Its About Time: Part Two

The girls (Leah, Amy and Amy) left the following morning from London.  It was sad to see our travel companions go, but Alissa and I still had two more full weeks of vacation ahead of us!  The night before we flew to Marrakech, we stayed with Alissa's friend who lives in Clapham Junction, a suburb of London.  We decided to take a taxi from the train station  because we didn't feel like walking a mile uphill with all of our stuff in the cold English weather.  Unfortunately for us, we gave the taxi driver the wrong address initially, so he started taking us back to London.  Once we realized something wasn't right, we told the guy, and he seemed a little annoyed that we gave him the wrong address because we had to totally turn around.  So we pull up to a street and asks us the number.  Come to find out, this time HE got it wrong, so we had to turn around again!  When we finally got to the house, a 5 minute, 5 pound cab ride turned into half an hour at least and over 30 pounds!!!  All I could do was laugh, or else I would cry.  We met Alissa's friend's roommate, Dave who invited us to go to the pub with him to watch the football game.  It was Easter Sunday, so everything was closed but the pubs, so we joined him.  He and his friends were quite nice, and we ended up drinking quite a bit.  We went to a few different pubs, and by 8 o'clock I was sooo drunk and hungry it was ridiculous.  Not one of my prouder moments.  So Alissa's boyfriend met up with us because he happened to be in London too, so the three of us went to dinner.  I inhaled my pasta, and went back to the house to give them some privacy and finish our laundry.  They had a washer but no drier, and we figured surely our clothes would be dry by morning.  I literally got home a little after nine, and was still quite tipsy.  I was drinking water like nobody's business.  I laid our clothes out to dry.  We had to get up at five in the morning, and when we did, I was not feeling so good, and ALL of my clothes were soaked.  I decided to wash everything because we didn't know when we would get the chance again.  Keep in mind, it had snowed the two days before in London, so it was chilly.  Well, since all my clothes were wet, including the two pairs of trousers I had packed, I had to borrow some shorts and a shirt from Alissa.  She is not a big girl by any means, but she is quite a bit taller than me, and I am pretty petite.  I looked like a crazy person in summer clothes too big for me walking to the train station.  Then, we got on the to the airport, and I thought I was going to puke.  It took everything I had to hold it together.  Again, not one of my prouder moments.  But we made it alright, and had enough time to grab a few snacks for the plane.  The flight to Marrakech was not long at all, and before we knew it, we were in Morocco!

Marrakech:

First off, it was AMAZING, and I really encourage everyone to visit.  It was desert, which I have been missing terribly in cloudy ol' England.  We got on a shuttle bus which took us straight to the Medina.  We saw camels and many people riding scooters on the way there.  Our hostel had given us directions, so we assumed that it would be easy to find.  Well, the Medina was quite overwhelming, and Morocco is an Arabic Muslim society which is quite different from our usual lives.  Barely anyone spoke English, mostly Arabic, French and maybe a little German or Spanish.  We wandered around for at least an hour basically clueless and overwhelmed.  Finally, we decided to stop for lunch because we figured we would be in a better frame of mind with a full belly.  An English couple sat next to us, so we asked them for directions, and they pointed to where they thought we should go, which turned our right.  For lunch we shared a lemon-chicken tagine and mixed salads.  They were delicious.  After lunch and another half hour search through the souks, we found our hostel, which is actually a Riad.  (Riads are big houses that are owned by large, wealthy families.  The new trend is to turn these into guest houses).  It was seriously down some tiny, dark streets, with no markings or signs, it is amazing we found it!  It was the most awesome place I have ever stayed.  There was a center courtyard, a rooftop terrace to relax, a restaurant/eating area and the first night it was just us in our room.  The breakfast was included, and it was fresh orange juice, baguettes with fresh jam, crepes and coffee.  And it was cheap!  We were so blown away by our Riad.  

The Moroccan currency is the dirham and I think its around ten to one to the euro.  Anyway, things are really cheap, but they cost a lot of dirhams, if that makes sense.  So we didn't initially pull out enough money to pay for our Riad, but they let us check in anyway.  Once we put our stuff away and toured the Riad, we headed out to get some more money and tour the Medina.  It was still quite early.  In the big square, there were street vendors set up selling fresh orange juice (which is amazing, it is just squeezed oranges, but tastes like the best thing ever), dried fruit and nuts, and of course henna artists, snake charmers and other various entertainers and goods.  Alissa and I stopped and bought some cashews, burnt peanuts and dried apricots.  We then just walked around gazing at everything.  We stopped to watch some snake charmers.  And of course, suffered the ultimate tourist trap (which of course we were bound to do at least once).  A charmer came up behind Alissa and put a snake around her neck.  He said he was blessing her with his snake (seriously, no pun intended), and by doing so, she kissed the snake on the head, then he kissed it, then he touched it to her forehead.  He of course told me to take a picture of them, and of course I wasn't going to say no.  Then an older charmer came up, and put his snake on me.  He didn't speak any English.  The first guy put his snake on me too, and asked Alissa to take pictures.  Then they demanded money, and wanted 200 dirhams, which equals 20 euros, because I had been doubly blessed.  I only had 15 dirhams, since we were on our way to the bank, and he said he would take pounds or dollars, because he knew I was rich.  Alissa gave the old charmer an apricot because he put his hand out for money, and she didn't have any.  He took it.  The other guy however, was getting pretty irate, and it was making me very uncomfortable.  He said 15 dirham was nothing (its the equivalent of 1.50 euro).  But I wasn't going to give him anything more for just taking a picture.  Anyway, in the end he took it unhappily, and I felt very uncomfortable.  Lesson learned, but we got awesome pictures! : )

We finally got some cash, and continued to wander around.  We grabbed some ice cream, and had some small children come beg from us, one of which simply hid his ice cream behind his back to make it look like he had nothing.  

We had dinner at the same restaurant that we had lunch, on the rooftop terrace.  I had a lamb tagine and Alissa had couscous.  We also had dessert, homemade yogurt, which was again, the best thing I have ever put in my mouth, and traditional Moroccan pastries.  At night, the big square puts up food stalls for dinner, and we wandered through that.  We saw some goat heads and brains.  When we went back to the Riad, it was pitch black in the streets we had to take to get there.  It was scary, and probably not the safest thing ever.  However, the girl at the Riad had assured us beforehand that it was perfectly safe, and it turned out to be, if not a little scary.  We lounged in the couches in our Riad reading most of the night, and it was great.  I didn't want to leave those couches the entire time we were in Marrakech.  

The next day we went in search of some historical sites.  We first found the Saadian Tombs, which had been built in the sixteenth century, outside the Medina.  The royal family had been buried here.  They had been walled up by the king who followed the king who built them, and weren't discovered until the early twentieth century.  They were quite impressive.

We then stopped for lunch at a fancy rooftop terrace, I had chicken kebabs, and Alissa had a chicken curry.  They were quite good.  After lunch, we sought out the two palaces in Marrakech, the first was the El Badi Palace.  It was built by the same man who built the Saadian Tombs, and was subsequently destroyed by the same king who walled up the tombs.  Even though it is in ruins, it is magnificent.  You can tell that in the past it would have been truly impressive.  After that we went to the Bahia Palace nearby that was built by the chief Vizier in the nineteenth century.  It was covered in beautiful tile, it had lush gardens, and of course a harem.  It was quite impressive as well, and we were overawed by everything that day.  

That evening, we relaxed on the rooftop for awhile before having dinner in our Riad with traditional musicians.  The food was delicious yet again, I think I ate better in Morocco than any other time or place in my life!  When we arrived, they served us fresh grapefruit juice with a sugar rim.  For dinner, they made a chicken tagine, couscous, a salad, a vegetable tagine and bread.  After dinner they served the traditional mint tea that was sweet, but good.  The musicians were very good, and got us to dance.  We tried a Moroccan red wine that was tasty.  It was a really nice evening, and so nice that it was right in our Riad!  

The morning we left, we did some quick shopping, but I didn't get anything because I thought we had plenty of time to do so while we were in Morocco.  Alissa got a nice bag and earrings.  I wanted shoes and some sort of jewelry, which I never got because it turns out we didn't have another chance!  I really enjoyed Marrakech.  The people were super friendly once we got over being intimidated.  After the first day, we figured out how to get around and bargain for things, making us feel much better.  I want to go back!