Day 58: More Tangier

Because of our late night, we slept in till 11:30 and skipped breakfast. I showered and shaved in the morning and was ready to start the day. Unfortunately, it was raining again, so we had to modify our plan. 

First we went to a place called the Foundation Lorin where they had a couple hundred cool black and white photos of old Tangier and famous dignitaries visiting the city. I love those kinds of old pictures so this was a great free museum for me.

Afterwards, we went to a cafe near Hotel Menzah called La Giralda that overlooks the water. Despite the sprinkling outside, we could still see Spain in the distance and it was definitely raining over there too! I had some crepes and a vanilla milkshake but then I had some issues keeping them down. It must have just been a couple hour bug because, as of the time of writing this (10 pm), I haven't thrown up since lunch and have kept down some Sprite and some Pringles. I had to eat Pringles because the train didn't have any good recovery food like toast. I didn't want Pringles to see me in this haggard state, but they did and I think our relationship is still fine. Sometimes, I feel like Pringles just use me because I've got a good digestive track and they want to show off to the other chips at the grocery store. Sometimes, I feel like it's a very unhealthy relationship, but I can never say no to that face on the can; we connect. Do we need to go to joint therapy? Is a nice tupperware an okay 1 month anniversary present for a chip you recently started seeing?

After lunch and throwing up, we went back to the Kasbah to the museum. I wasn't very excited by this idea, especially because it was raining and we had to walk up some steep hills, but in the end, the sun came out as we entered the Kasbah and the museum was the best one we've seen in Morocco. It was a huge museum (the kasbah was the sultan's palace after all) and it had different rooms representing the seven periods of Tangier's history back to the first settlers in the area before the Romans. They had a lot of neat artifacts and good presentation style. The most fascinating room was all about trade through the ages. It had a huge map of the Mediterranean with each city around the ocean labelled, the trade routes from each period highlighted, and what each city would give the other cities. The map had details on over 60 goods and 50 cities. 

Afterwards, we got our stuff from the hostel and went to the beach. There was a food court next to the beach that had Dominoes and since the rain started picking back up, we hung out there instead of the beach. I didn't have any but it looked and smelled good. According to Meredith and Ariel, it was not as good as Pizza Hut.

Our train left at 5:30 and we got there early to get seats together. The train filled up too, so we had planned this well. On the ride back to Fes, I watched the movie Winter's Bone, Jennifer Lawrence's (of Hunger Games fame) breakout movie. It's about her struggles in Missouri, raising her two younger siblings, dealing with a mom who has checked out of the family, and trying to track down her dad who makes meth because he has to be in court in a week or their house will get taken because he posted it as bail. I didn't think it was that great, but it won the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Drama two years ago. We got to Fez at 10 and found a cab that would take us and use the meter, which never happens at the train station and especially not after dark. Then it was bed time.

Day 57: Seeing Spain

Our plan was to spend all day in Assilah and then to take a 5:30 train to Tangier which is only 45 minutes to the north. When we woke up at 9, it was raining, so we changed our plans. In the morning, as it cleared up, we walked around the medina and looked at all the murals. We explored the medina even more than I had last time so I got to see some cool murals I hadn't seen yet. Afterwards, although it was sunny and clearer, we didn't trust the weather to hold so we caught a 1:40 pm train to Tangier. There was no one to buy tickets from at the station, but no one checked them on the train either, so our 16 dh ride was free! 

Assilah medina

One of the many murals in Assilah

When we got to Tangier at 2:30, it was beautiful. The sun was shining and you could see the ocean from the recently renovated train station. It is a huge city with a small medina, a large centrally located beach, and tons of big buildings and well-contained urban sprawl. I'm very happy we chose to visit it because it strikes a great balance between its traditional side and modernity and is a good example of how Morocco could be. We were barely heckled the whole time we were there and the city transitions very well between the medina and the Ville Nouvelle that surrounds it. It is all contiguously Tangier, unlike how Fes is two separate beasts. With all its hills, Tangier reminds me a lot of San Francisco. 

You can also see Spain 8 miles away across the Straits of Gibraltar, even on cloudy days. Seeing its proximity and the huge ferries that are constantly making the 35 minute run, I understand how Moroccans could get so jaded and eager to leave for Spain. Illegal immigration is a big problem for Morocco and Europe and many have lost their lives attempting the crossing. The land on the other side is exactly the same and everyone on both sides can speak Spanish, but when you throw an 11 to 1 exchange rate into the mix, it's hard to ignore the greener grass just across the Straits. Europe doesn't want Moroccans, and Morocco has lost a lot of its young talent to the allure of Europe. Moroccans have a terrible time legally leaving Morocco because to get a visa to Europe, you must prove you have over 15000 Euros in assets. Even if you have that much, you still have to deal with inefficient bureaucracies and a shortage of visas. It's not a very pretty side of Moroccan/European relations.

Our lunch spot with Spain in the distance

We spent the day walking around the medina and the Ville. We went up to the Kasbah to have the best view of Spain and had lunch on the terrace of a nice small restaurant. We tried to visit a bunch of museums but they were all closed. We went to the beach though and to the Gran Socco, a big fountain and central meeting point in Tangier. We also stopped by the Hotel Mensah to see its storied Caid Bar. It's a five star hotel built at the beginning of the 20th century that has housed the likes of Winston Churchill and other famous people. We had dinner in the medina at a fancy restaurant called El Jedad and the food was delicious. Afterwards, we were planning on going out so we went back to the hostel to drink and change.

At the beach in Tangier

All the clubs in Tangier are along the beach, including one called Miami Beach! It's a nice situation though because there is a bluff, so they are all below street level and you can still see the beach over them. We went to a club called Beach Club 555 that has a gorgeous pool and a good scene. Alice came up from Fes for the night, so we met up with her at 555 at 1 am and had a blast together. We danced a ton and the music was super loud. It wasn't the best music because Moroccan dance music features a lot of elements of Moombahton, a genre of electronic music that is percussion-heavy and features a lot of drums. There's not many words, but there's a lot of bongos; it's still fun to dance to but I would have preferred some American pop music. All in all, it was a lot of fun being out in Tangier and being right next to the beach. We could see a few twinkles from Spain. I went home at 3:30 am, but the others didn't walk home till the club closed at 5. It ended up being a packed, but fun, day with a lot of walking and a great ending.

Day 56: Assilah 2.0

So this weekend, Meredith, Ariel, and I are going to Assilah and Tangier. Of the three of us, I'm the only one who has been to Assilah and none of us have been to Tangier.

We left from Fes at 7:10 on the train. Meredith barely made the train with only 30 seconds to spare, and unlike last time, I didn't oversleep my alarms. We all napped on the way there and got to Assilah at 11:45.

We walked down the beach to the medina and headed straight for the hostel. We stayed in Christina's house again and she has not gotten any less spacey since we were last here. We went to a delicious restaurant for lunch where I had calamari and then after lunch, we took advantage of the sunshine and went to Paradise Beach. We decided to take a horse cart there and then walk back while the sun was setting, but it was less glamorous than it sounds. The horse cart, which we had been picturing as something similar to a Central Park buggy ride, was literally a two-wheeled flatbed cart with a blanket on it. It cost us 100 dh because Meredith and Ariel wouldn't let me haggle but it was an experience. We had to hold on for dear life and got bumped around so much that we will probably have neck problems tomorrow.

The beach was just as gorgeous as it was last time, except we weren't the only ones there. There were a couple soccer games going on at the very north end of the beach and probably like only 150 - 200 people total on the beach. We walked 10 minutes down the sand though and had the entire south half of the beach to ourselves with no one within a couple hundred meters to the north and no one at all to the south of us. We, in effect, became the Kings of the South and would get mad any time anyone, or any sheep, entered our Southern territories. To explain, sheep were grazing on the hills next to the beach.

We swam for a while because the water was warmer than in Essaouira. We buried Ariel in the sand and made silly bodies for her out of rocks. I pooped behind a rock but took caution not to burn my cheeks. We saw two huge washed-up tunas that were each over 100 pounds and over 6 ft long. An army truck came and removed them both while we were there. We also saw a huge jellyfish that had washed up and was over two feet in diameter. 

Our three and a half hours at the beach were fun, but we started walking back at 7:45 to catch some daylight. The sunset was marred by some clouds, but we still got some views. I had fun jumping around on the big rocks again while we walked. For dinner, we ate at one of the restaurants on the main boulevard. I had more calamari and then after we went back home and passed out just after 11. 

In other news, I found out I'm going to be a Presidential Scholar next year, a Dartmouth program that pairs bright students with faculty members to do research. I applied for it back in March and was selected by the professor I wanted to work with. I will be doing computer modeling of language shifts by creating multi-agent virtual worlds where the agents interact, communicate with one another, and live like humans, all under the guidance of the computational linguistics professor in the Linguistics department. I'm excited and Dartmouth gives me some grant money too.

Day 50: Surf's Up

Day 8 of our 9 day trip

Plan: Essaouira

I slept in until 10 and then went to the terrace for a gorgeous breakfast overlooking the sea. In the morning, Elle, Marissa, Ron, and I went shopping. Most people had already left, but we ended up running into them and swapping people. I got some shopping done but not nearly as much as I had planned to. At 1:15, I grabbed some chawarma and sprinted back to the hotel where Ariel was waiting for me. She was waiting because at 2,….

We were gonna go KITE SURFING!!!

We walked like 2 miles down the beach to find out that we couldn't actually go kite-surfing because there is a 10 to 12 hour certification process and we would have only been able to do the 2 hour safety and on-the-sand class today. Instead, we saved our 55 euros and rented surfboards and wet suits for the rest of the day for only 165 dhirams. We exaggerated our skill a little, especially me, so that we didn't have to buy lessons too.

We hit the water at 2:15 and stayed in it until 5:45. I discovered a sea fiend in Ariel that rivals myself. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, she was a more experienced and better surfer than me too! With some adjustments and help from her, I was riding the 4-5 foot waves all the way into the ankle deep water. We had so much fun and the water temperature didn't bother us at all. I could not have imagined a better day at the beach. We don't have any surfing pictures because neither of us brought our cameras. The next album won't have any beach pictures because I never wanted to risk getting sand in my lens.

The fish I got is in the bottom left

Ariel and I walked back to the hotel at 6, stopping for ice cream on the way. Marissa, Elle, Ariel, Meredith, and I had a sunset dinner at the food stalls. I got a whole sea bass and grew three new chest hairs when I ate the whole thing. Afterwards, we did some shopping and had some fun bargaining. 

Yum

Most people wanted to stay in tonight and watch the Big Lebowski on the terrace, but Marissa and I wanted to go out. Elle was M.I.A. with a fever, but Marissa and I had some mixed drinks on the terrace before going back to Le Chrysalis at 11:45. It wasn't that crowded though so we decided to check out a bar called Taros that we had seen in Lonely Planet (official bible of the trip). It had a swanky rooftop terrace that looked like it had been transplanted from the Hamptons (never been there but it seems plausible). We sat there for an hour and talked before going back to the hotel. I crashed at like 1:30 in my comfy bed, happy to not be sweating liters like the night before. Yes, I did just embrace the Metric system.

Lastly, Happy 15th birthday, Sarah Roberts! Don't crash Mom's car on the way home from the DMV with your permit. You may be 15 now, but 15's not the new 21, so don't get your hopes up for anything fun yet! You still have three long years of high school, standardized tests, and college applications ahead of you. Welcome to Hell!

Day 49: The Sea

Day 7 of our 9 day trip

Plan: Marrakesh to Essaouira

Deaprture at 10. Woke-up, had breakfast, showered, got in the van, tried to ignore my iPhone weather app which once again said the high for the day in Marrkesh was 104. The two hour drive through the arid fields to Essaouira was painfully hot and I passed the time reading our next book, Leaving Tangier, by Tahar Ben Jelloun. It's all about a Moroccan boy who gets his sister and himself tickets to Spain by being a Spanish artist's gay lover. It's a decently explicit book, but a good read nonetheless. 

We stopped at an Argan oil co-operative on the way to Essaouira where women walked us through the whole process of shelling and grinding Argan seeds to make Argan oil. It was a more enlightening trip than the visit we made to the women's NGO with Prof. Sadiqi.

We pulled into Essaouira at 1 to a cool sea breeze. We were officially free to do as we please from this moment until Sunday morning at 10 am. Our hotel, Dar L'Oussia, is gorgeous, right inside the medina walls and a minute's walk from the huge curving beach. Essaouira is located on a point with a big protected beach stretching out to the south and a windier and more exposed beach extending north from the city. The medina strikes a perfect balance because it's walled-in, busier than Fes but not as fast as Marrakesh, open streets, and lots of shops. It's also very well maintained. 

For lunch, Marissa, Ariel, Elle, and I went to these fish stands near the beach. They put out a huge selection of the catch of the day, you choose what you want, get your hag' on, and then they grill it and serve it to you right there. They have snapper, dorado, live lobsters, prawns, sea bass, shrimp, even whole eels! So many options and all sitting there for the choosing. I got a big squid and a dorado and it tasted so good with some lemon squeezed onto it. I HIGHLY recommend checking out the fish stalls because it was one of the best meals of the trip.

Afterwards, we walked around the medina to get our bearings and climbed on the ramparts some. My inner Laura Roberts has emerged and decided that there is definitely some shopping to be done here. Hopefully, I'll knock out all the presents I need to get during the day tomorrow. 

After parting with the ramparts, we rendezvoused with everyone else on the beach. It is so flat that the high tide takes away like 200 ft of the beach's width. Everyone was playing soccer; there were so many concurrent games that I even saw one game being played long ways and another game being played across, all on the same plot of sand. The water was chilly but I took a couple dips while we were there. Christy took the quote of the day.

Meredith: "It's so cold in the water"

Christie: "It's not so bad over here"

(meredith paddles over 10 ft)

Meredith: "I don't feel any warmer…"

Christie: "What are you talking about?! You're closer to the sun!"

Unfortunately for Meredith, that's not how the Pythagorean theorem works, so she never got warmer. Swimming was also interesting because Tash doesn't know how to float or swim (or drive nor has she heard of Jack Johnson, among many other lacking features. She's currently enrolled in an "American FSP" being taught by Meredith).

Coversation 2: Tash is half swimming back to shore but getting pushed around by the waves

Meredith: "Ahhh! Tash is floating away!!!!!"

Andrew: "How? She can't even float!"

We stayed at the beach from 4 to 6:30 and then went back to the hotel to shower. For dinner, Elle, Marissa, and I got take-out chawarma and ate it on the beach. When we went back to the hotel, it was time to start getting ready to go out. We left at 12:30 for some bars right outside the medina. One of them was a really nice club that had a live band and no people. This can be attributed to the Moroccan Billy Crystal who performs nightly, whose performance didn't really lend itself to doing much besides sitting and listening to him in a space that could have been a banging club. Right next door was a bar called Le Chrysalis that had a great band with a female singer that sang American covers. We ordered a 10 shot special that had all these neon and multi-colored shots, so each person got their own color. The music was fun and we danced some. After we walked really far down the beach to another club that had a talented band but was just too far and it was too late for me. Elle, Marissa, and I went back to the hotel at 2:30 and everyone else came back at 3.

Assilah Pictures

I put up pictures from the weekend. There's a lot of pictures of the cool murals and the pretty beaches. For those of you who get jealous, sorry I'm not sorry

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151579332450461.841203.867195460&type=3&l=97b047c594

or just got to https://www.facebook.com/andrewrobe and click on "Photos" and then "Morocco 6 - Assilah Beach"

Day 36: Paradise Beach and the Cattle Car

We slept in today which was a good idea because the forecast called for clouds and rain all day. There was a delicious breakfast buffet upstairs of Moroccan pancakes, whole grain bread, and croissants. After breakfast, we packed up and decided to brave the wind and clouds and walk to Paradise Beach 3 km to the south of the city. You could take a horse and buggy there but we didn't want to pay for it and had the time to walk. Our journey took us on a dirt/mud road along the coastal cliffs to Paradise Beach. 

A stretch of road we got to walk on

It was really scenic, despite the clouds, and I got to be a little boy and climb on some big rocks and jump around as we hiked. We got some stunning views, but, unfortunately, my camera was not charged, so it died 30 minutes into the walk. We got to the beach at 1 and it was low tide and sunny. Most surprisingly, we had the whole stretch of coast line to ourselves! We walked along the pristine beach, dipped our toes in the cold water, and drew some in the sand. We found a washed-up jellyfish which prompted my naturist tour guide alter ego Scuba Steve to give an anatomical discussion about jellyfish and to show them how you could pick it up. It seemed like Elle's Wyoming mind melted, but that might have just been her eyes glazing over as I got my nerd on at the beach. We stayed there for about an hour until a storm began to roll in from the ocean (Scuba Steve used Eagle Scout knowledge to predict and explain this and to also portend the storm movement based on wind patterns). Because of this, we scrambled up the cliff side and began to briskly walk back towards Assilah in the rain. It only rained on us for 15 minutes because the storm was blowing north, but the hike was a cold and wet one. Hungry and wet, we went to a restaurant for lunch, only desiring warm food. As a result, I got calamari again which didn't help me much because it wasn't that warm and didn't really fill me up either. So afterwards, Elle and I went and got these awesome ice cream treats. Though the price point was slightly steep (15 dh! What is this? It felt like a bread shortage in North Korea), they were the most incredible treats you could imagine. They were half ice cream bar (ICB) and half ice cream sandwich (ICS)! To properly gorge yourself, you first hold the ICS part while feasting on the ICB side. Once done, you flip it over to start on the end of the ICS half. We had them on Friday and just had to have them again on Saturday. It was a culinary revelation on par with other major breakthroughs from the past couple of centuries like salting your meat, putting cheese on an angus patty, or mashing tomatoes and naming the delicious result, ketchup. 

Paradise Beach!

We went back and bought our art just before the rain picked up again. We sat in a gallery and had tea while we waited for it to blow over. At 5:15, we went back to the hostel to pick up our stuff. Christina, the hostel owner, proved she was crazy by first not answering the door for 15 minutes while we stood in the rain, then forgetting that we had stored our stuff in her room, and lastly, despite living in Assilah for 5 years, not knowing where to grab a cab or the number to call to catch one. We showed up at a cab stand that we had remembered passing at 5:45, believing our train left at 6. There were no taxis in sight. Instead, a horse and buggy pulled up who said they could get us there in 10 minutes. Rather than just jump in, Marissa tried to BARGAIN the price down from 50 dh to 30 dh. Why she did this still eludes me, but we only paid 30 dh and made it to the train station in under 10 minutes. Fortunately, the train didn't leave until 6:15, but that horse ride would be the first of many strange occurrences on this journey home.

The train showed up 10 minutes late. As we soon found out, it was because it was more crowded than a JC Penney's on Black Friday. We pushed and shoved our way onto a car and settled down comfortably in the aisle. I punched a man in the face getting on but exercised my right as an American to not have to say sorry. We sat in the crowded aisle for 45 minutes, praying someone wouldn't pull the fire alarm before we got one seat. Elle and I shared this seat while Marissa continued to sit on the floor. Then we got another seat that Marissa and I shared so that Elle could do work. For the hour and a half ride, Marissa and I kept passing my phone back and forth and typing messages about the various characters around us (they transcended being just normal people into the realm of character-dom). When we switched trains, we pushed and shoved our way into an 8 person compartment. At this point, we also decided it was time to discretely finish off what was left of the vodka and that we had been keeping in a diet coke bottle. We took turns taking swigs and chasing the swigs with cheddar pringles and pistachios. We ended up having a phenomenal train ride back to Fes where we openly discussed intercourse in front of Moroccans and taught them about American rap music. Marissa and I also talked a lot in Spanish to one of our compartment mates who was from Lebanon. What can I say, I get pretty multicultural and multilingual when I drink!

Toes in the water

We were back in Fes by 9:45 and home by 10. The whole way home, I debated and talked to the cabbie in Arabic (I was still feeling pretty "multicultural" at this point). I talked to my family some when I got home because they were all still up. After, I talked to my American family some too. Shout out to Sarah and her water polo team for winning their fourth consecutive state championship (her first!). Went to bed at like 11.

Day 35: The Streets of Assilah

My early morning did not begin as early as it should have. We decided to meet at Batha at 6:30, but that was when I woke up. Sleepy Andrew woke up at 6, turned off the beeping alarm, and fell back asleep until Lla Fatima came in to check on me and found me still asleep! I hurried down to Batha and got there at 6:50, so we still had plenty of time to get to the train station and catch our 7:10 train. 

Elle, Marissa, and I made it and began our journey to Assilah. We talked for the whole four hour train ride. We had to switch trains at one point too, something we didn't know ahead of time. Luckily, Elle noticed, so we didn't miss our switch. We pulled into Assilah at 11:45 to a very sunny and windy day.

Ramparts by the coast

Rather than pay 40 dh for a cab to drive us the two kilometers from the train station to the medina, we walked along the beach-side boulevard to the walls of the medina. We stopped along the way at a restaurant called Casa Garcia for some lunch. They imported ham from Spain, sold wine, and served delicious seafood. We walked around the walled-in medina some before a faux guide walked us to our hostel which was actually in the Ville Nouvelle. We stayed in a place called Christina's House, owned by a British ex-pat in her 60's. As we later would find out, though the hostel was very nice, Christina was, what we would call in American slang, a bit "cray-cray." 

A wall of murals in Assilah

In the afternoon, we walked around the medina and checked out the cool murals. Every August, Assilah has a festival where they invite artists to paint murals on certain walls. It creates a medina that is a neat combination of white houses and colorful houses, interspersed with crazy murals, all right on the Atlantic coast. We checked out some galleries and went to some spots where you could climb on the old ramparts. We took so many pictures and went to a cool art-shop where Elle and I each negotiated buying paintings. The artist was super nice and spoke better Spanish than English, so I got to practice my Spanish with him. Being only 50 kilometers from Tangiers, almost everyone spoke Spanish in addition to French and Dirija, so Marissa and I spoke a lot of Spanish this weekend. After walking around the medina, we walked down to the waters edge and hung out on some big rocks where there were tide pools because of the low tide.

Man at Work

At 5, it dawned on us that it was 5 o'clock somewhere, and that somewhere was in Assilah, so we went back to the hostel and split a bottle of wine while sitting on the roof. We went to dinner on the main boulevard that draws the line between the Medina's ramparts and the Ville Nouvelle. I had some delicious calamari. After dinner, it was about 8 o'clock, which meant it was approaching 5 o'clock in Argentina, Brazil, and Greenland, so we brought out a small bottle of vodka, made mixed drinks, and played a fun card game called Kings, where you take turns drawing cards and each card represents a different sort of activity such as having to rhyme words, point up, or all the guys/girls have to take a sip. Drawing a Jack allows you to make up a new rule for the duration of the game, such as you must refer to each other only by last name or you can only hold your drink with your left hand. An infraction result in a penalty of sips. The three of us had a blast playing Kings and ended up laughing for two to three hours straight. Elle laughed so hard at one point that she threw up a little on the floor! We ended up falling asleep all snuggled up together in the queen bed after a very successful Friday.

Day 32: The Baguette Strikes Back

Unfortunately, this post has nothing to do with Star Wars; I have just been dying to make a Star Wars reference.

Today was not a good day food-wise. The return of goat milk yesterday should have been seen as an omen of bad news to come. At breakfast today, I had my choice of day-old khubz (bread) or the dreaded baguette. On the bright side, my parents ate breakfast with me. I just drowned my sorrow in nutella and tried to move on with my day.

In Arabic, we learned a lot of really useful phrases and verb conjugations today to help us better express our wants, as in I want to play soccer with you(ana bgheet nlAb lkara maAk), you want to buy a kilo of tomatoes (n'ta bgheetee tshree kilo dyal taneesha), and we don't want to go to school (Hna mabgheenash nmshaaoo l'mddrasa).

Unfortunately, I did not tell my family "ana mabgheetsh n'kool heut." As you try to struggle through that last sentence, Spoiler Alert: this story ends with me eating fried sardines for lunch. I politely ate half of one and just ignored the rest. The fruit salad for dessert made up for it though.

Taken from google images. Fortunately, there weren't this many on my plate

Class in the afternoon was interesting and I followed it up with some time in the riad doing more readings. I have two more articles left. Unfortunately, they are 50 and 90 pages each. I watched a hilarious episode of Modern Family as a study break and also skyped with my friend Paul Finklestein back at Dartmouth. Most of the night was spent finishing my write-up for Year of the Elephant because I had to do some outside research about Islamic Feminism.

Lastly, in travel news, plans to travel to Spain this weekend have been nixed. Instead, Marissa, Elle, and I are going to travel to the beach town of Asilah on Friday. It's like 50 km south of Tangiers and supposed to be gorgeous. We're leaving on Friday during the day day and coming back on Saturday night, so we can hammer out work on Thursday and Sunday. Should be a pretty low-key, recovery weekend at the beach.

Day 16: Rabat

Happy Easter, readers!

Our third day trip started at 7:15 this morning. We piled into a bus with Lla MJ, Si Ron, and all of Si Abdellatif's family. There were no more open seats and it was a tight fit. We then had a 3 hour ride from Fez to Rabat, during which most people chose to catch up on sleep, but I opted to stare out the window the whole time. The clouds were incredible and the pictures I took should reflect that. 

We entered Rabat's city limits just before 11 because we took a lengthy bathroom break on the way.

Our day went as follows:

11 - 1: Rabat National Zoo. We walked around the newly opened zoo for two hours. They have the only remaining Atlas lions in the world, and they are a sense of pride for Moroccan people. Much literature says that the last Atlas lion was killed in the early 20th century, so the genetic build of the lions we saw is questionable, however, these belong to the royal family and they are fairly darker than your run of the mill lions. The zoo was not very big and most of the habitats were very scarce. We saw rhinos, ostriches, birds, giraffes, and all of your typical zoo animals. They also had some funny creatures in their zoo like squirrels (which we hadn't realized that they don't have here!), long horn cattle, and a dairy cow.

1 - 2:30: The Chellah. This is an archeological site that features ruins of from the multiple civilizations that have occupied the Rabat area. There are prehistoric ruins, Roman ruins, Phonecian ruins, and early Moroccan ruins, all on top of each other on the same hill! The site was massive, but our guide showed us around. There were two big take-aways from this. Firstly, none of the ruins here have ropes or railings. You can climb on whatever you want, walk wherever you want, and touch whatever you want. It makes the visits a lot more enjoyable and I have fun climbing and jumping on the ruins. Secondly, there was a pool that had fresh water eels in it. Women used to chant and put pieces of egg white in the water. If an eel ate the egg white, it was a good omen for fertility. this was a fun part of the day, but very hot.

2:30 - 4: the coast. We then drove through the city to the coast. Next to the beach, there was a huge cemetery, large enough that I would not have been surprised if it is the only cemetery in Rabat. It looked right over a beach to the ocean, so funerals must not have been the most somber occasion. We walked through ha walled in neighborhood that looked like it had been picked up in Greece and put in Morocco. Every wall was white and the bottom five feet was bright blue. We visited a women's pottery cooperative and walked around the streets. We went to a big patio that overlooked the beach. Lots of surfers were in the water and people were relaxing on the sunny Sunday. The coolest thing was that a group of 15 to 20 boys had a device that looked like half of a fitness ball on a plastic base. They put this down in the sand and would run, jump on it, and then do huge flips. They were so entertaining to watch and some of them would get like 10 feet up in the air. It was the best street acrobatics show I've ever seen. After some pictures and some ice cream, we walked to a gorgeous cafe that looked out over the river that flows through Rabat with the Mediterranean in the distance. We had tea and cookies before moving on to our final destination.

4 - 4:45: the mausoleum. We went to the royal mausoleum which is in Rabat. In it, are the marble coffins of the past two kings and the elder king's other son. It was gorgeous and mobbed by people. Outside, there was a courtyard with a lot of unfinished columns. Like typical tourists, we climbed on top of the 4 foot columns and took pictures together. It was a lot of fun and an easy way to end the day.

We then began the long drive home. Some people slept, but a big group of us talked and sang songs the whole way home. We got home just after 8, and as we walked home, Joe, Meredith, and Tash stopped by to meet my family. Lotfi was at Cafe Clock with friends, so we went there to get some dinner and milkshakes. I had a spicy camel burger and some incredible french fries. That night, I called my family at home to wish them a Happy Easter and did some reading before bed.