Our holiday started in March with a jetlagged 48 hours in Frankfurt and Madrid on the way to Casablanca in Morocco.
It was interesting to stop in Frankfurt instead of just passing through. The city is not too big and is walkable, but by the time we’d arrived there after our flight with hardly any sleep, we were delerious with fatigue and too tired to really appreciate it. We went to a nice art gallery for lunch and asked in German if they had a table at the cafe (making an effort with the language). Upon hearing the reply in rapid German I childishly and inappropriately just burst out laughing. Perhaps we’ll do justice to Germany some other time.
The day in Madrid made it four countries in five days, and we saw the Prado museum (great), the majestic Plaza Mayor and had tapas in a ‘ham museum’ there. And yes, they really do start eating dinner at 9pm, even in winter when it’s dark and cold! I have to say that the smoking in every public place, restaurant and bar was a down side for me. Apparently smoking was banned from restaurants in Spain a few years ago, but restaurants and bars can apply for exemptions, which nearly all of them seemed to have done.
We planned to go back to Spain and Madrid and have a good look around in May when it wasn’t so wintery.
Casablanca is not like the movie but rather polluted and choked with traffic – but the enormous modern white mosaic mosque is a testament to the skill of Morocco’s artists.
We gorged ourselves on seafood at Essaouira, a small touristy town by the sea, bargaining probably quite unsuccessfully for our two lunches and one dinner in the same seafood market.
Then taking the train to Marrakesh, we did a Moroccan cookery course there involving going shopping for ingredients then returning to an atmospheric old riad (guest house) and cooking ourselves a feast. Because there were about twelve people doing the course, including two children (aged two and five) we could make a lot of different dishes – carrot, aubergine and moroccan salads, meatballs, sardines grilled with capsicum, cous cous cooked with butter, two types of biscuits. . .
The family with the two kids travel everywhere with the kids with only carry-on luggage. This was heartening to see as I like to travel light as well (I was still going strong on my one pair of shoes).
Marrakesh is a great city if you don’t mind crowds and have a taste for gorgeous old architecture and freshly squeezed orange juice.
Fez, Marrakesh and Essaouira all have old cities (‘medinas’) with narrow, twisty streets that in Fez can only be walked in, and in Marrakesh and Essaouira are also navigated at high speeds by motorbikes. The medina in Fez is more than 1000 years old and is about 1.5 x 2km so quite fun to get lost in and explore.
The architecture in Morocco is dazzling, and the food is delicious, and the people were welcoming, although taxi drivers trying to charge you 10 times the local rate can be tiring (we usually settled for paying double to three times the rate). We took a few trains, which is one of my favourite ways of travelling, and they were comfortable and interesting. The seven hour trip to Fez from Marrakesh involved five hours sitting opposite a man who worked in tourism who hardly drew breath for five hours as he told us what to do and see in Fez, and gave us the phone number of a tour guide friend of his, which we took up somewhat to our regret after the eighth craft or carpet shop visit the next day, and being taken to a restaurant filled with westerners and their guides where we were served a banquet and were expected to pay for the guide as well (the guidebook warned of the importance of good communication and boundary-setting with guides. . . ). The next day we checked in to an upmarket riad for a night and spent the whole day there, relaxing on the terrace, with just the sounds of the fountain and birds to distract us (and the occasional call to prayer). This was a marked contrast to the budget hotel we had stayed in for the previous three nights in Fez, with lumpy pillows, three beds crammed into a tiny room, and toilet paper on request by the roll every day.
So we experienced sumptuous, refined, colourful, noisy Morocco, as well as the smudgy Morocco of the budget traveler in our two weeks there. A fitting start to our wanderings.
