Marrakech

There are different types of traveling. There's the "ooh a foreign department store" kind of traveling. This is what I did in Dublin. (Yeah, I kicked the ass out of Marks & Spencer). Then there's the "what the F is going on?" kind of traveling. Marrakech is more like that second kind. Granted there are more "hardcore" places than Morocco, but Marrakech is definitely a different level of foreign than Dublin.

Andy and I got to the airport and looked for a cab. We had a little trouble spotting them at first, because they were parked. I guess that makes sense... why waste gas until you've got a paying customer? BTW that reminds me of this tv show I saw about truckers. Did you know that truckers idle their engines a lot, because they sometimes spend the night in their trucks and they want to listen to the radio, have the a.c. on, etc. It makes sense, I'd just never thought about it. Lots and lots of gas goes to that purpose.

Anyway, we showed a cab driver the address of our guest house, and he told us it'd be 150 dirhams. It was late and we were feeling quite out of our element, so we didn't argue. We later found out that the going rate from Bab Doukkala (where we were staying) to the airport is about 60 dirhams.

Our cab driver Mohammad was very nice although spoke extremely little English. So when he dumped us off at a dark alley, we didn't feel super confident that we'd find out hotel. Luckily a nice guy helped us find it.

This picture is Andy in front of our hotel during the day. Imagine finding this place at night. It's a labyrinth in there.

Our very nice host Hassan welcomed us and poured us some mint tea. He served the tea hot, even though it was about 100 degrees outside. For some reason the tea was still really refreshing.

Here's me in the courtyard of our beautiful guest house. It was really unlike anything we'd seen. For the first time since I've known him, Andy was stunned into silence.

Hassan told us to go explore the square. We got down there around 11pm, and it was hopping! There were bright lights, and smoke filled the air from all the food vendors. Andy and I got talked into some cous cous. It was fairly bland, but decent enough. The veggies with it were nice. As I stared at everything and tried not to get run over by horses, motor scooters, cars, or pedestrians, it was hard to believe that back in Seattle at that very moment, people were sitting in front of their computers doing work.