Trains, Buses and Ferrys

Locations: Madrid, Algeciras, Tarifa, Tangier, Fes

On Tuesday morning at 6:00am, we got up to get to the main Madrid train station. The plan was to take the train from Madrid down to the coast of Spain, get on a ferry that goes across the Straight of Gilbraltar, to the Moroccan city of Tangier, and then take a train from Tangier to the city of Fes (famous for the hats-which, by the way, no one from Fes actually wears).

So, the first part of the ride went pretty smoothly. The train from Madrid left on time, and was a very comfortable ride in second class. The train took us to the town of Algeciras. To get to the ferry, there was a complimentary ferry from the city of Algeciras to the city of Tarifa, where the ferry left from. Some photos of that:

On the bus to Tarifa, we drove through a very hilly area. The entire area was full of wind farms, with more turbines in one place than I had ever seen before-I saw around 10 in the rural area of the Netherlands a few months ago, and maybe about 5 on the way to Pittsburgh from New York. Here, there were maybe around 100 turbines. They were all spinning very fast too. I guess there's hope for wind power yet...

Once we arrived at Tarifa, we got on a ferry going across the strait. The ferry was advertised as a 35 minute ride, but in reality, it was really 2 hours and 35 minutes. It was still a pretty neat ride; the boat was a decent size, able to carry cars and buses as well as passengers:

Unfortunately, docking at Morocco took a very long time-the captain of the ferry did not align it right the first time, so we had to re-enter somewhere else. As a result, even though Morocco is 2 hours behind Spain in the summer, we missed the 5:05 pm train to Fes, and had to wait for the 10:05pm train. I took the chance to walk around Tangier a little bit:

There were a lot of construction projects going on in Tangier; it looks like the city is preparing pretty heavily to become the site of the 2012 International Exposition. Meanwhile, there are still many open areas, older homes, and cows grazing right next to the roads. The last picture shows the brand new train station, with the older homes in the distance. It's interesting to see the mix of the two, and Tangier is sure to be a very different place if and when they hold the Exposition.

Finally, we got onto the train. It wasn't very comfortable, even though we got 1st class seats. The A/C was not so good, and the cabins were very narrow. We had to transfer at a city called Sidi Kacem, and continue on to Fes-with only 3 people in our cabin at that point, it was a lot more comfortable. We made it to Fes and checked into our hotel at around 2:30am. The total cost of all the trips was about $145 per person. We got to Fes exhausted, and annoyed. However, the next day made it all worthwhile. Stay tuned..