Hotel de Paris Casablanca

... at the train station and we needed to make sure he had a badge and worked for the govt. As soon as we got off the train Mohammed the travel guide was there waiting for us. He immediately told us he had a great Riad (Moroccan hotel) that we could stay in. Mohammed, or Don Fez as we would soon call him, helped us check into the Riad which was GORGEOUS ! so nice ! Seeing all the beautiful Moroccan interior design makes you want to have an entire Moroccan themed house. <br ...

... I feel much better. On to car rental. On the road. I opted to drive so I could stop more often than being on a bus or with a larger tour group. But if I had it to do again I would pay Zaid the extra to provide transportation.

Today we leave for Marrakesh, which is about 3 hours via bus/mini van or however we are being transported. As much as we all enjoyed Casa, we are excited to be going somewhere else. I will miss our guides and the nice people we're met, but hopefully we'll get to see them again at the district conference, or before we depart! Here are some final photos!

... pound and a half of sugar. each sip was like the first bite of that mint gum with flavor crystals. my teeth were rotting, but, man, they'd never been so happy to do so. how sweet it is. After a week in Morocco, the Morrocan people have really been very helpful when faced with the fluency of my English-Spanish-French-Pictionaryese mix, and i knock on wood [i really just did] when i say that aside from the normal travel hitches (like the shower incident (i'll get into that ...

... along the way and set off to experience the rest of the country in 5 days (quite an impossible task if you ask me). We moved to Marrakech and Dad was able to squeeze in a round of golf after spending a morning touring the local sights including a mortuary which was a thousand years old, and an old palace with beautiful rose bushes. While he golfed, our driver showed me the rest of Marrakech, including hundreds of acres of olive gardens owned by the royal family (Morocco is a ...

... we travelled on before, although this time it had been fine for a number of days so many of the swollen creeks we saw on the way down were trickles of their former selves. Again we witnessed the many blocks of land which appeared to be experts at growing rocks, as well as Argan around Essouria. It appears a farm block is created in a number steps; firstly the surface rocks are gathered into piles, these piles are them arranged to form the basis of the ...

... again to the safety of the basement and the internet and discovered that one of the computers had a drive that i could put my Turkish CD in -- I then put a whole heap of photos on the F/Book website and spend over 2 hours mucking around -- loving the free internet. Before too long it was time to venture outside and head to the bank to change some travelers cheques. I did this at the ...

... star. In the morning adam and I woke up to two cats fighting (mating actually, its a horrible sight and sound) and some of our group had slept outside of the tents, and we were just waiting for these cats to start fighting on top of someone. And they did!! They woke this guy chad up and he screamed so loud! And he said that he's never been so scared in his life! Its a pretty horrible way to wake up. Especially in the middle of the dessert when youre ...

Big Mosque, Horrible place. Crazy crammed train ride from Asilah down to Casablance. Thrown out of a Taxi when Fes asked if we could use the meter. Had a bit of a blow up we did, about a pen if I remember rightly, Eric the French man was nice. The mosque was amazing, but another barney with ******* taxi drivers meant it's time for us to leave. Off to El Jadida.