JulieNSteve

Dec. 22nd – 25th Well, from here on out this whole things slows to a crawl and we drop into the sleepy beachside vibe of Essaouira. We slow roll the alleys, stopping to dig on street food and street cats. We climb across the rocky sea wall surrounding the ancient walls of the fortress that contains the medina and marvel at the coast, the Atlantic and the seabirds. The tide is starting to come in and around each curve the wall keeps coming and an entrance back into the medina is not visible. It’s a high wall with parapets and some cannons that we are given to believe is where Calisi first addressed the Un-Sullied. Game of Thrones is so good that this actually feels like a historical location! UNESCO is going to have to open ... read more

Okay, breakfast is grand what with eggs and all, but the most impressive aspect is that they have even more variations on bread! We coffee and juice ourselves sufficiently and it’s back to Driss. This will be our last day in the SUV. We will traverse the High Atlas Mountains for most of it, stopping at a couple of touristy things along the way, if only to stretch our legs. It will be a long day. The first stop(s) will be a movie museum and the Atlas Studios tour. Because virtually all of our friends work in or around the film industry we will explain briefly; nothing to see here. They just don’t make many films here and the films they did make are old and who gives a shit. We do see a couple of ... read more

After breakfast more delightful conversation with Akmed and Said, we leave the Kasbah – note; just because one stays in the Kasbah, one is not obligated to “rock” same. From Wikipedia: In Morocco and in Iberia, the Arabic word form of kasbah frequently refers to multiple buildings in a keep, a citadel or several structures behind a defensive wall. When we turn around and get our first look at the Kasbah we are already leaving, it’s really quite nice! Next up, African musicians and Berber pizza. Again, understand that we are touristing like a motherfucker right now, so don’t expect anything off-the-beaten-track or challenging. But that doesn’t mean things can’t be interesting. For instance, the African music. We’re led into a small hut like building from which we can already hear rhythms pouring forth. Inside, there's ... read more

A little travel maintenance this morning as we find and book a desert tour. We will have a driver for three nights and four days who will take us around to all the places you will read about starting tomorrow. We wander towards to the market to look around, leave the medina because we want soup, find some whatever the Arabic word for uneventful is, soup, and dip back into the medina. A little more wandering takes us from soup to souk. The souk is the market inside the medina. This is that Indiana Jones shit you want to see. Narrow alleys criss-crossing with more narrow alleys; merchandise of all kinds hanging in front of worn facades with Moorish arches or other ancient designs. Bags, jewels, antiques, lamps, clothing, every possible combination of nick-nick, tchotchke, craft ... read more

At breakfast we meet a couple of nice young men from Minnesota. They are on sort of a reverse course to ours and have been to many of the places we are hoping to visit, with the distinct exception of Minnesota. Fes is next up for us and they had a great time there. One of them likes to spin his own wool (no, that is not a euphemism for ram masturbation) so the high point of their trip was visiting a nomadic tribe that spins and looms and makes highly intricate rugs. Today we have little to do beyond securing our passage by bus to Fes. This will require that we trek down the hill to the bus station to procure tickets, then come back to get our luggage and leave a while later. This ... read more