A Beach Too Far

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Ok, so it sounds like we have an addiction to crepes, but we have only had so many because we had to buy our own syrup for the first lot. We sat and ate the crepes whilst waiting for other people to turn up for the collective. We only had to wait about forty minutes for the taxi to fill up and we were on our way. Strangely enough we didn't receive the whole you can buy out the whole taxi spiel which we normally do. When you are the first ones to arrive for a collective they will tell you the price of the whole car, almost expecting you to pay it. What is worse is when there are four or five of you waiting and they all look at you as if to say that we are the westerners and therefore we should pay for the extra seats.

The taxi dropped us off in a car park somewhere. Lonely Planet said it was about one kilometer to the centre so we set off walking. We walked quite far and were attracting a lot of stares and people who said Bonjour and then giggled. Eventually we glimpsed the walled medina on a hill opposite us and after a few strained comments we began walking over towards it.

Hotel Majestic wasn't our first choice of accommodation but it was the nearest so we stopped to have a look. The room was nice enough for the price (110dH) but we saw that there was only a Turkish toilet and decided to leave it. As we were walking away we got called back and he offered us a better room and showed us an English toilet.

We were both hot from the walk, so we changed into shorts and sandals for the first time in ages. Our choice of attire attracted a few looks, but we were past the point of caring. We needed something to eat and so Rob opted for a glacier up in the new town. We climbed all the way up there only to find that Lonely Planet had misled us and what was described as delicious ice creams was actually another old man café which could get us vanilla ice cream if we wanted.

Back down in the old part of town we knew we had to eat something so we nipped into a cremerie and had bread, cheese and juice, all very dry and boring. We decided to walk along the front and check out the beach and see whether it was worth another days stay. We walked a fair distance in the full heat of the day and couldn't see any beach ahead. Eventually we decided to turn back because we were both very tired.

We had a late afternoon nap which is a first for us in Morocco I think. We woke up and headed immediately for a café, worrying slightly that it may be closed. The café was open so we discussed with the waiter that I was vegetarian and he suggested tagine legume. We ordered two bowls of harira as well and sat down. The soup arrived instantly along with a bowl of chips which we both thoroughly enjoyed until I discovered a bit of meat that probably wasn't filtered out of the stock. We then sat and waited for around forty minutes for the tagine to arrive. Vegetarian tagine hadn't been on the menu, so we believed that he was making it from scratch which normally takes around half an hour. Once we got tired of waiting we enquired after it and he placed the order then. Luckily it arrived pretty speedily and was pretty delicious because of its cinnamon sauce. We went to pay and it was so cheap (35dh) that we actually listed everything we had eaten just to make sure he hadn't missed anything.

We went to an internet café to upload some blogs and pictures. We managed to stay longer than we anticipated and therefore got back to the hotel just after twelve. We had to ring to be let in and then we crept into our room rather sheepishly and settled in for the evening.

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