening hanging out with some fun people from Spain that made up the rest of our little group. We spent a toasty night in a tent and returned back to the main hotel in the morning. It was definitely our favorite part of the trip. We then drove to Ait Benhaddou, one of the biggest and most famous kasbahs in Morocco (many movies have been shot there, including Gladiator and the Mummy), and stayed in a hotel near there. The next day we drove to Marrakech, which we liked but it was SO touristy. I ended up getting sick there so we didn't do a lot. From there, we rode a train to Casablanca, where we spent the night to catch our flight in the morning. We did eat dinner at Rick's Cafe (mostly for our parents sake), and were relieved that not once did we hear "Here's looking at you, kid" or "Play it again, Sam." We were sure that all of the tourists eating there would be quoting the movie non-stop, but it actually was a pretty nice place. We flew from Casablanca to Paris, where again we had most of the day and a night layover, but by then we were too tired to do much at all.