Here’s a picture I took in Stockholm:

The harbor with a battleship. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Turns out it was the USS Cole.

My journey to Morocco started on Friday night at about 1am. To get to the airport, I had to take a bus to the subway, the subway to the central station, and then the bus to the airport. To top that off, I had a 7 hour layover in Frankfurt, which I spent reading and sleeping on a bench until I was kindly asked to leave. I finally arrived in Fez at 6:35, the last train for Rabat left at 6:45. I took a bus into town and tried to get a bed at the hostel. It was full, but the guy at the desk pointed me towards a few other hotels. I ended up getting a room and heading to the internet cafe to find out where the hotel in Rabat was and what time I was going to be arriving.
Found out quickly that the hotel was right next to a Mosque. That was at 4:20 when the call to prayer sounded. I got up and had some coffee, then walked to the train station.

I was really expecting the worst when arriving in Morocco. After my experiences in India, I thought I was going to be endlessly hasseled and I was overeager to get to Rabat where at least I’d be with six other people. But Fez was amazing. No one bothered me. No one was shouting out to me. One kid came up and asked if I needed a hotel, I told him I didn’t and that was the end of it. The same was true in Rabat. I got out of the train station and asked for directions to the hotel, no one seemed to know, but one guy pulled out his cellphone and dialed the number I had written down and got directions. I was utterly impressed with how friendly and helpful everyone was.

Train station in Fez:

When I got to the hotel, I asked if the Pauls had come back yet. Their English got me nowhere, and neither did my French. Fortunately I had my modern standard arabic, which at least meant they could understand me, even if I had only a tenuous grasp of their responses in Moroccan. Turns out Robbie had taken a taxi all the way to the airport to surprise Jill and John, who were getting in late. Unfortunately, he woke up late and ended up missing them. We figure they were probably all at the airport at the same time, but just didn’t run into each other.

Once they got in an settled, we walked down through the old city and to the beach. I’ve never seen so many people in one place in all my life. Robbie got some great pictures, unfortunately I don’t have any with me here. I’ll try to post a copy at some point though. We bought some fresh cooked potato chips from a guy on the ramp up from the beach, then walked back through the crowded markets. We had dinner at the hotel, and Robbie and I made plans to meet Chris, Anna, and Laura. Their budget flight out of Paris was delayed (they even had to switch from Paris-Orly to Charles DeGaulle) and didn’t get in until about 5am. Robbie and I were waiting for them at a cafe, we had some coffee and orange juice together and then went back to wake Jill and John.

The cast of characters:

Chris, Jill, Laura, Anna, Me, John, Robbie.

After a quick rest, we walked to Chellah, the site of some Roman ruins and later a Mosque.

The most surprising part might have been the sheer number of Marabou Stork nests, even on top of the Minaret!

Then we showed the new arrivals the sights we had seen the day before. We watched the sunset over the Atlantic Ocean.

After that we had dinner at a great Moroccan restaurant. I’d say over the course of our trip, perhaps the biggest language stumbling block was the Menus. Of course all were in French. If we were lucky, there might be English translations. Even if we asked for an Arabic translation, my Moroccan dialect food vocabulary isn’t particularly extensive. So, it was a good thing we didn’t order the baby deer on the menu that night. Or what we guessed to be baby deer. (Cervelle) We later found out that means brains. Not that it woudn’t have been good, but that’s the thing you would like to be expecting before the waiter removes the cover, I think.