Riding the Marrakesh Express!  May 3, 2008

After a really long journey from San Diego (13 hrs of flying, 5 hours of layovers, and three different planes!) I finally made it to Marrakesh!  I even arrived early - I thought I was landing here around noon but in the end, I had a much earlier flight out of Casablanca and landed here in Marrakesh around 10

The airport was one of the strangest ever - why?  Well, not one person tried to sell me anything.  Usually walking out of the baggage claim area is a huge throng of people vying to be the first one to rip you off!  Well, here, there was no one!  Was no one going to even try and rip me off?  It didn't make any sense. 

I knew Morocco was going to have a little bit of that type of hassle.  What I didn't know was that I'd get it in NYC.  My flight was scheduled to depart @ 8.20pm, so at 7.40 I wander past my gate just to see if they had started boarding.  Yessirre!  In fact, the screen was flashing "Final Boarding Call."  40 minutes early.  The guy looks at me, and says, "You must be Mr Newman!  You are late!  You have to board immediately."  I tell him its way early....and he replies that they are very much planning to leave early.  Such things I've never known before....but like I said, its Morocco, and you just have to go with it.

So yeah, I had to walk all the way up to the Taxi guys before they got interested.  Their interest consisted of looking up at me.  They then quoted some outrageous price for a taxi to town, so I walk away looking for the bus, and of course one guy follows after and we get a price that I pay.

Then we had to walk all over the parking lot to get to his cab, all the while the other taxi drivers are all animated, talking as if something wasn't right.  Who knows.  Was my price too cheap?  Are they always like that?  Did I still pay too much?  Who knows!  

Rolled to Hotel Alley, which in this case is literally an alley with a bunch of hotels.  Took a room for $8 and decided to take a quick cat-nap.

So I'm pretty jetlagged.  My usual plan of "stay up late the night before so you can sleep on the plane," didn't work as planned.  I never sleep well on planes, and the flights weren't long enough to take a sleeping pill.  So I'm kinda tired.

After my nap, I hopped up to a little roof-top restaurant overlooking the Jeemah el Fna.  I have no idea how to pronounce it.  Centro seems to work.  

Seems like everyone in France is here.  Morocco is an ex-French colony and French is the co-national language.  So french menus and french people.  Us Anglophones are curiously neglected....there is some english but less than I'd expected.   It doesn't matter anyway what language they have tho, for they have no street signs anywhere!  So being able to or not being able to read them is moot.  Genius!

Wandered around the Medina this afternoon, thru the Souks markets.  Again, a strange experience as no one is hassling you to look at their stuff, as I expected.  This is quite a touristy town, which ususally means more hassle, but perhaps they know if they're too aggressive, they could lose the tourists.  We'll see how the rest of the country goes....

I'm sitting in a Cyber-Park.  Free Wifi on a park bench - genius.  These guys know what they're doing.  It was awfully hot today - but cooling off nicely.  The centro, aka the Jeemah, goes off once the sun goes down.  Night market.  Snake charmers.  Acrobats, dancing, story-tellers, street food.  So that'll be awesome to watch come to life.  

Beer is also tough to come by here.  I expected it to be like Egypt, but its certainly less common to have beer here than in Egypt.  On the other-hand, the women seem to be dressed (in general) more Westernly than Egypt.  Go figure.  

- Ryan