Morocco!

Stray Cat sitting on the tombs

We ended up buying way too many of these

Hello one and all!  To put it lightly, I'm exhausted.  My friend Michaela and I went to Marrakech, Morocco this weekend.  There was a holiday on Friday, so we grabbed the opportunity and got a flight.  Friday we hopped on the plane, after about 3 hours of waiting, lines and security of course, and had a two hour flight.  This is the first time I have been in a Muslim country, so this was very new and exciting for me. We had reserved a hostel in the medina (old part of the city) close to the Jemaa al-Fnaa, the largest square in Africa.  The bus landed us here, and by golly it felt like the biggest square in Africa. My senses were bombarded.  People everywhere, motorbikes almost running you over, horses pulling carriages, disorder, everyone trying to sell you things, beautiful colors and lights everywhere, there were a million things to look out for, and a million things to see, however we had a mission to find our hostel. This was rather like a treasure hunt, as street names are nonexistent we followed directions like turn left at the beautiful petal shaped doorway, go 45 seconds and turn into the alley after the orange seller on the right, til after the carpet-seller you come across a mosque-like building. We felt very proud after we found it, the hostel was absolutely beautiful, wonderful decorations and colors everywhere, a fantastic terrace, and of course, Moroccan mint tea with loads of sugar anytime we wanted it. We immediately went back to the square to explore. The Jemaa el-Fnaa is a rather touristy area, and there are boutiques selling everything and anything at a lovely inflated touristy price, but the first thing we did was have a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, which we had heard rave reviews about.  It was good.

It was hard fighting the urge to adopt it

 The square was surrounded by a labyrinth of traditional berber markets called souks.  There are areas dedicated to certain crafts or items such as leatherworking, spices, silver, etc, but its mostly all sort of jumbled together. The food from the vendors was quite yummy, we tried tanjine, some sort of couscous, snails, soup and had lots of nuts and dried fruits.  There was fantastic fruit to be had.  In the main square you couldn't walk two feet without being "invited" to come and eat at a stall.  They (for there was usually about 3 at a time) would use whatever means necessary to get you to come, promising free food, cheap prices, and calling you pretty and skinny.  Being young, blond tourists, Michaela and I attracted an amount of attention, especially since virtually all of the workers were men.  Most of this attention was purely to sell us things, though I did get a proposal! 

 The next day we went to the palace, but strangely, we could not find a way inside, we would walk into some portion of the wall, where a few guards would yell at us, then wander in another direction and repeat the process.  Very confusing.  I still don't know if or how people can visit it. Our next venture, the Saadian tombs, was more fruitful, per usual, there was a good helping of fantastic architecture and mosiac work.  Beautiful. 

I was amazed that when the dark fell, and things calmed down, the city was very quiet, a welcome change from the 6am parties and traffic of Spain.  You could also see the stars!  

We spent a fair amount of time in the souks, doing a bit of early Christmas shopping, and by the end I feel like I was getting fairly comfortable with haggling, and was beginning to find it fun, though exhausting. Michaela and I became enamored by the chameleons that they would sell for keeping a house bug free, and I considered trying to sneak it into Spain, but sadly decided against it.  Someday I will get one.  There were actually animals all over Marrakech, with about as many stray cats as people, turtles on the roof, people selling pictures with monkeys, snake charmers, chameleons, stray dogs, not to mention all the flies.  A very lively place. By the end of our long weekend in Morocco, we were exhausted, and surprisingly relieved to return to Spain, where there are street names, where we weren't tourists, and where we could function normally.  Now its two days later and I think I'm sick with food poisoning.  Great. I'm rather exhausted from all the travelling, and am looking forward to doing nothing this weekend. 

Just another incredible ceiling