My Winter Vacation… ( part I )
My winter vacation was very challenging and stressful, yet rewarding and the best vacation I have ever taken. My trip to Morocco was first. It was my first solo trip and I was very excited about my first time in Africa, though I didn’t know what was in store for me.
At Marrakech airport:
Interior of the airport:
At this point of the trip, I was full of excitement and couldn’t wait to get lost in the medina and souqs. But my first task was to figure out where the hell was my hostel.
Mouth of the souqs or market place in Marrakech
My first meal in Morocco, lamb brochettes with fries
A video I tried to make on how to get to the Equitypoint Hostel aka Riad Amazign. The maze of twists and turns with no signage at all, that is what greeted me in Marrakech and foretold what is to come in my later trips. The labyrinth of the medina/souqs was very exciting… at first… (with Cintia from Brazil)
My hostel, Equitypoint Marrakech aka Riad Amazign
Night picture of the streets of the medina in Marrakech
The once beautiful Palace Badi is now is shambles because it was pillaged and burned down, this is all that remains.
Inner sanctum of the Palace Badi with new friends from the hostel, Monica and Kristen
Video of Palace Badi’s courtyard
Picture of the famous slave gate, Bab Agnaou, at one of the main gates to the medina of Marrakech
The maintained Palace Bahia
Intricate decorum filled the walls and ceilings of Palace Bahia, because imagery was not allowed in the Muslim religion, calligraphy and patterns became the foundation of decorative art in Muslim countries. I love Arabic calligraphy… I heard there are many ways to write Allah in Arabic and as I began using my Arabic phrasebook, I began to notice the poetry in the phrases used. Everything related to Allah and sounded very poetic. For example “al-hhamdu lillah” roughly translated means “praises belong to Allah” or ” Thanks to God” but is used in the same way as “How are you?”, Muslims tend to thank God to express their well being. I thought this was interesting in order to understand Muslim people better.
Video of the Palace Bahia
Another street pic of alleyways of the medina of Marrakech
Djemaa el Fna at night
Djemaa el Fna during the daytime
Train to my next destination… Casablanca…
Marrakech was exciting and interesting. Though the pictures don’t show it, part of the experiencing Marrakech is interacting with the street vendors, street performers, hustlers and the Moroccan people in general. I couldn’t take more pictures because as soon as I took my camera out, everyone was asking for money or yelling at me, because of the before mentioned, no imagery rule in Islam and also people just wanted money. Some of my favorite people that I met in Marrakech were:
The sandwich shop lady and her friend, I went exploring deeper in the neighborhood of Marrakech with two other hostel stayers and came across a cheap pizza/sandwich shop, the shop lady and her friend were very nice and really opened up when I tried to speak Arabic to them.
The local grocery store kid who ran his father’s shop from time to time. This kid was like 12 years old and ran his father’s shop while his father was away. At first, this kid, I forgot his name, looked and spoke to me like I was some effer but I after I tried to communicate with him in Arabic, he hooked me up with Coke for a great price, aka a little lower than tourist price.
Cintia, Monica, Kristen, Mohammed the front desk guy, this Aussie guy who looked like Stifler and this Dutch guy who wanted to eat a sheep’s head. These guys were great and I wish I could have hung out with them longer.
Stay tuned for Casablanca and the rest of my trip. I would like to blog the whole trip but I don’t have the time to upload all the content and write about my trip. Also, it would be one long ass blog entry.
[ Life.Iz.Good ]
