Spain to Morocco: Frustrations and Obstacles

After a great day yesterday, we had a surprisingly difficult – and frustrating - day today. It was like the travel gods just grabbed us. We had to visit the Alhambra in Granada so every team set off this morning on the 9 AM train to Granada. The Alhambra is an amazing palace complex in this really neat town called Granada in Southern Spain. We arrived by 1 PM and hauled ourselves and our luggage to the Alhambra – only to find out that they limit the number of visitors to the Alhambra each day… and all of the tickets for today were gone. URRRGGHH!!! Our options were to spend the night in Granada and line up at 7AM tomorrow morning in hope of a ticket (no guarantees) or head to the coast of Spain and cross into Morocco. The only thing that David has wanted out of this trip is the opportunity to set foot in Africa.. and to take some African soil home… so we decided to head out. This is obviously going to cost us a penalty for this leg, but if we stayed we would not be able to get to Africa.
The next train did not leave for a few hours so we then tried to eat at two different restaurants on the scavenge list.. no go. Both restaurants were closed because it was a holiday in Granada. I have no idea of the significance of the holiday but it involves every little girl in town dressing up like a Flamenco and every teenage girl was wearing red flowers in their hair. They were so cute.
We are now on our way to the South of Spain and hoping for a late night ferry to Tangers. We want to end up in Fez tomorrow but we’ve been told that the Moroccan trains are very unreliable.. so who knows. The countryside of southern spain is just beautiful. Reminds me a lot of Tuscany in Italy with hills and cute little towns all along the way.