Blogs from Morocco, Africa - page 192

Being the complete and utter tight arses that we are we decided to move into the cheaper room we had originally booked. The room is half the price (£6 for a double room) and exactly the same but without the view of the sea. I think the owner always puts people in the rooms with views to begin with in the hope that you will love it and not bother to change. We left our hotel and turned onto the main street and our noses led us directly to a food stall. There was a woman standing over a hot plate making square pancake type things, they smelt beautiful. We ordered one each and they were served with a completely unhealthy helping of butter and honey. We walked out of the relative comfort of the medina ... read more

I have discovered that waking up at 6 AM is always a mistake. The idea, originally suggested by Abdullah of Auberge de Jeunesse, was to catch the 6:50 train to Tangier so that we could arrive by midday. This turned out to be foolish, as even though we managed to catch the train we were so exhausted by the time we reached Tangier that after finding a hotel, the "Promenade Palace," we turned in until 6 pm. The one good thing that came out of the whole affair was the sight of Venus in the morning sky, closely conjuncted with another planet (Saturn?) near the crescent Moon. If the moon were only on the other side of these two stars, I would have had a very nice approximation of the symbol of Islam, on a Friday ... read more

Thursday 31 January 2008 Exhausted after a 5:15am wakeup in Fes to catch the 6:50am train to Marrakech, and with disturbances during the night from rowdy locals outside our hotel, we were hoping to sleep for much of the journey. Unfortunately the locals had other ideas. Once again, the local women found it fascinating to be able to hold an intelligent conversation with a man, let alone a western one, so Michael ended up nattering with the women on the train for most of the journey. It was all very pleasant and entertaining but left us even more exhausted when we arrived in Marrakech 7 hours later (photo). Very weary, we trudged out of the railway station and followed our Lonely Planet map to our hostel - well that was the plan anyway, the Lonely Planet ... read more

The plan yesterday was to go to Moulay Idriss, one of Moroccos most important pilgramage sites Has apparently only been open to non Muslims for the past 70 years. It is about half an hour in a shared taxi from Meknes. Unfortunately, no one else seemed to want to go to Moulay Idriss yesterday morning, so I had to negotiate and hire a grande taxi for myself. According to the Book, it can sometimes be a little difficult to get back to meknes from MI, so I arranged for the driver to wait a couple of hours, while i looked around, then take me back. None of the mosques or monuments in Moulay Idriss are open to non muslims, but (with the exception of one annoying little dickhead who made it his business to try and ... read more

Breakfast was more fun than usual because we had the company of lots of little birds which enjoyed our breakfast with us. We spent a while enjoying the courtyard and watching the birds and then headed into Djemaa el-fna in the medina. We phoned Hicham and he said he would meet us upstairs in café France in the square. We both ordered Jus d'orange and sat and watched everyone going about their business and dodging hustlers etc. When Hicham arrived we chatted a while and then followed him to his workplace. We walked through more of the backstreets and there was so much to see. We must have gone through a very poor area because the smell was unbearable in some places. There was a little street market where kids were selling fruits that looked well ... read more