Welcome to Marrakech!

Greetings from Marrakech! Yesterday we made the 6 hour journey from Fes to Marrakech... From our train window you could see the beautiful landscape pass by, although admittedly I slept nearly the entire way, as I most often do. I did however wake up for an hour long unexpected stop... when my mother and I asked why we were stopped, we were told that a man was under the train. Yikes. We wished we hadn't asked. Apparently, this was not a terribly uncommon occurrence.  

We arrived safe and sound at our riad, which is just as beautiful and fabulous as the one we stayed at in Fes. The riad has two swimming pools and tons of fabulous little rooms on the first floor, or floor zero as they call it. Once again, my pictures fail to do Morocco justice. 

Our room is lovely, a real treat. We are positioned perfectly, in such a way that we don't hear the loud street just beyond the walls of the riad. My favorite thing about Morocco is that you can be walking down a dingy ally, but just behind the doors that line the ally are gorgeous riads, or spacious beautiful houses. Everywhere is a secret garden. 

The stairs in our room lead up to our own private terrace! It is official, we are never leaving.

From our terrace we look out to the Koutoubia Mosque, built in 1147! Through out the day we can hear all the calls to prayer from our balcony. It is in those moments that I say to myself "Wow, I am in Morocco!"

My mother and I thought the hotel robes were hysterical. I couldn't stop laughing from the moment I put it on. If you have ever seen the movie Space Balls, I totally felt like one of the dink-dink guys from that movie....

Exploring Morocco

Monday afternoon we went on a day tour of Volubilis and Meknes!

Our first stop was Volubilis which dates all the way back to the 3rd century B.C.  the roman ruins there include the Arch of Caracalla, the Basilica and the Capitol, as well as the remains of roman houses and mosaics, some of which are shown below. 

"Diana and the Bathing Nymphs"... in the house of the cortege of Venus there is a mosaic which depicts the nymphs admiring Diana as she receives water from pegasus. 

Triumphal Arch

Clearly in my natural habitat...

And then on to Meknes!!!

While in Meknes we went to this great big ancient looking building, and to be totally honest, I have no idea what it was called, or what it was for, but I do know that they filmed the Passion of the Christ there, and that the building was fantastically huge and quite enjoyable.....

God I am a terrible tourist.

I also know that this place was fun to photograph! good enough for me.

This photo shows the ablution room which is next too the burial chamber in the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail...

We went to the medina in Meknes and toured around the market area.... there were fabulous colored pastries everywhere...

exhibit A: Fabulous colored pastries

SOO many olives everywhere.... if only I liked olives.

yep... you guessed it... that is a cows head.....

nothing like walking around where the streets literally run red..... 

Today we shopped around the medina and purchased lots of fun stuff.... Tomorrow it is on to Marrakech! Yippeee! 

Exploring Fes

This morning we woke up at 7:30 and had breakfast at the hotel before departing on our tour of Fes. We started our tour at the palace gates which were huge and grand, as are most doors around the city. The craftsman ship and detail that goes into the art here is jaw dropping. 

We then went to the top of the hill from which you could see all of Fes. Our guide pointed out each area to us, the old city, new city and modern city. Following that we headed over to the area of the city that makes mosaics. Our guide took as to the second largest mosaic craft house in Fes.  We watched men throw pottery, paint it and we watched in amazement the men that chiseled away at tiles making mosaic tiles one by one.

We then ventured into the medina, where we saw the oldest university in the entire world, an overwhelmingly huge rug shop and last but not least the tannery. Of course our guide took us to this shop and that shop where he wished for us to shop, so as to be able to earn a commission, but so it goes. He was not so pleased when we didn't need any rugs or coffee tables....

After our tour we ventured around the medina on our own and did some shopping. I got henna on my hand and purchased a great pair of leather shoes for 100 MAD...AKA $12.50.

Pretty sweet.

But that is all boring to read, so here are some pictures, which are perhaps less boring.

I like to think so anyways.

Here is a convenient store in the medina.

 These men hammer at little pieces of tile and make the shapes that go into the mosaics. They sit here and do this for hours....talk about tedious.

The only way to travel or get things through the medina is by donkey. They are very startling when they come up behind you on the particularly narrow path ways. everyone jumps out of the way. Poor wittle guy has to carry all the stuff :(

These women were weaving a carpet. It will take them 4 months, or more, working every work day to complete a single carpet. Mind boggling. They gladly invited me to join them and help, for a tip of course, but it was fascinating. It actually hurt my fingers to do it for one minute, so I don't know how they do it all the time. It is truly insane. Now I fully understand why those rugs cost so much.....

This man is making a brass plate with beautiful decorations. You can see people doing this all around the medina. 

Mummy and I in front of one of the seven heavenly gates to the palace.

That is one big handle.....

This is a camel head, in case you could not tell. They hang the head outside the shop so as to indicate that they have camel meat for sale. yucky.... well at least the eyes are closed, I could not say the same of the goats heads I saw around.

The tannery smelt so terrible, but seeing it was incredible. The men that work here have trouble finding women that will marry them because they always smell so bad from work. The yellow things you see in the corner of the photo are goat skins that have been died bright yellow.

Trying my hand at rug weaving...

Fun with henna! This women drew a design on my hand so fast, although, sadly, I did not leave the henna on my hand long enough, so the final result is very light on my skin. But that is all right, I can not say that hand tattoo's are really my thing anyway, I did it more for the experience and what a fun experience it was!

Welcome to Fes

Yesterday morning ( October 15th) we arrived in Fes after a four hour train ride from Casablanca.

The train was quite fun, as mum and I got to look out the window and watch the rolling landscape of Morocco pass by. As expected we had two men enter our train cabin to sit with us and suavely attempt to convince us to use their tour guides, or come to their shops in the medina. Everyone here has an angle, everyone is scheming, it's apart of the experience and I find it quite entertaining.

We arrived at our riad, the La Maison Bleua, and were given the most beautiful room I have ever stayed in. The hotel it self is just inside the old medina and it is beautiful! I kept laughing to my mother about the fact that our room looked like a honeymoon suite, rose petals included.

Talk about hospitality.... they even put rose petals in the toilet bowls....

I thought that was pretty comical. 

Our living room area

Our bedroom. Mummy daughter sleep over! My favorite.

The stairs in our room lead up to the terrace where we will be having breakfast each morning.

Our windows in the room look out over the court yard of the riad, which has a lovely pool and it truly magnificent looking. I find that pictures don't do Morocco much justice.

After exploring the hotel and getting settled, we headed into the medina to check it out.

We stuck to the straight away by the riad, as we were quite nervous about getting lost, which is easy to do. There are 35,000 narrow streets and 9,000 dead ends. 

YIKES! It was wild.

The Sites of Casablanca

....Ok, so I admit, there are really not "sites" in Casablanca.... it is more like the site, as in single site, of Casablanca. But, boy oh boy, it is a site to be seen!

I attempted to capture the unbelievable roof, but it was so far up and so incredibly detailed that I could not :( It was truly magnificent 

The Hassan II Mosque which can be seen from our hotel room, is spectacular. Regardless of how nice a camera one has, there is not a picture in the world that does this place justice. 

Partly erected on water, the Hassan II mosque is one of the most beautiful edifices inspired by the late Hassan II. The prayer hall of the mosque covers 20,000 square meters and accommodates up to 25,000 worshippers. The mosque has the highest religious minaret in the world. It is 200 meters high!! The mosques construction was started in 1987 and completed in 1993.....yes that is right, it only took six years to build!! Which is totally wild considering the incredible detail. 

Leaving the mosque my mother and I marveled at the fact that, despite the state of the living conditions, each household had a satellite for their television...

On our way back to the hotel we stopped in at the old medina and shopped around to scope out the goods for sale, as well as their prices. We struggled with the currency conversions, but are starting to get the hang of it. There was some really neat stuff for sale in the medina, but we were advised to wait to do our shopping in the medina's in Marrakech and Fez, which are supposedly cheaper and generally better. 

AND THEN! Dun-Dun-Dun... I spotted it. A Pizza Hut.

There was no question that we were going there.

Pizza is easily the thing I crave most from home.

You can see how pleased I was with our choice of dinner.

Welcome to Morocco!

This morning I watched the sun come up as I walked across the tar mat and up onto my plane. It was beautiful, as were the views from the airplane as we traveled across the dessert up towards Morocco. 

Coming into Morocco the landscape changed into a patch work of earth tones, as you can see below...

I arrived at the hotel where I met up with my mummy!!! Reunited and it feels so good.

Check out the view from our hotel in Casablanca, where we will be spending the night tonight. 

Hitting the Dusty Trail!

And I am off!

Morocco here I come!!!!!!!

Woo-Hoo!