Busses, bad Spanish and the best huevos rotos EVER

Back to Spain we go. And after that ridiculously stressful day in Faro, I am ready for some more normalcy.

We were more than lucky with the bus situation. We had bought tickets from Faro to Sevilla yesterday, knowing that we would need to switch trains (and companies) in Sevilla to head south to Tarifa. I searched for hours on the internet and could never find anything in the form of an actual bus timetable.  But I did know it was possible and so we thought we’d just try and figure it out. 

We caught the first bus from Faro to Sevilla, arriving in Sevilla just after noon. After I asked several confused people in terribly broken Spanish which window we would needed to visit to buy tickets to head down to Tarifa, it was finally explained, in terribly broken English, that we had to go to another bus station.  Uh. Ok?

So we boarded a local bus bound for the airport, which was promised to take us to the other station. But when the bus driver told us to get off, I saw no such station. So again, in my surprisingly terrible Spanish, I asked shop owners, passers by, a police officer. No one seemed to know where we were trying to go. Finally, a guy selling sunglasses on the sidewalk realized what I was trying to do and pointed me in the right direction. After walking to where he told us to, finding nothing in the form of a bus station, I asked one final woman in an office building who pointed us to the small staircase that led to the bus station we were looking for. Walking up to the counter, we realized that we had 10 minutes before the bus left, and it was a good thing we made it, as the next bus didn’t leave for 6 hours.

More bus riding ensued, thankfully, and we arrived in Tarifa early afternoon, in perfect time for a stroll down to the port and a stop for tapas. We checked into our hostel, a place I’d been before called the Melting Pot, had a cocktail and headed out for an early dinner. We stumbled upon the most AMAZING restaurant.  It was incredibly simple, really cheap and had the most amazing food.  We had huevos rotos, which was basically a twist on a large Spanish style tortilla with eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, cheese and other yumminess. We also split a large pan of seafood paella and a couple bottles of €2 wine. The place was so great that when we got back from touring around Tangier the following day, we walked straight off the boat and back into our now favorite little Spanish restaurant. Nothing else for us to see here :)

Hangovers are just as unfortunate overseas

Location: Tarifa, Spain

Oh man. This morning was ROUGH!! I woke up about 11 and had some toast and drank a lot of water and Tylenol and laid down by the fire for a couple hours. Andrew came back from Málaga from dropping off Linda and Nicky and then drove me to Tarifa which was about an hour away.

Tarifa is this little town at the southern most tip of Spain that is the gateway to Africa. It is literally a 20 minute ferry ride to Tangier from here. This town was an old pirate town that made its fortune collecting a tax (tariff) from ships as they would pass through the straight or else shoot them down. Everything here revolves around pirates.

Today has been spent catching up on emails and blogging (as well as sleep) and so I haven't done much exploring of the town yet. Dinner tonight, however, was very interesting. Since I am slightly more confident in my ability to speak Spanish, I felt like I could go to a restaurant. I tried to order grilled tuna (because that is the specialty fish around these parts) but they didn't have any, so she suggested, that if I like fish, I should just get the fish of the day, which was a mild white fish. Ok, sure sounds great. I order a salad and some wine and make a meal of it. The salad, was wonderful, it had pineapple, peanuts, almonds, corn salsa and a really sweet and spicy honey mustard dressing. Then... the fish came. And... I should have known, but it was literally a fish. It was about a foot long and complete with a head, tail, eye balls, organs, everything. So... I ate it. There wasn't much meat, and I probably could have found more if I had felt inclined to dig a bit, but I didn't want to so I didn't find it. It came with some grilled potatoes which I assume were sharing the same space because they tasted quite fishy. Don't get me wrong, it was wonderful fish, and I enjoyed the experience, but I think I prefer my fishes filleted and head/tail-less.

Off to read and bed now, but tomorrow should be interesting!!

XOXO

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