I'm spending this weekend in Tangier!
I disembarked after school on Friday. I live about two or three streets down from the tram-way. The internet in our house was off when I got home from school, and I needed to look up a few more things before I left, so I packed up, played with my host sister for a little bit, and went to school to use the internet. I'm wrapping things up and realize it's already 2:10 PM! My train is supposed to leave at 2:42 so I book it to the tram-way and right as I walk up the train is departing. So I buy a ticket and painstakingly wait the seven minutes until the next tram. Fiiiiinally it shows up and I'm just staring at my phone. I get to the station around 2:30 and then realize I have to wait in line for a machine to get the ticket. I think about asking the guy in front of me to let me go first because at this point I had five minutes left until 2:42 and didn't know if there was security or something after that. Didn't know where I was going, etc. Anyway he gets done quickly and I see that they've delayed the train by five minutes, thank god.
Ticket in hand, I descend the escalator to where the train disembarks from and try to determine the difference in where first and second class ticket holders can board. I just went with second class, which as I found out, means you have no guaranteed seat. Rabat in the middle of the day was super busy and it was a ridiculous push to even try to get on the train. People were so concerned about getting on that they wouldn't even let the poor people on the train get off first.
I realize there are no seats anywhere so I have to stand up in the aisle with everyone else and hold on to a seat back and prepare myself for what I now realize is going to be a long, exhausting, hot (no AC), four hour long train ride. Eventually, maybe less than 45 minutes in, enough people get off that I am able to grab a seat finally. Less and less people remain the closer we get to Tangier. After a while I start to try to figure out which stop I need in Tangier, cause there are three stops. Turns out I needed the last one which was at the end of the line. Disembark from the train, and make my way into the train station. Find a bathroom, cause there weren't any on the train I don't think, but I also wasn't going to give up my seat to go look. The strangest thing here is paying the "bathroom attendants" who don't really do anything... But they only want usually like 25 cents. Just strange.
I get outside and as I should have expected, there were a bunch of taxi drivers asking like pelicans if we needed taxis.
Finally after my hour long tour, I jump off the horse which was much easier, and walking after that was a bit difficult! My knees were so sore from being in that awkward position. I flag down a taxi and since it's around 11 at this point, I decide to try to find the bookstore I have on my list. The museums, according to my research, were all closed from 11:30 - 3:00 so I had some down time. Taxi driver took me to the right road, but the shop was closed, or I maybe didn't find the right place. But I decided to walk home since I thought I knew where I was... yeah bet you can guess how that ended up.
I turn them down cause I can't tell if they are grand taxi or petit taxi drivers, I assumed grand taxis because they were everywhere and it's not really recommended to take the grand ones because they cram six people into them and you have to negotiate the fare beforehand. I much prefer petit taxi because they are metered.
I manage to flag one down and he doesn't really know the hotel but he's nice and knows a bit of English and is willing to ask some people where it is. We flag down a traffic police officer and manage to find the hotel! It's a seemingly little hole in the wall, but once I get inside it's pretty big. Manager is nice enough and gives me the choice between two rooms. One has two double beds and seemed bigger, the other had a larger full size bed. I stupidly chose the one with the two double beds cause it was bigger, but it would have been nice to be able to spread out on a full size bed! I swear the beds I have here are narrower than the ones I have a Tech, which is seriously saying something...
There isn't much to do because it's nearly 7:30 PM by the time that I get all settled in. Check some emails and decide to go check out the immediate area, but it's about 8:30 by that time, and it's after iftar, so the only people really out are men sitting and smoking in cafes. It's dark so I decide to play it safe and just come back to the hotel and get an early start for the next day.
I spend the rest of the night planning what I'll do tomorrow, and the tentative list included horseback riding, a contemporary art museum, visiting St. Andrew's church, and a museum in the Kasbahs. Turns out the art museum and church should be within a ten minute walking distance of my hotel, and another ten from that is a bookstore which has a modest selection of English titles, according to the guidebook I consulted. Plan and directions in hand, I head to bed.
The next day... I had plans to wake up early, around 7:30, but accidentally slept in and didn't get on the road until around nine. Flag down a taxi and try to communicate that I want the horse park, and I think it went okay, which was confirmed when I ended up at the park, haha. About a 10 DH ride there, which is ~1.15 USD, so not too bad. I manage to find the front office and communicate that I would like to ride a horse! Cost me 150 DH, or 18 USD, for an hour plus a guide, which I suppose is a fair assessment.
I wait around for a while checking out all the horses in the stalls until my guide shows up. There are some really, really big animals there. Like, massive. Scary massive. They were all very well tempered though, and the woman in charge was showed me the facilities.
My guide shows up with some normal sized horses and I start to realize that I have to climb onto that thing. The person lowers the length of the stirrup which is still impressively high, and I get one foot in, and then swing over to get on. And realize how uncomfortable it is! I also didn't think through the clothes situation very well, and ended up just wearing sandals. I think some tennis shoes might have been helpful!
We start walking and then I realize what an impressively athletic sport this really is. Just trying to find a comfortable spot on that saddle was impossible, and holding on to make sure you don't fall off! By the end I realized if I put more weight onto the stirrups themselves and supported myself that way, it was more comfortable, but highly exhausting as well. No idea how jockeys do it.
We start walking around the facilities and while I was hoping for some scenery more exciting, it was still fun. We walk around a few times in the perimeter, and then my guide ties down his horse, and puts me in a circular training arena. Then he decides we should start to run. That was impressively difficult. I figured out that if you stand up on the horse like he was telling me in Arabic to do (hardest part, haha) you can sort of bounce in sync with the horse and it's a lot more comfortable than just walking. However I seriously lacked the body/muscle strength to do that with any serious repetition. I tell the guide I don't want to run anymore and we go back to making some perimeters. The facilities are a lot larger than I had realized and they had dogs and chickens and baby chickens pecking around for food. It was adorable.
Actually got to the right place, but the roads are confusing and very poorly marked, and went down the right fork in the road instead of the left like I needed to, and decided to get a taxi cause it was hot and I was lost. After convincing the guy that no it actually wasn't in the medina (seriously no one knows this hotel), also hello Arabic direction skills) we found it again and it was just the street over. But oh well, I have a good idea of my way around now. I seem to pick it up pretty quickly, thankfully.
I decided to catch up on emails and watch some TV since my research showed that everything was closed from ~12-3. Sat in the lobby of my hotel and watched some Stargate! After a quick peanut butter sandwich, I start to walk around to find the Contemporary Art Museum that is theoretically within a ten minute walk from my hotel. Yeah, no. I found the church, I think, and the difference in address between the church and the museum was 50 vs 52, but no success. I tried asking around, but no one knew either. At this point I give up and decide to move on to the next museum, the one in the Kasbahs. I find a taxi (which took an incredibly long time) and we actually get me right there, but the museum is closed, and the hours on the website were wrong. Turns out it was open 9-3 entirely, and not 9-12 and 3-6 like my book said. So that was a sad bust. Looks like a great museum though, I'm going back tomorrow.
On the plus side, I got a spectacular view of the Mediterranean ocean for the first time. And naturally, I forgot the camera card in my computer on the way out, so I couldn't get a photo but I'll go back tomorrow. The amount of blues in the ocean were spectacular though.
I found a taxi back to my hotel and at this point was pretty exhausted, and took a nap for about an hour and a half. After this I went back out and walked around the city and wanted to go back to the gelato shop I found, which turns out was about a twenty minute walk up hill. Not excited about that... Not much to do in the cities either because of Ramadan so all the restaurants and cafes are closed. I figure out that said gelato shop has food food, and around 6:45 sit at a table and start pursuing the menu. Luckily I had a semi English speaking waiter who was able to translate the French for me. I decide to go with one of the Ramadan specials, and for about $6.50, I got dates, a boiled egg (ewwww), orange juice, milk, water, three dessert pastries, and a huge bowl of harrira. I spent about two hours at the restaurant overall. It was crazy... tangier is super loud and noisy, but around iftar, 730, it got silent. Strange to see that transition in daily life.
After dinner I walk back to my hotel and on the way I see the most adorable tiny little kitty cat, who thankfully doesn't look sick, just small and mommy-less. I have my little water bottle, and pour some water into the lid and give it to her. She was the first kitten who actually drank water from me! She had a lot too, must have been seriously dehydrated. Also a skittish little thing, she barely let me come near her! I did manage to sneak around her and grab her, and was walking down the street with her seemingly calm, but at the last minute she flips out of my hands and runs away so fast I don't even know what direction she went. I was seriously intending on taking her back to the hotel and feeding her bread I had. I might have even taken her home to Rabat. She was so beautiful and sad :(
I spent the rest of the night just relaxing in the hotel, since there isn't much to do and just men left on the streets after about 9 pm at night. Which suites me well, some down time is always good!
The plan for tomorrow is just to get to the beach to get some sand and water, and hopefully visit the Kasbah museum as well!
No comments:
Post a Comment