Birthday Celebrations and Moldy Shoes

The rest of the birthday was fantastic. Cam and I went to lunch and ate some sort of gravy/multiple meats/cheese/egg sandwich thing that's a local specialty, then to a port tasting and tour, where we pretended to understand the nuances of port. After we ate some ridiculously expensive (for us) chorizo and shrimp and drank some beer. Next it was off to a little place with sangria and the nicest lady serving us. We headed to drink some more port at this place called Vinologia and it ended up being the highlight of the evening.

First off, we got 2 extra glasses of port. Always fun to get free stuff. The guy serving us was about our age and was the most talkative person you can imagine. He went into this 20 minute monologue about how much he wanted to go to Africa and how he watched this television special about this boy who gave a large pink stuffed teddy bear to be shipped to Angola and given to a kid, among other toys to be handed out. *not to be irritating, but that's such a waste of money. Would have been much better for the kids and the local economy to donate money and then buy things that are produced in Angola to hand out. Okay, getting off of soapbox now.* Anyway, he was great and hilarious and told us about all his previous American customers and how ridiculous he thinks people in LA are. We headed to an Irish pub after, where the waitress asked why Cam speaks Portuguese. Seriously, it's ridiculous. I know it's similar to Spanish and everything, but Camilo shows up somewhere, hears someone say something once and then just commits it to memory. Wish I could do that.

Our grand finale was a trip to McDonald's. I know, I know. Poor Camilo didn't want to go because he didn't want people to think he was a bad guy for taking me there on my birthday, but it's what I wanted to eat!! And since I'm not going to keep eating all that crap once I get back to the US I need to take advantage of it now.

This morning we packed up for our overnight train to Madrid, where Cam's mom got us a room in a real hotel!! How fancy. We pick her up in 2 days. Now, about those moldy shoes...

When we arrived in Morocco we kind of panicked. It was so cold and we didn't have shoes. Cam ended up with some cool sneakers that were terribly uncomfortable and he hasn't been able to wear. He got some new ones in Spain that are much better. I bought these terribly ugly black loafer type shoes. When they got wet in Fes we stuck them in a plastic bag and subsequently ignored them for 10 days. Big mistake! This morning Cam pulled them out of his bag and looked inside and they were MOLDY!!! Really, really moldy. I have a picture and will load it when I next use the internet. It was so gross!!! Needless to say, they were left behind in the hotel room. I feel bad for the cleaning lady.

Thanks for all the birthday messages!