From donkeys and souks to tapas and Gaudi
Trip Start
Sep 27, 2007
1
7
8
Trip End
Ongoing
Casablanca,
Morocco
Saturday, March 15, 2008
To start, let me clarify, that i had booked the holiday soon after my return from my christmas holiday, and so, annoyed people endlessly for seven weeks by reminding them that i was off to warmer weather, and providing them with a daily-updated countdown of 'how many days to go?!' ....am sure a good proportion of Bergerac (both its natives and etrangeres) were pleased when i finally did pack up and go!
Managed to score a free ride up from Bergerac to Perigueux, and then on to Orly airport. Lynn (an american assistant in Perigueux) and I flew into Casablanca on saturday night, 22nd feb, got to the hotel at 3 in the morning after the unsurprising problems with ATM machines and taxi drivers..
Lynn and I, Day One, Ain Diab
23 feb - Casablanca - met the tour guide, Jamal from the Atlas mountains, and spent the afternoon exploring this unimpressive city and its far more impressive beach at Ain Diab. Met our driver that night (Bougmaar, or 'bouge-ma' as we came to call him) and Lynn and I had our first lesson in the Arabic language that night as we went back out to the airport to pick up Rachel from Montpon (actually English).
The next day we swung past Temple Hassan II (super pretty, and some part of it is apparently submerged) and headed over to Rabat (the capital city). Rabat was a heck of a lot cleaner than Casa, easily explained by the presence of King Mohammed VI's palace. It was here where one tour group member (Jill, English, travelling with her husband Martin) learned the valuable lesson of which way to face when using a hole-in-the-ground toilet (or twoi-let as Jamal would say). Face away from the wall Jill, away from the wall! We then stopped off at Chella - the ruins of a walled arabic city, oddly enough also home to many storks... yeah i mean the birds. Every which way u looked seemed the perfect snapshot... We continued on to Meknes where we showed off our arabic to the restaurant workers, and Lynn managed to get the restaurant owner to take off his guns and berber knives off the wall for her to try... sorry Lynn, your pocket knives may impress us, but they're nothing on the berber ones
Temple Hassan II. Rachel, Lynn and I
!As usual, an early rise tuesday, in order to visit Volubilis, the ruins of an ancient roman city. Our local tour guide here was a crack up... im pretty sure he knew 10 phrases in english, and took us around pointing things out:
mosaics: 'dolphin: the symbol of the protection of the family'
crack in concrete 'earthquake line'
Houses: 'atrium' was always followed by 'solarium', and we quickly got the hang of what parts were in fact 'original' and 'restored'. He even gave us a demo of how one squated in the room that he called the 'latrine' ...Jill, take notes, he faced away from the wall... in fact, to top it off, when Lynn explained to him that she had a bit of an urgence (needed the loo), he sent her off to relieve herself where ever she pleased amongst the roman ruins (lucky the guide had given that demo on how to squat!)
Popped into Moulay Idriss or whatever the nearby town is called, where I had the fantastic chance of riding a donkey thru the village... geez, if i didn't at all stand out as a foreigner before hand, the donkey ride sure did the trick. although i excitedly shouted donkey everytime we had seen one on the trip to-date, the donkey ride sealed the deal..
Mosaics, Temple Hassan II
. 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 are smarter than romans) and made us smell some dudes hashish in a temple. Also helped me with my potential donkey purchase from Jamal. I loved the donkeys, couldn't see enough of them... with trailers, without trailers, tied to trees, with people on their backs, brown ones, white-grey ones... i was developing strong arguement for having a donkey in Bergerac as my main mode of transportation... just had to sort out a few details involving where i'd keep it, and what size trailer i'd need for him. Luckily our journey continued onto Fez that afternoon so i could mull it all over. That evening we had another lavish 5 course meal, but a show aswell.. belly dancers, magicians (tigga tigga tigga!), drumplayers and dudes that played shearing scissors, a dude that breakdanced with a mint tea glass on his hand, and then Rachel and I were dressed up as 'wifes' of some other audience member, and spun in a circle in the air on a table thing... bizzare...
Chella
Thursday we had a day-long tour of Fez with our guide Abdullah... from the tile and mosaics factory, to the jewish quarter, to the medina. 'Balak' was the word of the day... meaning get out of the way, im coming thru with a donkey loaded up with cargo. The medina was amazing... a maze with metalworks sections, textiles, food, knife sharpening sections, leather tanneries.. and by the end of the day we still didn't feel like we'd seen it all. But i did manage to score an extra macaroon at lunch from the dude who poured tea and guarded the metal container of cookies! Lynn managed narrowly to avoid purchasing a carpet, while Jill and Martin got a great deal on some leather goods, thanks to their 'daughter' Rachel getting them a 'student discount'.
The friday was a super long drive down to Marakesh, stopping to see monkeys on the way, and subsequently running away from the monkeys when they turned on us! A quiet day of donkey sighting, urgences, and snacks, and of course, repeating lines like 'earthquake line' 'original' 'restored'...whether it was me getting sick or Lynn's incredible alarm going off at 530am, i didn't feel quite on top... of course, just to check it off the list, i was sick during the night, so missed the guided tour of Marakesh the next morning, and the planned trip to the hamam. But in the afternoon the girls gave me a guided tour, and i bargained for two beautiful cactus silk scarves (red of marakesh of course)
Storks at Chella
. Saturday was our final day... and we opted to add on a trip out to the village where our tour guide was born, passing Richard Bransons marocan hang-out along the way. The Imlil market was an eye-opener... twisting necks of chickens to break them, people walking about with great whopping chunks of animals over their shoulder (did i really have to shake his hand?!), bizzarely a tupperware style section, and my favorite part... a donkey-park instead of a carpark! We lazed about in the sun, with the most amazing backdrop of the atlas mountains, and the immediate countryside, we ate (pasta.. damn i was greatful for something other than couscous vegetarien and tagine vegetarien) got sunburned, and rode Jamal's mule. wandered thru the countryside thru villages, and bought myself a rosewater bottle.
Unforgetable. Headed over to Madrid that evening, where we met up with Sarah, a Bergerac assistant, and once again, found that i looked like the people around me... i no longer stuck out like a sore thumb!
We went out to Toledo the sunday, and enjoyed the sun as we relaxed and dawdled about Toledo, admiring the mix of arab, catholic, and jewish influences
Chella
. On monday we thought we better see Madrid city itself... and gave paella a go aswell.. Madrid had some fantastic shopping, although i had nothing to spend, and i must admit that although i appreciated the subtle differences in architecture, I just felt like i was back in another european city.. damn it, where were all the donkeys?! At the end of the day, we found a great public garden with lake... it made madrid worthwhile. Tuesday morning i visited the Prado Museum... determined to become cultured whilst im surrounded by all this art! Several hours of admiring later, i can say i loved one painting in the whole museum: 'Maria Luisa y Mariano en el salon japones' by the painter Mariano Fortuny. Took the bus to Granada that night, and after getting wrong directions, and falling over in the middle of an alleyway, we found the hostel (Oasis Hostel... totally reccomend). Next day we saw Alhambra.. despite the biting wind we explored the palace and its surroundings.. the best palace ive ever seen... the ceilings were stalagtitic, fountains and orange trees, beautiful gardens, mosaics.... and the alleyways thru granada were inviting... Lynn and I felt like we were back in Morrocco... all was well again.
Took an overnight train to Barcelona that evening and arrived there thursday morning at the paraiso hostel (also a fantasic hostel, right next door to the Bocaria market, just off the main street La Ramblas)
the citadel, nextdoor to the Casbah
. Wandered Barcelona that day, and saw the fantastic Sagrada Familia Cathedral, by Gaudi... absolutely worth its 5 euros. Saw another assistant that evening, Drew, and went to the Dow Jones Bar, where the prices of drinks change as customers buy them... Friday, our last day, we saw Guell Park, Casa Mila, swung by Barceloneta beach, Lynn and I managed to get lost on a hill afterdark until we found our fountain light-music display and finished the evening with the most amazing tapas and a jug of sangria. Saturday we trained back to Bordeaux, and sunday morning i got back to Bergerac, just in time to do the washing and get ready for school the next day.
FANTASTIC!
