The Road to Morocco...

Okay, so Madrid was kind of boring. I was sick. The only Spanish I know is from Taco Bell. But finally, we were on a flight to Marrakech. Marrakech is one of the four imperial cities in Morocco, and by far the most tourist-friendly. There is a huge square, called the Jemma el Fna, which sits in the middle of the Medina, or the old walled city. At night, the square is filled with food vendors, selling snails and goat's head, as well as figs, dates, fresh-squeezed orange juice, Moroccan mint tea, and a little bit of everything else. The square is also home to storytellers, drumming circles, snake charmers and performing monkeys...so it's pretty much right out of a movie. When we got to the airport, we hit the ATM for some Moroccon Dirhams. The exchange rate is about 7.66 Dirhams the dollar, so I often feel rich. Of course, most things aren't that much cheaper than in the states, so a few hundred Dirhams doesn't really get you too far. But it feels nice to have HUNDREDS of Dirhams.; One thing that is seriously cheap is taxi rides. When we left the airport, we were going to take a bus to our hotel in the Medina, but three college students from Chile asked us to share a cab with them. So we crammed four of us in the back with Dad in the front, and the cab ride cost us about $2 a piece. The cab driver drove like evryone else in the middle east - I thought we might die at any moment. There are also literally hundreds of motorbikes and mopeds on the road, and no one wears a helmet or obeys traffic laws. I honestly don't understand why I have yet to see someone's brains all over the street. The students from Chile had nowhere to stay, so they came with us to our hotel to get a room for the night. By the way, if you are a student from Chile who shared a taxi with two very white Americans in Marrakech....we owe you money for the cab. We never got their names, and no one had small enough bills to split the cab fare. So one of them paid for ours. And we were going to pay them back, but we never saw them again. Maybe they tried to ride a moped... Anyway, the Hotel Ali was fantastic. We had our own western bathroom and two twin beds, with doors that opened into a courtyard. From the terrace on top of the building, you could see the whole Jemma el Fna, as well as the minaret of the Khoutoubia Mosque, from which we could hear the call to prayer. Breakfast was included with the room, and about 8 or 9 cats wandered the hotel. The cafes on the square had tables out front, and I have to say the best introduction to Morocco was sitting at a cafe, drinking a cafe au lait, and watching people go by. It was exceptionally relaxing. Marrakech also has a big red open-topped tour bus, and I am not ashamed to say we bought tickets and fully embraced our role as tourists. It was a great way to see the city, complete with an English audio tour guide. We got to go the new city, or the Ville Nouvelle, and go farther out of the city to where the huge fancy-pants resorts are. We wandered through the Medina a bit at night, and mostly had a fantastic time getting acquainted with Morocco. We purchased train tickets to Fes, choosing to bypass Casablanca as I was still sick and eager to get settled in Fes.