(December 21 – Still in Marrakech)
Today we woke up to a wonderful breakfast. Some Moroccon bread and a fried egg. Always with coffee that is like hot water. There was a new staff member here today and he spoke English. We asked him where we should go today and what we should see. We aren’t too concerned about seeing too many things because we are still waiting for Amy to arrive and we don’t want to have to do things twice. He suggested that we see some gardens. There are a lot of gardens on the map and it looks like we can check them all out. The area is not too big to hit all of them and there is a synagogue in the New Town too so we can check that out.
We head out for the first park. It is a beautiful day there isn’t a cloud in the sky. It is actually quite warm in the sun almost too warm. We walk to the gardens it is quite a walk from the center but not too bad. We aren’t sure what we are supposed to do in here. We read that there are orange orchards and I definitely see a lot of tree but there are no oranges on them. There is some crowding going on up ahead in the park so we go see what the fuss is. We walk up a few stairs to a large pond. The water is dark and you can’t see anything but people are throwing bread in the water. Something must be coming to eat it. Considering the color of the water I am a little nervous what exactly might come up and eat the bread and then we see a medium sized fish barely hitting the surface. That is exciting. One park down a few more to go.
We are hungry so we take to the map and try to find a restaurant in the area we are in. We walk up the street and bit and see a few cafes. This part of town is very rich there are lots of high priced hotels over here so hopefully we don’t end up in some really expensive restaurant. We sit at the first café we come to outside on the terrace. We have a perfect spot in the sun and it is really warm. Not your typical Moroccon food but that is ok. We eat paninis and drench them in hot sauce. We have some real coffee and then it is off to explore more parks.
As we are walking we are in the center of the road and there is a park there. Steph and I attempt to pretend we are vacationing together by taking a snapshot of the two of us together. She has never used her timer and there aren’t many people walking around in this area to help us out so we prop the camera up on a bench and try to take a picture of the two of us with some orange trees in the background. Epic fail but at least we tried. The picture was so far away you can hardly tell who the people are but at least we are together!
We walk a little further and we run into the train station. We have to come here in a few days when we go to Fez and the bus station right behind it we will visit as well when we head to Essouria so it is good to know where it is and it is easy to find and not too far away from the hostel. Across the street is a theatre that should be interesting. We head to it and go in. Upon our entrance we meet a man who is the concierge, that is what he calls himself. We ask if we can go in and look around and he offers to show us around. Oh how nice. The theatre is apparently not done yet so we are getting VIP service here. He shows us the opera and shows us the coliseum. We go back stage and outside all over the place. It is cool and we take some pictures. After of course he wants money. You had to know that was going to happen. They don’t charge admission. We aren’t even sure we are supposed to come in here but they want you to give them money. So I slip the guy 20Ds. He looks at me like I am crazy. I probably should have taken the money back he didn’t seem to like the amount I gave him. We talked about that all the way to the next park but I didn’t. I gave him the 20Ds and left. If he didn’t like it he should have given it back but I certainly wasn’t giving him anymore…the nerve!
So we talked about this guy all the way to the next park. We stopped by to try and find the synagogue but it seems as though it is no longer there. The next park was pretty cool. It was much smaller and it did cost something to go inside. It was full of bamboo and agave plants and it had a little museum in the back. We were trying to find the art museum we are not sure if we found it or not but we weren’t going in. We took a couple of photos in the park and headed out. It is too beautiful a day to stand in there in complete shade. We did, however, find a memorial for Yves Saint Laurent in that park. It was just a stone structure hanging out in the park. I am still not sure why the memorial was there and what it was meant for. Why it is in Morocco?
Now that we are in New Town we are going to stop at the grocery store and pick up some food and alcohol. We can’t get alcohol in old city so while we are here we are going to pick some up. We planned on having dinner in the square tonight. Every night in the square there are a bunch of food carts, big food carts that have dinner. They compete against each other it is kind of crazy. We are going to go there tonight and check it out. We met a few girls from our hostel that will head there with us. They are in our room. One of them lives in Rome and teaches English and the other girl just finished studying. Not sure where she lives I think she is still trying to figure that out. So we head to the square and people are yelling at us to eat at their cart but we are just walking around checking all of these things out so of course we tell some of the people that we will be back. They like this saying and we can say that to get away from them and move on. We sit down and have some food. Most of the restaurants have the same menu there is no surprise there. We sit down and have a few tapas plates of different food. We go to leave and run into some of the same guys that were trying to get us to sit at their carts and they weren’t very happy with us. They called us ugly smugly liars. Very strange!
We turned in for another early night. All of this walking around is making us tired. Amy comes in tomorrow and we want to be fresh for her arrival. We aren’t really sure if and when she is coming. She made an incorrect reservation with the hostel and since she made an incorrect flight reservation when we booked this trip to begin with we aren’t really sure if it was the hostels mistake or hers so we aren’t really sure when she is coming but she is supposed to be here tomorrow. We also want to check out this cool bar in New Town but we will do that when she arrives. So that is it for today.
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