Part I of my trip to Morocco and Portugal<\/p>\n
I must say, it was a very sandy trip.\u00a0 If you were to empty my backpack after my return, you would find sand from the Sahara, the Algarve (Portugal), and the endlessly flat beaches in Tangier.\u00a0 Sand in my socks, sand in my shirts, sand in my shampoo.\u00a0 I took a little bit (by accident) from each place I visited, coming home to Granada with a sandy mix of Morocco and Portugal, safely stowed in every article of clothing that I brought.<\/p>\n
Two of my goals when I came to Spain were to visit Morocco and Portugal–check, check. In eleven days I went to two continents, three countries and ten cities.\u00a0 Yes, I will shamelessly use the line \u00a8trip of a lifetime\u00a8here because, well, it was. For goodness sake I saw camels sleeping on the beach in Tangier, I stayed in a Berber camp in the Sahara, I walked along a never-ending coastline in Portugal that was so peaceful I expected to\u00a0 come upon the Pearly White gates.\u00a0 So, I guess one could say that I had, you know, an okay time.<\/p>\n
Where do I even begin? Shall we do this chronologically?\u00a0 That means we must start in Granada, where I met my friend Jake who flew in from Milan, Italy where he is currently studying abroad.\u00a0 We caught a bus from Granada to Algeciras, a port town in the south of Spain.\u00a0 We were there for less than ten hours, just long enough to find our hostel, find a bar, and catch a ferry the next morning to Tangier.<\/p>\n
To me, the ferry from Algeciras to Tangier signified an interesting passage from affluent Europe to Africa which is, in some places, less than fifteen kilometers away.\u00a0 On the ferry there was a mix of travelers, europeans, Moroccans, children, mothers, and grandfathers, all speaking either French, Spanish, English or Arabic.\u00a0 (I\u00b4m sure other languages were represented as well but those are the ones that I heard.)\u00a0 We were all leaving and arriving together, but for so many different reasons.\u00a0 The ferry ride is a beautiful crossing of\u00a0 the Mediterranean, from one world to another with the diversity of so many on a single boat.<\/p>\n
The first thing Jake and I did when we arrived in Tangier (after we shed ourselves of the persistent \u00a8tour guide\u00a8who insisted on showing us around the city) was have the most amazing meal of our entire Moroccan experience.\u00a0 We sat atop the roof of a restaurant where we looked at the remarkable contrast between the stunning Tangier coast and the diry, stacked city, with its countless satellite dishes perched on the roofs of nearly every building, like baby birds waiting to be fed.<\/p>\n
We knew we wanted couscous.\u00a0 We didn\u00b4t see it on the menu, but all we had to do was say \u00a8couscous?\u00a8 and the server took it from there.\u00a0 An older gentleman, our waiter climbed about six flights of steep and spiralling stairs to brings us the biggest plate of couscous I had ever seen.\u00a0 It was like a treasure hunt as we dug through it finding chicken and and array of different veggies hidden in the pile (or shall I use the word \u00a8mountain\u00a8?) of couscous.\u00a0 (Oh no.\u00a0 I need to stop writing about this.\u00a0 Right now I\u00b4m in my room in Granada and I can hear my Se\u00f1ora cooking dinner and if I muse over this amazing meal any longer I just won\u00b4t be able to eat the chicken noodle soup that we have every night).\u00a0 Let\u00b4s just say that our first meal in Morocco is representative of the rest of the trip: a surprising, delicious and exciting exploration.<\/p>\n
Suggested Soundtrack before continuing: \u00a8Marrakech Express\u00a8 by Crosby, Stills and Nash.\u00a0 Go ahead, type it into YouTube or play it on your iTunes if you have it.<\/p>\n
We took the overnight train from Tangier to Marrakech and who knew that being on a train for ten hours could actually be so fun? We boarded the train around 10:00 p.m. and arrived in Marrakech at 8:00 the next morning. I shared a couchette with four other women, one of whom had a little daughter named Wiram.\u00a0 Wiram taught me the French names of different animals and drew pictures of her house in my journal while the train vibrated along the tracks beneath us.<\/p>\n
Eventually we went to sleep to the soothing movement of the train rocking us in our small beds as we cut through the desert.\u00a0 I drifted off so content in my dreams, knowing that when I awoke i would be in the red city of Marrakech, somewhere unlike any place I had ever been.<\/p>\n
Our hostel was situated within the Medina, the old part of the city that is surrounded by a wall, red like the earth with which it was built.\u00a0 The Medina sits under the watchful eye of a Mosque, whose tall minaret gazes down on the city like a pine tree might watch\u00a0 the shrubbery below.\u00a0 Five times each day the prayer is anounced, and one can hear the voice of the announcer echoe\u00a0 throughout every part of the Medina.<\/p>\n
When we arrived in Marrakech that morning, the huge open market in the center of the Medina was bustling with a fair number of people, but at this hour there weren\u00b4t too many dried fruit stands, mopeds, or monkies on leashes.\u00a0 Jake and I had no idea how the night transformed this plaza.<\/p>\n
We settled into our beautiful hostel, and before heading out to get lost in the complicated streets of the Medina, Jake and I relaxed on the terrace of our hostel, chatting with the owner, a younger woman from the UK named Francesca, who had moved to Morocco two years ago to be with her husband Abdullah.\u00a0 We listened to her explain th ecity and suggest places to visist, as th esounds of the city hummed in the background.\u00a0 If you stood on your tip toes you could look across the satellite dishes and crowded rooftops and into the market place that grew busier and louder as the day went on.<\/p>\n
We drank cups of tea that tasted like liquid candy with mint leaves swimming like Beta fish inside the glasses.\u00a0 While we sat on the terrace, Echo, a local magician, musician and entertainer (a man of many talents) made us traditional Berber coffee.\u00a0 He stood there for 20 minutes or more mixing, and whipping what looked like peanut butter, when he finally scraped it into a cup and poured warm milk into the curious mixture.\u00a0 I had my doubts.\u00a0 Coffee the consistency of peanut butter? I\u00b4ve definitely heard of more appetizing things.\u00a0 But, as you can probably guess it turned out to be some of the greatest cofee I\u00b4d ever tatsed.\u00a0 It was sweet, and latte-like, and smoothe in the way that coffee should be, not at all peanut buttery!\u00a0 I couldn\u00b4t get enough of this peanut butter-looking, coffee-tasting goodness.\u00a0 I could have sat up on that terrace for hours drinking that Berber coffee.\u00a0 But alas, there was the rest of Marrakech to explore and I couldn\u00b4t well justify spending the entire afternoon on the terrace sipping coffee.<\/p>\n
Echo invited Jake and I to his house where we were able to indulge in our respective passions: music and children.\u00a0 Jake and Echo played the drums while I played with Echo\u00b4s eight month old sister.\u00a0 She bobbed along to the rhythm of the drums as she attempted to yank out my hair with her remarkably strong miniature hands.<\/p>\n
The house was located just off the main streets in the Medina. When we entered we greeted the women who were cooking in the kitchen, removed our shoes and went past what seemed to be the dining\/livingroom and into another part of the house.<\/p>\n
The house was crowded, but comfortable.\u00a0 When I say comfortable I mean comfortable in the physical but also in the intangible sense.\u00a0 There were large pillows sprawled on the floor that were, in fact, very comfortable.\u00a0 But more importantly I felt comfortable being in the house as a guest, as a foreigner, and as an absolute stranger.\u00a0 I had no way of conversing with anyone (Echo spoke French, so he and Jake could talk, but the women only spoke Arabic).\u00a0 When they served us lunch I did my best to \u00a8look\u00a8as grateful as possible, which pretty much consisted of over-smiling constantly.\u00a0 They pushed us to eat more olives, more bread and continued to refill our cups with the sinfully delicious and beautiful Moroccan tea.\u00a0 (Let me just explain why I say that the tea was beautiful: as some of you know, I love leaves.\u00a0 I have been known to crawl around in them during Fall, or to stop mid sentence, or mid stride to croon over a particular leaf.\u00a0 The way the mint leaves floated in the tea, limp but brilliantly green was, however mundane it may seem, beautiful to a leaf-lover.\u00a0 Cheesey, nerdy, but so very true.)<\/p>\n
We sat on the (comfotable ) pillows around a plastic table while the baby nursed, and we ate.\u00a0 The door to the home opened and closed as a little girl of about seven ran in and out.\u00a0 Each opening of the door brought something new.\u00a0 Sometimes a donkey would be pearing inside, and other times it was just the little girl, running in with newly bought candy to give Jake and me. One opening of th edoor brought an old man, clad in what many Moroccan men wear: a tactful robe and a round cap. No, not a bath robe, a nice robe.\u00a0 One that you might expect Dumbledore to wear.\u00a0 This man was, as Echo informed us, a man of few words.\u00a0 He sat next to me, and I felt a sort of tranquility as you might feel, again, if Dumbledore were to sit down next to you: calm, but in the presence of great power.\u00a0 Not threatening power, rather the power of knowledge.\u00a0 I hardly exchanged one word with this man (at least as far as I know), but I could tell that he understood.\u00a0 Understood what? you may ask.\u00a0 Honestly, I\u00b4m not sure what, but it was something important.\u00a0 Here, I could throw in words like \u00a8life\u00a8, \u00a8love\u00a8, \u00a8peace\u00a8or \u00a8self\u00a8, in an attempt to describe this man\u00b4s deep and inmeasurable understanding but those would just be inadequate and superficial guesses.\u00a0 So I won\u00b4t use those words.\u00a0 I won\u00b4t use any words, in fact, to help you or me understand this man\u00b4s understanding. Okay, let\u00b4s just say, he\u00b4s got it down.\u00a0 A real-life Dumbledore, if you will.<\/p>\n
We left this comfortable home and I gave my \u00a8thank-you-so-much-for-hosting-us-and-feeding-us-and-being-so-hospitable\u00a8look as clearly and forcefully as I could.\u00a0 The little girl leaped into my arms, giving Jake and me good-bye kisses on the cheek (she may have bruised my face with her enthusiasm) and we spent the rest of the day smelling rare spices, trying on Moroccan dresses (Not Jake, just me. And not by choice, but by the insistence of the shopkeeper), nearly being mauled by mopeds, and simply getting lost in the streets of the Medina.<\/p>\n
Note: Given that we are only on day two of my journey, I will have to write about this trip in parts.\u00a0 Stay tuned for the rest, I promise it will come shortly! Thank you for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Part I of my trip to Morocco and Portugal I must say, it was a very sandy trip.\u00a0 If you were to empty my backpack after my return, you would find sand from the Sahara, the Algarve (Portugal), and the … Continue reading