MMMMMMM....Marrakech - Day 1

So let's start with day 1, 5:30AM Hermosa Beach, CA.  Wake up and catch a cab to LAX.  FLy to Dallas.  Sit and wait three hours, they're having rain storms.  We sure could use some of that in California.  We sit and waste some time eating BBQ and walking around, knowing we are going to be sitting for quite a while.  Turns out our flight was delayed about 45 minutes due to the weather.  So we take off... 9 hours and 45 minutes later we land in Madrid.  We're gonna be here 4 total times in the next month, so I hope we are comfortable.  We found a place that serves Iberico ham flatbreads for breakfast.  So we jumped right on that.  We missed it so much and it's sooo tasty.  Customs took it from us when we tried to bring some back last time, I think we learned our lesson.  It's now 9 AM local time.  Neither of us have slept very much at all.  We're just waiting another 2 hours in Madrid waiting for our flight to Marrakech.  We board that plane for another 2 hour flight.  I ended up dozing off some but woke up just in time to see the desert that we were flying into.  It's kind of crazy. 

We land and have to walk off the plane onto the runway and it's HOT.  Then into the airport and through customs.  We get our passports stamped and walk out into the heat.  First things first.  You can't get Moroccan Dirhams at any currency exhcange.  It's a closed (?) currency, so it's not traded outside the country.  You have to get currency in the country and it's actually illegal to leave with any.  So SHHHHH!! and it's about 10 - 1 dirham to dollars.

So we walk outside and walk over to the cab line.  We get mobbed by a bunch of cab drivers.  This is not exactly what I was looking for first thing in a new country after about 23 hours with minimal sleep.  So we just pick one, he throws our bags into his trunk and we tell him where we're going.  He says it will be 250 ($25) which seems reasonable enough, that's what it cost us to get to LAX.  So sure.... Drive us to our place.  So we're driving through the city, out of the airport and out to a big wall.  Marrakech is interesting in that the city is divided into two parts, the Medina or old part and the Geuliz or the newer trendier European part.  Our cab driver drives through a gate in the wall, and lets us out on the street.  He says, I can't drive to your hotel.  You have to walk up that street and it will be on your left.  Mind you this is in broken English, with a French and Arabic accent.  They speak French and Arabic in Morocco, huh.

So, we walk to our hotel, and walk in the door.  It's pretty crazy.  A riad is an old palace and they have now been converted to BnB's all over town.  It's pretty beautiful on the inside.

 Looking down on the courtyard in the center of the Riad

 The light outside our door

 Hallway leading to our room

Hallway leading to our room

So we check in.  She sits us down that the table in the lobby (where the blue pool is above) and proceeds to pour us some mint tea.  Very Very tasty.  And tells us that you need to bargain with everyone because they will try to rip you off.  Any cab ride in the city should be less than 40 drm.  Oops... ripped off already, oh well.  So she walked us up to our room.  Turned on the computer and noticed it's 6:30AM PST, good lord we've been traveling for almost 25 total hours.  We unpacked everything and decided to go for a walk down to the main square, Djemaa El-Fna.  Which I guess means square of death, since they used to do executions there many years ago, now it's just a crazy mess of street performers and vendors that sell anything and everything you could possibly imagine.  So we walked around there a little, but were tired so we went upstairs to see the fray beginning to build from above.  There was an "obligatory consumption" to sit at a table upstairs.  What would you like to drink?  

Sure, that looks tasty... I'll have that.  There's not really any booze around, so soda will have to do.  The market down stairs start to assemble.  And we can hear the drum beats of the dancers starting to come into the square.  

We walked through the market a little, and got lost in the Souks, or little market stalls down the alleys.  Everywhere you turn there are people hassling you to buy something, and it got pretty overwhelming pretty quick, since we were so exhausted.  we had dealt with about as much as we could.  We went back and just had dinner at our riad.  Tajine is one of my new favorite foods.  It's just a way of cooking, but it's pretty fantastic, and I'm sure we'll have plenty more.  So that's it for now.  We're sure to have plenty more adventures in this city, not really sure what to make of it quite yet.  But it sure is beautiful to watch the sunset over the main Mosque in town.

So, tomorrow we're going to go around the city here, then we're taking a day trip to a small beach town named Essaouira, and then we're going on a camel trek out into the Sahara to camp for a night.  It should be interesting.  I can tell you so far this is like no place I have ever been before....