Ramada Les Almohades Tangier

... engine. It is so loud and so persistent that when he stops
snoring briefly I think he is dead – either through choking on his own tongue
or I had an out of body experience and suffocated him with his own pillow. The
USA should have used him instead of water-boarding to extract ‘secrets’ from
alleged terrorists. It’s more inhumane.

So after three
weeks of this in Croatia and a few nights in Marrakech I was tired, cranky and
ready to split up ...

Today was mostly a travel day to Tangier, a port city near Spain. We also made a lunch and supermarket stop (I needed dental floss and toothpaste) in the small town of Kenitra. Here are some photos from yesterday in Rabat (Friday). In the morning we visited the National Library of Morocco and got a short tour. The interesting thing about this library is that it didn't look that different than modern ...

... we scraped enough of a combination of Euros and Dirhams to pay for our train ride, moved to our compartment and were finally able to relax for the 8 hour trip back.

The long train ride back was somewhat uneventful, although we had a couple of false endings when we thought we'd arrived only to find out there were a few more stops left. Thankfully we finally arrived at the final station at Casablanca, negotiated a reasonable rate for the taxi back to the hotel ...

... with guns, wire corrals....I don´t imagine many borders are what one would call pretty, but I sure as heck don´t remember those wire fences when I crossed into Portugal nor when crossing into France. lol Our passports were stamped and then a Moroccan border patrolman entered our bus, very stern, very loud and warning us not to take pictures of videos of the border. We were checked and then our guide for the weekend named Abduhl, who ...

... women are at home or out buying food. The most important thing we learn today. After a whole day, we find out that Moroccans are in the middle of the Ramadan fast or holy month which means they are basically fasting and are only allowed breakfast very early at around 5am after their first prayer of the day. This was the singing and prayers we heard on the first night, they blast it through the city via mega speakers. Then no food or water is allowed until ...

... TGI, Texas Ribs, and even Notre Alsace - it's all a bit surreal and tawdry. On my way to Tangier I stop in at Asilah and Larache - before she left I read Alison's copy of a book called Streetwise, which covers a section of the life of the author, Mohammed Choukri, when he decided to learn to read and write at the age of 20 and lift himself out of the hard and tawdry life he had been leading, and much of it is set in these locations so I was curious to see these places ...

Dad sent me off to go shopping, thinking that I would come back with food, instead I brought back necklaces and stories about the men who had invited me out and walked me home along the beach. He wasn't impressed. He's missing Mum and apparently I don't live up to her. So I got him (and myself) tipsy on sparking wine.

... A lone woman walked along, her robe floating in the foamy water. Some time later we ate at a restaurant along the beach. An older waiter spoke excellent English and delivered a multitude of food to us: bread, butter, olives, and eggplant as appetizers. We had some sort of Moroccan dishes and then very sweet tea to wash it all down. At this point we found ourselves tired of Tangier and ready to go back to Spain: there simply ...

... we arrived in Fes. Best minute of my life. *** We picked up a taxi at the bus station. We had no guidebook so we asked the driver to take us to the center of town. I never thought that language would be a problem here, but English speakers seem to be few and far between. French and Arabic were all the taxi guy understood. When the French came to Fes, they left the old city exactly as it was and built a newer French version right alongside of it. This had the side effect of ...

... or less split into two: the new town which was created by Europeans this century and has a faded grandeur that reminded us of Southend-on-sea (which is not necessarily a bad thing); the medina is the old part of town and is incredibly impressive.  It looks as though it has barely changed over the past 400 years.  But we will not be rushing back to see more. We did not intend to spend longer than a day in Tanger anyway, but our experiences there made us ...