Part #5 - A'dam to Maghreb

---

Part #5 A'dam to morocco

On the return flight to Amsterdam I had a bit of a cold, and after an entire lifetime of flying I finally suffered the incredible pain of non-equalizing-ears. Couldn't hear for a few days. Uncool! Anyway arrived and went straight to sleep. From there the fun began. Went the next night to a university society party, with some of the group of 8, loads of fun! Also convinced suus, a group of 8 member with a great British accent to join me on an Amsterdam tourist pub crawl pretending to be a Brit. Which turned out to be a complete riot! And also went to a big dinner with lots of medical interns, good indo/chinese dinner. So lots of fun had in Amsterdam as expected! Ien and I then headed off to morocco, unfortunately Ien suffered the same ear trouble on the way, and came down with a bit of a cold for the first few days in morocco. We arrived in Casablanca, at a shocking hour of night and going our way to the old city, after trying two hotels both of which were full or closed, a random old man left his dinner party to take us around. We ended up in an alright place and paid and went to bed. At 3 in the morning, we were woken by a woman crying out the front of our room, and a man talking to her. After a little while she started to scream in this bloodthirsty screech, which obviously kept us up for a while and then lots of men arguing ensued..... Still not sure what happened but we promptly moved to a new hostel. Found a great new place and enjoyed exploring casablanca or daar albeida "white house" either way. Anyway so we explored the old city and enjoyed cafe France's croissant and coffee brekkie, mmmm French colonialism certainly had it's ups! Then we took a comfortable train off to Marrakech. We strolled around and went into the first hostel we found, turned out very cheap and friendly! Marrakech was a blast, although overloaded with tourists, the endless souqs and the lively night markets more than made up for it. While there we managed to buy a plethora of knitted beanies as gifts and wrist bands, and enormous gorgeous engraved bowls were bought, and watched the snake charmers, performing artists, ate snails, and walked a bloody marathon. As an awesome birthday present Ineke booked us in to a fancier hotel for a few nights and we lazed by the pool, and we started Arabic lessons. Much fun was had and we headed off to fez. Fez was gorgeous, while the hassling was originally a little frustrating (nowhere near as bad as marrakech but worse timing) the charm of the place took over. We chose a favourite dinner restaurant and did our best to subtly draw in other tourists for the nice guy's restaurant, and continued our obsession with mint tea in a nice little cafe where the world rolled by and splendid breakfasts were had. The charming little streets kept us entertained for days and we saw the tanneries and beautiful views from cemeteries and went tile shopping and got lost in the markets. It was then that we raced off to meknes, a chilled city just west of fez, our intro to the city was unpleasant, hot, bothersome, and we couldn't find a room, until we stumbled upon a beautiful spot over an even nicer cafe. We strolled around checking out more souqs and old cities and drinking as much mint tea as one could, there were kangaroo carnival rides, local beer spots, and sheesha searches and all were completed successfully. We stayed two nights and planned to head off to the infamous blue city of chefchouan, however after a painful one hour bus ride the day before, the prospect of a 5+hour trip that would only result in a 7+hour return trip was less than exciting. So in a last minute change of mind we decided to head south to alwaleediya, a beautiful beach town with a lagoon and crazy sunsets. After loads of seafood and long beach walks it was sadly time to return to white house and take our flight back to a'dam, but not before a wonderful dinner at dauphin complete with dropping sunglasses from the top floor onto the poor buggers below. After a nice 2 and a bit weeks away I had a few days in holland before flying off to indo. I Managed to fit in a last goodbye dinner at the lively "bazaar" Arabic restaurant, and then off to the oh-so-familiar schippol airport...

---