Heres a little on Morocco. Sorry for not updating in a long while but I've been traveling too much to write. Just starting to sit down and reflect. Here's a little something...but I have much more.
I decided to take a week off school for my spring break to travel for 2 weeks. Mostly because I wanted to have enough time in Morocco and Italy, but also because flying on Wednesdays is mucho barato (cheap). I talked to my teacher Sara about missing so much class and she said I’ll lose 10 percent of my grade in the course, but I felt it was worth it. She also told me I’ll learn more traveling than in the classroom. She told me I’ll have a test the day after I get back and to have fun. I left Wednesday morning on the 24th of March to fly to Alicante to meet up with Marisa and the morocco crew. When I was descending, my sinuses and ears started killing me. I arrived congested and in pain. Luckily, there was a farmacia in the airport, and they gave me some decongestants. I waited in the airport all afternoon for the Alicanteans to meet up with me because our flight was around 4. I slept in the airport, on my backpack, and started an epic journey. The crew met me at the airport and we checked in to Ryanair. I foolishly checked my backpack. We passed through security and I met the people I would be spending the next 4 days and 3 nights with in Arabia. Their were 8 of us, 3 guys and 5 girls. They all are from different parts of the U.S. and are all studying with Marisa in Alicante. We had a beer at the airport to calm the nerves and boarded the plane.
The flight was uneventful except for the landing. After we touched down, the passengers erupted in a loud and raucous round of applause. It made me feel like soft landings were unusual in Africa. As I walked off the plane and looked at the sign for Fez airport, with its foreign scribble of Arabic, it hit me, I was in Africa. We passed through the long lines of customs and were rewarded with new Moroccan stamp on our passports. We changed our money from Euro to Djarums and the exchange rate was excellent. We got about 11 djarums for every Euro and walked out of the airport with thousands of this new currency. Immediately, the Moroccan cab drivers were all over us, offering us rides in their 70’s Mercedes. With the help of an American studying in Fez, we found a couple of drivers to take us to our hotel. I was reminded of Mexico driving into Fez, except that the radio was blasting French and Arabic music. Marisa impressed me with her French once again. She doesn’t like to admit it, but she’s really good. She was holding a decent conversation with the taxi driver who took us to our hotel. The cab was extremely cheap, we each payed about 2 dollars. We checked in the hotel and made plans to meet down at the lobby bar for a drink.
Morocco, being a muslim country, is not a place to go if your looking to party. We sat at the bar and ordered avocado juice and the waiter promised it would make our genitals stronger. That was a common theme for the trip, many people try to sell us substances to make us more vital. The avocado juice was warm but tasty. We then walked to find something to eat. The streets of Fez were chaotic and foreign to us, so we didn’t stray far from the hotel the first night. We ate a huge dinner of pizza and pasta, which probably wasn’t the best choice. We sat outside and the whole time a stray cat was pawing at my feet and a little boy was begging on the other side. After dinner, we walked around the block and headed to bed, exhausted from the day of traveling. The hotel concierge asked us if we wanted to set up a tour guide to take us to the medina. The thought of navigating the narrow streets of the medina was mind-boggling, so we told the concierge we’d love a tour guide. We woke up and had a great free breakfast on the rooftop of our hotel overlooking fez. We waited in the lobby for our tour guide and he showed up looking sharp in a cotton suite. He sat down with us, and introduced himself as Mustafa. He was in his 30’s and talked exactly like Borat...more coming tomorrow
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