Hotel Negociants Casablanca

... hotel. So I get up to the roof and there is an older Moroccan man up there. He says hi, or something similar in Arabic and invites me into his room, which is connected to the roof, for tea. Since this is not the first time I have been invited into someones place for tea since being here I decided what the hell. Why not? Let me tell you why not: He speaks no English, I speak no Arabic The room is the size of a ...

... up in the residential parts of town. Lene managed to get quite a bit of attention; it seems that some of the guys have never seen anybody with blonde hair. Eventually after way too many zigs and zags we made it to the third largest Mosque in the world. Hassan II Mosque was only finished a couple of years ago and built to commemorate the former kings 60th Birthday. It can hold 25,000 ...

... again, haha. Plus, they were not kept very well either and I actually felt bad about riding them. It was the craziest and funniest hour of my life though. I will always be able to say now that I rode a camel in the rain with some interesting details that if you really want to know them, feel free to ask me some other time!! After the traumatic camel experience, we headed into the Atlas Mountains. They were amazing. We passed numerous Berber villages and kept climbing ...

... find good quantities of tasty food completely filling us, as well as the always welcome Coke in a glass bottle being available. Definitely expensive for a lunch, but the surroundings and food quality softened the blow. Barely functioning due to fatigue we stumbled back to the hotel for a long semi-satisfying nap. Upon getting up we figured we'd follow the guidebook and have a snack at Cafe Moure, a drink at Rick's Cafe and then be off to the nightclub ...

... s what I had. It is simply mint leaves in a silver teapot (very hot!), with lots of sugar. They drink it about 5 times a day, and it is also an Important part of retail activity. It was good. Sometimes they add other flavors in there too-clove, salvia (sage), coriander. There are orange trees everywhere, though many are bitter orange and therefore not edible. I saw some agave, which the Mexicans use to make tequila. No tequila here, though. I was prepared for a ...

... and accommodated quite a few cars, which surprised us given our previous experience. We found later this was limited to the outside streets of the Medina, the internal ones were the normal ``narro and tight'' we were used to!Rick's bar is a converted house; with a guard posted at the front door! We saw several people arrive in quite nice taxis and, based on our research of the bar and location, concluded the cost of the food and service within the bar may be a little out of our price ...

Depois da capital, a capital economica. A minha intenção era simplesmente que me deixassem na saida da autoestrada para eu voltar a entrar imediatamente seguindo a direcção de Marrakech onde contava com o Raki para me dar alojamento e refeição. Era o dia do aniversario da minha mãe e a minha unica resolução para esse dia era de ligar-lhe para lhe dar os parabéns e claro um sinal de vida. Fazia uma semana que tinha partido e ainda ninguém sabia do meu paradeiro ...

... into Casablanca 25 minutes away. We had no idea were we were so we saw a Novotel hotel and walked in pretending to be guests and asked for a map of the city. They also organised a taxi for us to the markets. Casablanca is a unusual mixture of old and modern, strict dress and relaxed. It has a great vibe with people everywhere. Cool city. We finally met the Glovers at the station with a mixture of joy and relief that we had finally managed to connect. We then went to ...

... We're in the desert. Rick: I was misinformed. Initial impressions were not favourable. The hotel was located in a decaying part of the city ...

... donkey ride sealed the deal... i loved donkeys. That afternoon, a few urgences, snacks and donkey-sightings later, we got the tour of Meknes, by none other than the ex-translator to the king who divorced his second wife and was looking for his 9th. We saw the worlds biggest silo (i can see that a king with 12000 horses would need to store hay), he told us the arabs invented the concept of the arch (sorry Lynn, your art history studies were clearly wrong, arabs ...