Marrakesh Trip

After school on Friday July 5, the CLS group disembarked to Marrakesh and Essaouria.

On the way there, we visited Mosque Hassan 2 in Casablanca. I believe this is one of the largest mosques in the world and the only one non-muslims are allowed to enter. The building was structurally quite magnificent from a civil engineering point of view. Also we were required to take our shoes off (I'm lucky I don't have a staff infection or something. Thanks for that phobia, Mom) and people were screaming at me to cover my shoulders up while I was trying to repack my purse and take off my shoes and comply with whatever else the guard was saying. It was a mess.

It's right on the beach or coast or something so it was really windy and nice. Spectacular view

After visiting the Mosque in Casablanca, we began the 3-4 hour journey to Marrakesh. This time the buses finally had airconditioning and plenty of room. No more storing luggage on our laps! 

We get to the hotel and there are workers protesting outside, so that was a little reality check. I have no idea what they were saying. Also all of these hotels try to say that they have wifi in the rooms... but it's only in the lobby. Pretty lame, but better than nothing. Really nice hotels too, but another thing they do here is only have like one key card per room, and with two kids in a room, it's pretty rough sometimes. 

The bus took us to Jemaa al Fnaa where we split up into groups. I went with the RD here and two other girls and we ended up eating street food. Not exactly what I was planning to do, but it's what you do in Marrakesh. I didn't want to spend too much money nor was I trusting of said street food, so I just got harrira soup, moroccan specialty, for something like a dollar. Walked around the medina for a little bit. My group went to stop to look at some story telling something and I saw a monkey so naturally... just wanted to look but owner threw the monkey on me! It was big and didnt want to go back to his owner. But then we went back on the bus to the hotel, I checked some emails, and went to bed for some well deserved sleep!

1) Menara Gardens

The next morning we went to the Menara "Gardens" which in my opinion weren't really gardens. It was super hot out, and was basically just a big tank with fish in it. On the plus side we saw some camels on the way out. 

You can kind of see some fish

Camels!!!

2) Bahia Palace

This was next up on our tour. It was nearby and I'm not very sure what it was exactly... It was very hot and about an hour walking tour, so I just sat outside in the shade with some cats while the group toured. When I say Marrakesh is hot... I mean hot. Like, 105 degrees hot. I did manage to snap some pictures.

3) Koutoubia Mosque

I didn't understand much of the tourguide on this one, but it was a pretty big old style mosque. We weren't properly informed that we weren't returning to the bus, so I left my scarf in there cause it was hot. We were dropped at the Medina and I searched for a while for a scarf, but they wanted to charge me 120-200 DH for a scarf! I've bought them for 10-20 before, so I went without scarf. Good thing I had sunscreen on! 

4) Medina

I had about four hours at this point to go shopping in the medina. I went looking for the vegetarian cafe my RD told me about, found it. Expensive though and I wasn't entirely hungry! So I came back out and had lunch at this little place, had a nice conversation with the shop owner who was impressed I knew some Arabic and made me prove it by writing "couscous" in Arabic! (Which is what I had to eat). I had some Moroccan pastry too, but it was waxy and weird... 

After that I went to find a monkey man so I could get a picture before I got all of my purchases. I found one that had a baby monkey who took no time in climbing on top of me! I got the guy to take a few pictures, and then I went to leave, and in true Moroccan fashion, he tried to charge me 50 DH for taking the pictures. I brought out a 10 DH coin and gave it to him, saying that was all I had. His partner and him started to get disgruntled and it started to get kind of iffy, but then a group of other CLS students walked by and I just walked away quickly with them. 

They wanted to go to the vegetarian cafe, so I took them to it and had some juice while they got their meals. Too bad I had already eaten cause it did look really great! 

After that I went shopping and got some good deals and made it back to the bus by 430 so that we could make our way to Essaouria...