Alex and I took a trip to Morocco for my February break. We went to a number of cities and it was pretty cool. I suppose I will begin my blog with some highlights of the trip because I talk a lot about these things throughout the blog. :-P
Highlights:
Mint tea: The most amazing drink in the world. We drank it about 5 times a day, and that’s not even an exaggeration. With every meal we got it, we got it at random times in the day when we were bored in cafés, and sometimes when people were trying to get us to buy stuff in stores they sat down with us and offered us mint tea and just sat and talked to us before discussing business. That is one really cool thing that I liked. Example: when Alex and I were in the store looking at hookas to buy, the guy called his friend over who brought us mint tea from a café next door. They just give it to you like you are family, it is really cool. We talked for awhile about our lives and then finally got down to business. ie. haggling
Haggling: For those that don’t know, haggling is talking down the price of something that you want to buy. Definitely big in Morocco. Everyone does it, and I apparently am not very good at it at all. I was a lot better at the end of the trip then in the beginning, but even then I wasn’t very good at it. I know I definitely could have gotten better deals on things. But such is life, I’ll do better next time. :-P
Speaking French: It was really cool to get to speak so much French. A lot of the time a lot of the taxi drivers or store owners spoke better French than English so I got to talk to them. Alex unfortunately just had to stand around and look confused. It was funny though because I got so used to speaking to people in French that even if they would talk to me in English I would answer in French. Alex thought I was insane. :-P
Traveling on Trains, Buses, and Taxis: We spent a lot of our time in Morocco traveling from city to city, which wasn’t really cool. The train rides we took were about 8 hours each, and it was super boring. The trains were pretty nice though. They were all cabines and not seats. The bus that we took from Chefchaouen to Fez was really nice. We got to see a lot of the countryside and we met a guy who graduated from Humboldt State in CA who was traveling the world for a year. He stayed with us in Fez and we randomly saw him again in Marrakesh. Taxis around the cities were generally really cool. The drivers were really really nice and they were super cheap. For a normal ride no matter how far we usually went it was about 10 durhams which is about a euro. It was awesome. However, the grand taxis, the ones that go from city to city, were a little weirder. They overcharged and I just didn’t like them.
Food: There was the same food pretty much every city we went to. The main things were tajines (dishes cooked over a flame that can be chicken, beef, or vegetarian. They are really good), couscous (a dish with couscous and either chicken, beef, vegetarian etc), soup (Moroccan soup or vegetable soup), kebabs (pieces of meat/vegetables on a stick), and mint tea (an essential to every meal). But seriously there were the same things in every restaurant so we got to eat a lot of good stuff. I loved all the food. I got an amazing vegetarian couscous in Fez but I was so full from the soup that I had had as an appetizer that I couldn’t finish it. :-(
People: I met a lot of people in Morocco. Natives and tourists. I had both good experiences and bad. In general, the people that I went up to and initiated conversation with and the taxi drivers were always really nice and helpful. However, the people who were just trying to get money or trying to sell you something were really bothersome and annoying for me. I talked with a lot of people and learned a lot while I was there too.
Durhams: The currency. It is 11 durhams to the euro and 7 durhams to the dollar so it was really cheap. :-D It rocked. Food was usually around 25 durhams and hotels were usually around 80 or 90 per person.
Faux Guides: People who try and get you to give them money for leading you around the city. They come up to you and won’t leave you alone. It is illegal for them to hassle you but they do it anyway. There are also “official guides” which I guess are legal, but they do the same thing and its still annoying.
Shopping: There are so many shops and so many things to buy in all the cities. They mostly have the same types of things: Purses, shoes, tajines, shirts, hookas, lanterns, tea sets, pottery, drums, leather, scarves, lots of things. I bought stuff that I probably didn’t need and some stuff that I really did need and that I really like.
Morocco was a very interesting experience for me. Alex and I flew into Fez at about 9 in the morning. My friend had told me that we would have people coming up to us telling us to stay at the “brothers hotel” or eat at their “cousins restaurant” and it was very true. We were followed for a little while and we decided to just chill out in a little café. The guy there was really nice and gave us really good soup and mint tea for 8 durhams each, which is about 80 euro cents. We then grabbed a taxi. The taxi driver was really nice and when I told him that it was our first time in Morocco he started to explain everything that we were driving by. It was really cool. We got to our hotel finally, and it was really nice. We had such a sweet room with a roof terrace and a roof café. However, from our hotel that first day just went downhill. The guy that gave us our room introduced himself as an “official guide” and as much as we said no, we ended up with a guide taking us around the city. And while it was good to get to see all of the things with a native, it was annoying because he kept taking us into shops and trying to get us to buy things. Alex and I were both really frustrated, and by the end we just wanted to get out! We did get to see a bunch of cool things though like a bunch of artisan shops. We got to see the tanneries, which are big in Fez and was also really cool to see. We ate lunch at a nice restaurant which was waaaay too much food but I got to try my first Moroccan tajine :-P It was pretty good. We visited a spice shop, a rug shop, a wool blanket shop, hand carved plate shop, a clothing shop, and a few more. By the end we were just so sick of saying, “no we can’t afford that” that we just wanted to leave. But finally it was over and he let us go off on our own. We took a walk up to a hill that overlooked the city and it was really nice. We heard the first call to prayer from there. It was really cool because we were so high up so we could hear how it started out in one mosque (all the way to our left) and then got carried on and repeated to the right until they were all doing the call. So we could hear it almost surrounding us. It was weird though because we didn’t see anyone stop what they were doing to pray, which I though would happen. That night Alex and I hung out at our hostel and just chilled out from the stressful first day.
The next day we woke up early and got on a train to Tangier. Tangier was the whole reason why Alex came to Europe. He wanted to see the place where the beat writers that he had read wrote their books. The cool thing was that we found the hotel where it is thought that William Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch, which is one of the books that Alex read before coming. :-P So it was pretty cool. We had a view of the beach and everything. And that was the most expensive hotel we stayed in and it was 10 euros per person, so it was amazing! We walked around Tangier for a little while, shopped a little, walked along the beach, got followed by another guy that wanted money for showing us around. Tangier is I think one of the touristy cities too. It is a port city so a lot of day trippers come over from Spain. It is a pretty interesting city. There are a lot of night clubs along the beach and there is even a catholic church. That night we went over to someone’s house and he made us dinner and we just talked for awhile, it was pretty nice. :-D
We decided that Tangier was not really what we were expecting so we decided to cut our time there short. We took a taxi up to the north/westernmost point of Africa, which is called Cape Spartel. We were in between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. We then headed to the Grottos of Hercules, where legend has it that he split Africa from Europe. There is a cave that has rocks shaped like an upside down Africa. It was really commercialized, but it was cool to see. After that, the taxi driver took us to another city called Chefchaouen. It is in the Rif mountains and it is a little backpacker city that is just becoming popular. The streets are all blue and it is really pretty. Everyone that we met was really nice there and I bought some cool things. I had a really good shrimp tajine too. :-D It was so different from Fez and Tangier and I felt like I could finally relax and not have people always bothering me to come into their stores or give them money. It was a good break. :-D I really liked Chefchaouen, I want to go back and do a 5 day hike around the Rif Mountains. We wanted to hike around a little but it was raining most of the time, so we just hung out and talked with people and shopped. We left on a bus the next day unfortunately.
We took the bus back to Fez and met up with my roommate and some other friends. The second time that I went to Fez was a lot better. I felt more comfortable because I knew exactly where I was going and didn’t feel like a lost tourist who is in a super foreign country for the first time. We stayed there just for the night and woke up early and took the train to Marrakesh. Marrakesh and Chefchaouen are tied for my favorite cities that I visited in Morocco. When we got there it was pretty warm (such a change from all the rain) and we got ice cream! It was amazing. There were a lot more tourists than any other city and there was a lot more to see. That night we just wandered around until it was dinnertime. At dusk they start setting up food stands in the giant square. When they open and you walk in you are bombarded with people telling you to come to their stands. It’s actually kind of fun. So we ate at one of the stands and had so much food! Good food too. It’s cooked right in front of you and is all fresh. :-D wonderful. They have all the food set up just waiting to be ordered and then they grab it and cook it. :-D We then went to a nice bar that was really touristy but we didn’t have a lot of money so we just got the cheapest bottle of wine on the menu. :-P The next day we took a horse buggy tour around the city. We got to see a lot of things that we went back to the next day. We saw the royal palace and some mosques and all of the rich touristy hotels, because Marrakesh is one of the really touristy cities in Morocco. There is even a Club Med right next to the Square. We met up with some people that we had met in Fez the day before and hung out with them for a little while until it started raining again. :-( We went to dinner in the square again and this time we tried snail soup. The thought of it was more frightening than the soup itself. It actually wasn’t bad. It was really really salty, but not bad. We had soup too for super cheap. I spent less than 10 durhams on dinner: which is less than a euro. Pretty sweet. The next day we did a lot of shopping and I got to take a bath in a Hammam. A hammam is a traditional bath in Morocco. I went to an all women’s one and it was really cool because people would just come with their whole family (grandma, mother, daughter) and bathe together. I got bathed and scrubbed down; I was really dirty from not showering for awhile. It was a cool experience to be in there out of my comfort zone. We took a night train from Marrakesh to Fez and caught a 9 am flight from Fez back to Marseille. We were so afraid we were going to miss the flight and we were so ready to go home. We did not sleep that last night and I passed out on the flight. Our train got in to Fez at 2 in the morning and the bus from the train station to the airport was not until 6:30, so we stayed up in a little café playing games and watching tv. No one in the café spoke English or French so it was really kind of boring. But finally we got on the plane, got back to France, and felt back at home. :-D
Nice
Last weekend we went to Nice for the last weekend of Carnival. Nice is a city in the south of France so it wasn’t that far. A group of 6 of us went and it was so much fun! We got into the city at about 5 on Saturday and watched the parade Saturday night. We got in so many silly string fights and we pretty much participated in the parade. :-P It was not at all like parades in the states. We could walk up with people and take pics with them and walk along the route. It was awesome! I even got thrown up in one of those circle blanket things, where people hold on to the edges and you get in and you get thrown in the air. It was amazing! At the end of the night we all had so much silly string and confetti on us and no one had batteries left in their cameras. :-P We woke up the next morning and hung out in Nice. It was perfect weather! Sunny, warm, lay on the beach with no shirt weather! Finally! I missed that weather. Anyway, Nice was beautiful! We got amazing pizza at a restaurant that Saqib had found the weekend earlier when he was there and we watched the parade during the day. It was pretty much the same parade with a few differences. Definitely not as fun as the night before. We lounged on the beach for a little while too. It was amazing. Then we got back on the TGV and headed back to Aix! It was the perfect amount of time, even though it made me miss the beach and sunny weather so much! I can’t wait until summer!!!!
Everything here in Aix has been going really well. As I write this I am sitting in a café not far from my house and people watching and drinking a thé au lait which is a tea with milk. I love going to café’s. Its just so cool to sit and talk for awhile and people watch. Its so much more laid back here. Nothing is rushed like it is in the states. At restaurants in the states you sit in a restaurant and they bring your check as soon as you’re done and they pretty much push you out. Here you pretty much have to flag them down for the check even after 2 hours of sitting in the café. Its great. I finally got my grades back from the first semester of school and they are A’s and B’s. I wanted all A’s but such is life. I am getting more involved, doing more stuff here. Today I went to the big Saturday market with my roommates and we just walked around tasting cheeses, meats, spreads. It was so great. I don’t know why I don’t go there more often. I am hanging out with more French people and I am trying to meet a lot more. I am listening to a lot of French music too. A couple weeks ago a few of us went to a French concert. We rented a car and drove to it. :-D It was a singer named Pauline Croze and she was pretty good. I am going to go to a Renan Luce concert too! I am so excited, he is awesome. One of my favorite French singers. Today was a beautiful day. It has been really cold recently in Aix, but today the sun came out and everyone was out and about and it was just a general good happy feeling. I got my hair cut as well. Super short. And dyed it. I look like a totally different person. :-P
my new hair
Girl's night. So much fun :-D
I am trying to plan the rest of my trips while I am here. I am planning on going to Italy for spring break and traveling around France in summer after school. I want to stay as long as I can. I really want to stay another year too. Really bad. But I also want to go back to Chico. Maybe that’s just because I long for In-n-Out and Burritos……:-P It sucks because I feel like I am just getting more acquainted with the city and going to try new restaurants and finding new friends and learning more every day and I am going to be ripped away from it all in 4 months…but I don’t like thinking about that…Hope everyone is doing as well as I am! PS: I’m always excited to get emails and letters….hint hint. :-P
