Morocco!

We got back to Spain about a week and a half or so before school started back.  Soooo we took advantage of our time off and we decided to make a quick little trip over to Marrakech, Morocco which was just a short hop, skip, and jump away from Sevilla.  We took a one hour flight on what is practically a bus with wings called Ryanair and arrived in Marrakech around 1 on Friday January 7th.

Marrakech is one of the most interesting places we've ever been!  It's by far the most unique.  First of all it's in Africa and part of the largest desert in the world (besides Antarctica but that doesn't count)!!
Second, I think it has some of the worst salesmen in the world.

Right off the bat our taxi driver from the airport to the town center initially gave us a 100 dirham (about 10 Euros) flat rate for 3 people....  right when we got out he wanted about 160..... I smell a liar...
It's ok though because we all know where liars go... back to the airport to lie to more people.

Marrakech, known as the "Red City," was a great little trip, but the first day took a little getting use to.  The city is filled with crazy vendors, tons of colors, snake charmers, people with monkeys, awesome food, and people looking to make money off of you every chance they get.  

Getting off the plane! We were told they spoke French and that doesn't look like French to me.

Our first task once arriving in Marrakech was finding our riad/hostel.  If you are lost, you can pay some little kids a few dirham to help you find your way around all the streets that seem to have the same name..... or no name at all.   But we are cheap skates and wanted to find it on our own simply for the adventure of course....  We didn't find it on our own.  We ended up asking a street vendor 3 times where our riad was and he gladly showed us.  FREE of charge!

On the roof of our Riad

Chillin in the 70 degree weather!!!!

The inside of our hostel/riad.  How did that crazy little deer get in here??

Street life in Marrakech is crazy.  Emma and I are relatively passive people, especially when dealing with all the street vendors and shopkeepers in town...  at least the first day we were there.  At first we were nice and appeased all the people asking us to just look at there stuff and insist 345987 times that we buy something, shouting out prices at stuff I definitely didn't want.  You know it's bad when the seller has to say "Come take look!  It's free to look!"  Wellll duhhh it's free to look.  I'm not going to pay you to look at this rug inside your store that I'm not going to buy and that I can see from the other side of the street just as easy..  I guess I'm just a little bitter.

But it is fun to simply get lost in the souvenir maze known as the souk! There are hundreds of little shops and you can literally get lost for hours just looking at stuff.  There is a spice souk, leather district, dye district, mason district, or practically any type of district of souvenirs you might want!  Emma and I wandered around for 4 hours.

In other news, they have awesome fresh squeezed orange juice and millions of fresh spices and herbs!  More fruit and nuts than you can shake a stick at!  There were times during our trip where I wanted to just roll around in the mounds of food or simply knock it over for the immature, childish side of me to enjoy.  Orrrrrr if someone was chasing me, I would knock off the nuts and the person chasing me would slip on them and land in some sewage....jeje

Freshhh.  and Crazy eyes.

A glass of OJ is 5 cents! boyah

Mounds of nuts everywhere.... Great for tripping up bad guys.

My new favorite game... that nobody ever wins.

One of hundreds of mosques.

The Medina at night

One exciting thing Emma did (but we don't have pictures....) was go to a "hammam."  A hammam is the most basic form of a "spa" you can get.  It's where tons of women of all shapes and sizes sit in a sauna-like room and scrub each other.  Her and a very nice 50 yr old Scottish roommate from the hostel went to the nearby hammam for a nice scrub down.  Emma basically stripped down to her undyroos while a 4 ft, 140 year old woman scrubbed down Emma's body with black soap and a rag that basically peels all your skin off.  It was basically a glove made of sandpaper.  They then washed her hair and finished up with about 20 kisses to the face.  Emma said it was one of the coolest experiences she's had, and definitely one of the most cultural/bonding experiences with the people of Morocco.  I wonder though.... how do they do it at the Men's Hammam?....

This picture would have cost us if we didn't buy a scarf....

Crepes au miel.

Emmie and Wesley.... heheheh heehaww

rugs everywhere.

Hitting up the dye district where they make scarfs and stuff. and charge tourists for looking at them...

more mounds of things.

Try to order on that menu...

Three of these pictures above cost money.  I learned if you don't want to be hassled for taking pics, you've got to give them your rate up front.  My rate is 5 cents for a picture of whatever animal you got.

Scarfs.

This is one of 2,345,987,289,345,761 pictures that Emma took with kitties while in Morocco.

French fries??

This guys electric bill is through the roof.

Our day trip to Ourika up next!