Monday/Tuesday 16th-17th July–Home again

Layovers in airports are not fun, particularly when they are for 10 hours and you have a stomach bug. There are many possible options of things to do in Singapore airport – I ended up curled up on a chair finishing Mockingjay and sleeping for basically the whole time. On to the plane with no dramas – finally I got a long haul flight free of screaming babies! Not much sleep was had however… I think I’ve clocked up about 5 hours since Sunday morning. As such, I was nice and feral/exhausted feeling when Dad picked me up at the airport.

    

Now I am home again, it seems very surreal (but perhaps that’s just due to my state of extreme exhaustion at the moment… I must stay awake until a reasonable time this evening!!). My six weeks holiday ended up being truly amazing, thanks to all who have followed my blog through it all! Signing off now until the next one :) xx

Sunday 15th July–And so the journey home begins

This morning all the people in my dorm room decided to get up early and leave – this was nice, having the room to myself to get ready and pack. Andy and I were out the door around 9.30am – we headed straight to Trafalgar Square to pick up some cheap breakfast from Tescos (this store is amazing). After that we just ambled around for a bit, checking out the gallery for a short time and then going back to the Olympic countdown clock to wait for Daniel and Simon to arrive. Soon we were ambling around with them – it was such an awesome coincidence to be here at the same time as them (and we’d only just missed two other friends that morning too!). We walked up to Buckingham Palace, saw the beginning of some soldier parade (something other than the changing of the guard, but don’t know what it was for!), sat in the gardens then wandered down to the Thames. Just relaxing in London was nice, I didn’t get to do anything of the sort last time I was here!

    

Soon it was time to head off – we said goodbye to Daniel, headed back to the hostel, I said goodbye to Andy and then caught the tube to the airport. No dramas here, I could check in straight away and was soon waiting around two hours for my plane to leave. The plane ride was long of course, about twelve and a half hours. I was sat between two friends who drank copious amounts of alcohol and passed things over me a lot… and of course, next to screaming babies again. A little bit of sleep was had, with that Moroccan food bug still making life a little difficult. Oh well, I distracted myself with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and a rewatch of The Hunger Games.

And somewhere on that flight, it was suddenly Monday.

Saturday 14th July–Back to London

Shortest blog today ever? This morning we had a bit of time swinging and had the option of getting up early and finding something else to see in Marrakech – instead we decided to sleep in! It was really hot already and there wasn’t much to see that wasn’t a 40 minute walk away – and really we were just marketed out. A quick stop over down for breakfast, packing and then check out at 12pm. Andy wasn’t feeling very well at all at this point so we stayed in the hotel near the bathroom before catching a taxi to the airport. His meter said 20 dhm, somehow he charged us 140 – lucky day for him!

There were lots of hot and sweaty lines at the airport and lots and lots of waiting around inside. Checking in was certainly interesting, particularly the designated male and female security lines complete with a rather intimate body search. More lines at the gate – at 4.45pm we finally left. The flight was interesting… Andy’s health deteriorated and I began to get sick too. As such Andy and I both experienced throwing up on an aeroplane for the first time, lovely. Good old Moroccan hotel breakfast to thank for that one (and excellent timing to get out of the country!)

    

The arrival at Gatwick was non-eventful, as was the train ride to London. It’s good to see that that Union Jacks that were hanging everywhere last time haven’t disappeared, rather they’ve increased. So very English! A closed Underground line meant we decided to take a good old fashioned English cab to our hostel, the same one as last time (nothings changed) – it helped us avoid the rain too. Apparently it was about 15 today, which is actually a nice relief from Marrakech’s 46 degrees!

Friday 14th July–Off to Marrakech

Today was a long travelling day. We were there to catch our 9am train in plenty of time… and so began our 8 hour train journey to Marrakech. We managed to be assigned a cabin with air conditioning, the seats were comfy and on the whole I didn’t mind the trip at all. I pulled out my Kindle, finished Middlesex (still not sure about that book) and started Catching Fire (Hunger Games pt 2). I was pretty much absorbed in this the entire time and was even a little annoyed when the train pulled into the station at 5pm… I only had 20% of the book left and I wanted to finish it!

    

When we jumped off the train the heat hit us straight away – 46 degrees, lovely weather! The Intrepid groups usually walk to the hotel but Jaimen was nice enough to spend a very long time negotiating with a whole lots of taxi drivers (none of them wanted to take us a short distance). Once we reached the hotel it was clear none of us wanted to leave it again anytime soon, so room relaxation and sitting by the pool was in order for three hours.

At 8.30pm, when the heat was reducing just a little, we all headed out on the 40 minute walk to the main square. Already we could see all the major shops and fast food chains – this place is a lot more cosmopolitan than anywhere else we’ve been in Morocco. When we eventually got to the square we couldn’t stop staring at the amount of people there…. it was like a music festival for us, instead it was the average night for them. The square was basically divided into two halves – big circles of locals watching street performers and big outdoor tables with food and kitchens (plus all the surrounding shops and markets).

    

We sat down at a cramped table in one of the local food places, with billowing smoke and piles of food on display everywhere. I ordered Tangia, a traditional Marrakech dish apparently – basically lots of yummy slow cooked meat in herbs and spices. All the meals came out about 2 minutes after we ordered them, the food was all just sitting there after all! The atmosphere at this point was truly something special, so much crazy energy and organised chaos!

    

After dinner the group split up and we said our farewells – this was our last group meeting after all. Shlomo and Laura stayed behind with Andy and I and we took another hour or so to wander around the square a little more, basically just through markets – it appears that shopping and eating are clearly the main things to do in this country. On our way back to the hotel we stopped to buy some cheap Moroccan lamps – this resulted in a highly entertaining process in which we haggled for three lamps, walked down the road, found better lamps for a cheaper price and then in a very complicated manner managed to swap them over for a small price. Fun times! Back to the hotel by 1am for our last night in the country!

Thursday 12th July–Fes

Last night’s sleep was beautiful, the bed may not look like much but it is comfy. We were downstairs in a relatively chipper mood at 9am to meet our local guide. This guy was good, very knowledge and overly fond of using the word ‘please’ in almost every sentence. We climbed back into our black party bus – our first stop was a quick look at the King’s palace (just the gate), a quick walk through the Jewish quarter (nothing notable) and then a drive up to a military fort with a viewpoint over Fes. We could see already that this city is huge – apparently it has the biggest pedestrian area in the world with over 9500 streets.

    

After all the necessary photos we clambered back in the bus and were driven off to a local mosaic school where we were shown the mosaic making process. Clearly all the people here are very talented – we watch them at the pottery wheel, cutting tiles into shapes, hand painting the finished products. Then of course we were shepherded into the gift shop afterwards! A couple of people bought thing and then off we went again, this time diving into to labyrinth of the medina (old town).

    

And this place really is a labyrinth – so many streets, so many shops selling so many different things, so many people and so many donkeys! I was glad we had the local guide to show us the way. He took us to lots of different places, clearly ‘friends’ of his but then that’s the culture here. We passed a few monuments/mosques before heading to a tannery. Upon entering the tannery they give you a bunch of mint to combat the smell – I sniffed my bunch a lot but I can’t say it helped much, the smell was still pretty awful. From the balcony we could see everyone at work tanning and dying the leather and afterwards the salesman tried their best at selling us bags, wallets and leather jackets.

    

After some more wandering we headed to lunch – more beef with cous cous, seems to be the standard thing here! We were mostly just excited for the air-conditioning, Next some more wandering, with a stop over at a pharmacy selling all kinds of remedies, oils and perfumes. I liked it here, it was fun smelling all the different products. I bought some Moroccan Oil and some green-but-really-pink henna+oil lipstick, shopping success! Then on to look at some more men weaving scarves and rugs… we were a bit shopped out at this point so nobody bought anything! 

At around 3.30pm the tour officially finished and everybody headed back to the bus – Andy was keen to do some more walking though so we stayed behind. He had fun bargaining for some pointy leather shoes, I mostly just wanted to be back in the cool hotel. Luckily for us Andy had a GPS app on his phone, making the 2km walk back relatively ok – we would have been hopelessly lost without it!

Back to the hotel at around 5pm. At 6 o’clock I met with some of the girls downstairs – we were off to try some ‘Hammam’, a spa experience popular with the locals here. Three of us grabbed a taxi and headed to a recommended ‘upmarket’ place (the local Hammam was a little bit too daunting). We payed approximately $18AUD, disrobed completely except for our underwear (topless) and walked in… we could see already we were the only tourists there and nobody really spoke English – there was lots of smiling and pointing by everyone. Our experience there lasted for about an hour and a half and involved a shower, a sauna, a complete scrub, another shower, a full body clay treatment, another shower, another sauna and then a cold Jacuzzi. It was actually quite amazing, I’m so glad I did it… it felt like a very local experience, apparently locals come to these things once a week. And so cheap! The full body scrub was particularly amusing, we could see all the dead skin rolling off – I don’t think any of us realised we were so dirty!!

We were back at the hotel around 8pm, time enough to go upstairs, wash our hair and get pretty again. I took the opportunity to wear my newly bought lace dress and the heels I’ve been carting around for 6 weeks but have never worn (my last chance!). Dinner was pasta and wine next door again, neither of which were very good. It didn’t matter, I was too preoccupied stroking my extra smooth (and tanned) legs, it’s was exciting! Back to the hotel for a relatively early night of 11pm – one more day of the tour left!!

Wednesday 11th July– Lazy day then off to Fes

Last night there was talk about a hike this morning, however Jaimen was unable to get in contact with the local guide. Therefore, instead of getting up nice and early, today we slept in. At around 10.30am we headed down for our Moroccan breakfast, before packing and checking out around 11.30am. From here we headed back down into the town. We did consider doing our own little hike for a while but we quickly decided that it was way too hot… shopping it was instead. There is not much to say about the town that I didn’t say yesterday – it is still very blue and hot! We did wander into the town museum – there wasn’t much there in terms of artifacts but we did head up a tower with a very pretty view, staying there for quite a while and just relaxing.

    

After the museum, there was some more browsing of shops and a couple of earring purchases. Then to lunch – I had a salad, roast beef and an apple tart, nothing particularly out there. Andy was a little bit more adventurous, getting a beef tagine with prunes and then a crème caramel complete with a live bug crawling on it. We also ordered a bottle of Moroccan wine which was not very good at all… I guess it’s not their speciality here!

Back to the hotel after for some air conditioning – it was already 3pm, a very lazy day today! At 4pm our transfer bus to Fes arrived – this bus was amusing, big, black, with tinted windows and doof doof music. Jaimen described our driver as a ‘mafia driver’, a big guy with big sunglasses and no smiles for anyone. The bus took around three and a half hours and wasn’t particularly pleasant… the ride was curvy, very bumpy and the driver was a slight lunatic. We all just retreated into our own little worlds to get through it all!

    

At around 8.30pm we arrived in Fes. Clearly already it is dramatically different to the little blue village we just left – this is a big, busy, dirty city and tomorrow’s tour through it will be very interesting indeed! We arrived at our hotel just as some sort of celebration was happening in the street, with drums and lots of people clapping… almost a welcome parade for us! Our hotel is nice enough… it was never going to match the last place.

Dinner was at a very fancy modern place next door. Most people ordered pasta, hamburgers or other comfort foods but I wanted to stick with something traditionally Moroccan – this meant a really bizarre pastry thing. The pastry itself was very sweet and covered in icing sugar and cinnamon but inside was chicken mince? Very bizarre. I liked it, I think. After dinner we took a quick stroll around the beginning of the market here, lots of fresh produce and other weird things… a small taste of tomorrow! In bed before midnight – tomorrow I think shall be a bit epic!

Tuesday 10th July–Chefchaouen

Last night was filled with random coughing fits – still, nothing took away from the pleasure of the very comfy bed in our awesome room. We headed downstairs to grab some breakfast… this consisted of olives, goat’s cheese and different types of breads and spreads. Very different to Europe! At 930am we met up with our local guide, Mohammad, with his white clothes, yellow pointy shoes and red pointy hat! He took us on a hike up to a nearby mosque, giving us a view over all the beautiful white and blue houses. We also walked past fig trees, almond trees and lots of goats, sheep and donkeys. I think this place really is your clichéd Moroccan experience, it’s fantastic!

      

We were back down in the town just as the weather began to really heat up (it must have easily got to 40 degrees today). This town is so quaint, lots of little walkways with stone houses painted blue. There are also lots of green vines everywhere, the mix of colours is mesmerizing. We wandered around here for quite a while before heading into our very first Moroccan rug shop! The owners sat us down, gave us mint tea and biscuits and then proceeded to show us lots and lots and lots of rugs (some made from cashmere, some from cactus silk, some from camel hair, some hand-woven, some in the loom etc. etc.). They were lucky – two of the couple bought a rug each, one for $800ish and the other for $1800ish (differences in bargaining skills perhaps?). The rugs themselves were beautiful and I was particularly taken by a big multi-coloured patterned one… pity I have nowhere to put it!

     

The trip to the rug shop ended up taking quite a while, due to the amount of negotiating going on and this made some people grumpy… I was really happy just to sit and watch the whole process. Eventually we all headed off to a Moroccan restaurant – lunch for me was a Moroccan salad, Meat Cous Cous (with slow cooked meat, raisins, almonds, vegetables) and a lemon tart. Yummy. After lunch it really was getting scorching so, after buying myself some more ‘modest’ pants to wear, we trudged our way back to our wonderful hotel and relaxed in our room for a bit.  This eventually moved to relaxing by the pool, reading for a bit and then a quick dip. Back to the room for a shower and then downstairs to dinner – I made a point of wearing my nice dress that I’ve been hauling around for 6 weeks but have not yet worn. Originally dinner was just Andy and I but soon people came and joined us in bits and bobs. A chicken tagine was consumed, yummy as usual. Andy brought out the bottle of vodka which we accidentally drank half of. Dinner at around midnight. Another day of relaxing tomorrow, this place is amazing :)