Day 141

This is our last week in Morocco and we have our first visitor!

In general we have been traveling pretty slowly. Most people wouldn’t spend an entire month in Marrakesh but we are loving it. Going slowly has multiple benefits including saving money and being able to wander streets a second or third time to see new things.

Today was a lot of wandering to places that we have already been but seeing them in a new light. We are loving the parks, cats, tea and everything else in Morocco.

Day 142

Today is the anniversary of the Green March. In 1975 there was a land dispute on the border and the King asked the people to take back the land. Hundreds of thousands of people marched to the border to gain back the territory from Spain. We happened upon a parade celebrating the anniversary of the march.

After following the parade for a while we walked the long way home (saw some new things) and then tried out a new places for dinner.

Day 143

Today we walked to the new city again and went to the mall and Starbucks. At Starbucks we got new nicknames! Other than that it was a mostly lazy day reading and enjoying the nice weather.

 

Day 144

We went back to Cyber Park today and they were harvesting olives from the trees. We watched them for a while before walking around the park.

 

Day 145

Today we were up somewhat early and had our coffee before noon. After coffee we meandered around the souks and then packed up to find our new AirBnb.

Getting to the new AirBnb was quite the adventure. The AirBnbs overlap by one night so we didn’t have to carry all of our stuff with us but we still had about half of the weight from our bags. The AirBnb directions were basically, “take a taxi and have the taxi driver call”. As always, we are on a budget so we tried to save some money by walking. Cue the dramatic music.

We walked to where the ‘dot’ was on Google Maps and there was nothing there. We called the Airbnb people and the response we got was, “get in a taxi and have them call”. But we had already put in this much effort and wanted to finish it ourselves. So we eventually ended up walking a quarter of the way around the entire Medina wall on the outside, going back to our old Airbnb, recuperating and trying again. On the second try we made it to the new AirBnb!

We are at the new AirBnb because we have our first visitor! Mom/Terry is visiting for the next few days. After she arrived we went out to dinner and had tajines.

Day 146

Katie woke up early to see the sunrise. There is a beautiful view of the city from our balcony.

Today we enjoyed going through the Souks with a guide. It was an AirBnb experience and definitely worth the money. Before the experience we had Moroccan coffee.

First on our tour of the souks we went to an olive stand. We learned a little bit about the different kinds of olives. Katie went into the stall and sold olives.

Next was a nut stand and then the dessert stand. We have seen a lot of these but there are always covered in bees, so we hadn’t tried them out. Our guide showed us what to get and explained how you can tell the freshness of the pastries.

Next stop was Cafe des Espice and on our way there we met a local woman who was very nice. She even tried to share her lunch with us. At Cafe des Espice we drank fresh orange juice and ate our snacks on the roof of the cafe.

After we were rejuvenated by the orange juice, we went to The Secret Garden. It was quite beautiful. From the tower you could see a lot of minarets (the tower of a mosque) all around the city.

Then we went to the carpet market. They pulled out carpet after carpet after carpet. They tried to teach us the words for ‘keep’ and ‘take away’ but we weren’t very good students. After buying carpets we were able to see a local woman working on a rug and even do a couple of knots with her help.

Spices were the last part of the tour. We were able to smell and sample lots of different items inside the shop. We left with lots of goodies.

The tour concluded with lunch at a local restaurant. It was simple but very good. Basically there was meat in the middle, spices for sprinkling were on the side and then we each had bread.

We watched the sunset at the AirBnb before heading to the grocery store (for tortilla chips!) and out to dinner.

Day 147

Terry brought us Creamy Jalapeno from Chuy’s! We started our day by eating that for breakfast. Then the woman running the AirBnb brought us some bread and olive oil. With the bread we ate some of our olives from the Souks yesterday.

After breakfast we went out for coffee and meandered around the souks.

We saw a lovely sunset and found a new park that we had not been to yet.

For dinner we went to Zeitoun and had more tajines and a Moroccan dessert.

 

We only have a few more days in Morocco and then we are off to Thailand. Thailand is one of the first countries that made us want to do this world tour. It is hard to believe that we are finally going there!

 

Morocco