On the Road again- Morocco adventure Day 1

After a long ass flight from Lax to Dulles, Robby picked me up with her DC friend to grab a cheap bite to eat before we boarded our night flight to Casablanca. I had thought that it was a 9 hour flight, so we’d watch a movie, get fed, and sleep a reasonable 6 hours, but turns out it was a 6.5 hour flight and with being woken up for 2 in flight meals and with uncomfortable seats, we both maybe got 2.5 hours of sleep. Needless to say, we arrived in Casablanca bloodshot and exhausted. 

Luckily our first class train ticket to Tangier’s gave us unexpected lounge access with a free coffee machine. When we boarded the train car, we discovered our tickets were for the wheelchair helper people seats and thus we sat staring at each other, 20 feet apart. I guess when you ask for extra leg room, you’re granted more than you need. 

After about 18 hours of planes and Trains, we stepped foot in Tangier’s and hailed a taxi (our automobile) to take us to our hostel in the old Medina. The only issue- the driver spoke French and didn’t know the address we wanted, so we google translated “left”, “right” “stop” while I attempted to pronounce the words and direct using google maps. All in all, we eventually made it to Bayt Alice Hostel- our home for the next 2 nights.

We offloaded our bags and headed out to explore the Medina - old walled city part of the city rich in culture, markets, winding streets, homeless cats, and buskers. It was maybe 5 minutes before we pick up our first unofficially “tour guide” who promised to show us around the area for no money and just wanted to help, but lead us on a fast-paced tour of random streets in the Medina. It was sort of nice to listen to him describe some of the sites, but a free tour guide is rarely ever free and we were being lead where he wanted to go with little time to stop and appreciate the views; he also kept talking on his phone with “blah blah blah Americans”. Not sketchy at all.

Once we got to the Kasbah (apparently it’s not a random word in a song that I thought said “Rock the Cash Box”, but instead the old fortified part of the city that used to house 5,000 people inside a Portuguese made castle wall), I’d had enough of our new friend and was like, “I want to walk along the outer wall and stare at the water and Spain across the way.” Guide was not happy because the direction we were going was not the direction he keep leading us towards. The weather was a pleasant mid 70’s with an ocean breeze, so my thoughts were to find the notable Cafe Hafa and drink a mint tea while enjoying the calm and taking in the fact that we finally made it to Morocco, were on a new adventure, and out in the world post Covid.

Of course, after drinking refreshing mint tea with a tad too much sugar, the common staple of Morocco, our “friendly guide” found us a third, or possibly fourth, time wandering the streets of the Medina and this time, got us to his final destination- a Berber shop that sells handmade rugs, cups, lamps, trinkets, etc. After seeing the view from the roof top and being told it’s rude to refuse more mint tea- we were shown rugs and mu-mu type clothing to buy. I insisted on asking the older salesman about his life and saying we would not buy anything, only listen to stories, they finally got the hint we did not want to spend our money and we were released to wander on our own.

I originally read that Morocco is a very touting country and we would be asked to go into everyone’s shops and have people being “helpful” for a small fee, but it’s not really like that. There are way less people out than I’d thought because Morocco summer starts in July, not June, and lots of people offered to help us without asking for money. But the guide thing happened, luckily his intention was to get us to the Berber shop, not to leave us in a random alley and demand a large sum before telling us how to get out- this happened our first day in India. 

All in all it I had a semi pleasant first day that wasn’t too stressful, determined the local mint tea is pretty delicious, and realized you can do a lot on little sleep.