At 5:30 a.m. Friday morning most of us were woken by the first Muslim call to prayer. Just in case you don't feel like going to the mosque, they bring the mosque to you. Every pause prompted a sigh of relief ... which was immediately followed by a muffled groan of disgust when the next prayer song began. This lasted roughly an hour.
Breakfast was provided by the hotel and consisted of warm eggy-bready crepes, bread, jam, butter, and mint tea or coffee. Mint tea is the national beverage of sorts of Morocco. We took a cab to the Voyageur train station, thought we were 15 minutes late catching the train to Marrakesh and ended up being half an hour early.
Andrew, Sean and Dan at the Casablanca train station
First class tickets for the three and one half hour train ride were 125 dirham ($15). The first hour was foggy, but the fog eventually lifted, revealing sparsely vegetated green hills and pastures. Western South Dakota is ubiquitous. Shepherds tended to flocks of sheep and the occasional several head of Holstein-looking cattle. Large cactus, a rather ingenious combination of hedgerow and barbed wire, were used as fences.
We arrived in Marrakesh shortly after noon and rode in another old Mercedes cab to the "Heart of the Medina Hostel." Marrakesh is home to just over 1 million people and is best known for it's large square, Djemaa el Fna.
Our hostel was located in the medina just to the east of the main square. After drinking some complimentary mint tea, we walked a short distance to our room. The room consisted of five narrow beds, extremely firm, with one blanket per bed. There were two toilets: one sitter, one squatter. The shower was pretty standard.
The medina consisted of windy, narrow paths between shops crowded with sundry worthless trinkets, Berber slippers, clothing, rugs, scarves, all being sold by overly aggressive hawkers. Street-meat venders offered hard boiled eggs, grilled kabobs, and frites.
We lunched at a cafe overlooking the square. We shared couscous (which originated in Morocco), tagine, frites, tomato based Moroccan salad, olives, and bread. The tagine, couscous, and salad were delicious. I saw a guy with a Twins cap in the restaurant, meant to approach him to compliment his good taste, and forgot. Compared to the part of Casablanca we visited, Marrakesh had far more Westerners.
Above is tagine served in it's traditional ceramic pot. It is actually baked/steamed in the pot, in this case the tagine consists of chicken, frites and olives. Next to it are brochettes of lamb, baked chicken, and in the distance vegetable couscous.
Fresh orange juice is served in many locations for between 3 and 5 dirham. We each grabbed one from a vender outside the restaurant and began to explore the square. Almost immediately we were harassed by snake and monkey handlers. Sean had a snake put on his neck without warning. When we returned later, the same thing happened to me.
Dan drinking OJ at one of the ubiquitous stands
The Snake with a snake around his neck (his neck is in my hand).
We left the square and headed for the city's largest mosque, the Koutoubia mosque. When you start with the second largest mosque in the world, subsequent mosques naturally seem less impressive. The trash strewn about the garden area didn't help. The fountains and small canals were empty and similarly littered (it is winter, after all).
We then walked for roughly two hours, picking up pastries and glass bottle cokes made with real sugar on the way. We ended up at a rooftop bar/cafe and had a round of San Miguels. Morocco was an expectedly difficult place to find alcohol (at least where we went). We welcomed the beers and the view. This part of town, to the south of the square, was home to a large population of white storks. They nested on the walls of El Badi Palace and were thought to be good luck.
Stork on the castle walls
We returned to the main square around sundown and decided to sup at one of the square's food stands. Roughly fifty full service small restaurants, complete with waiters, benches and chefs had been erected side-by-side in the center of the square. The waiters were typically aggressive and many spoke English very well. We eventually chose the stall with the most locals and the least aggressive waiters on the logic that a) locals know what is good and b) you don't have to be as aggressive if the food speaks for itself.
Me after giving the kids some hand sanitizer (but before they lifted my bill?)
As soon as we sat down small children began begging us for food, money, and sips of our cokes. As we had mixed rum in our cokes and were generally tired of being harassed, I ended up giving them only a few dollops of hand sanitizer, which they could not figure out what to do with. They ran and asked their mothers, now revealed to be standing nearby, who were similarly confused. It turned out, they repaid my generosity by lifting roughly 200 dirham from my pocket. I offer sanitation and this is what I get in return.
Restaurant stall
Andrew and Sean eating snails
After our dinner of grilled meats and frites, we visited a snail stand. I didn't care for them, but Sean and Andy did. At this point, no doubt hearing we were easy marks and urged on by Dan feeding them snails, we were surrounded by little boys and girls.
We eventually made it to one of the couple dozen dried fruit and nut stands. Pistachios were 80 dirham/kilo and dried apricots were 60 dirham/kilo. We bought some of each. Afterwards, we got milkshakes at a cafe with an elevated view of the square before heading out in search of tobacco shisha. We ended up learning no one in the medina had shisha on hand, so we began to return to our rooms for the night.
Dried Fruit Stand
Restaurant stalls in the square from the rooftop ice-cream parlor
On the way home, Patrick decided to enter an arcade filled with local teenage and twenty-year-old Moroccan men. He was immediately propositioned for hashish and other drugs and quickly left. Several of the young men followed and Patrick asked if they could find us shisha. Of course they said they could and began leading us down a street.
Upon reaching our hostel lobby, we tried told them we did not want to walk any farther and thanks anyways. They pursued, eventually demanding payment from us. When we refused one of them got quite belligerent, shoving Patrick and saying rather unpleasant things about what he would like to do to our mothers. Our hostel manager came out and convinced him to leave, but not before the young gentleman told us to "watch out." Nothing else happened, although a very loud, very drunk person tried to get in the hostel in the middle of the night.
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