Marrakesh, Morocco was without a doubt one of my favorite places we went to, and unfortunately, we stayed there the least amount of days (not including the places we saw during the cruise). But all the more reason to see Morocco again. And if I were ever gutsy enough, I'd travel to South Africa. Only because I really hate bugs.
Though I loved Marrakesh, getting there was an absolute nightmare. It makes blogging all much more fun because traveling is never smooth sailing in my opinion. Our flight out of Venice to London was delayed and what made it worse was that we probably got dropped off at the furthest end of the airport and the customs line took longer than it normally should have. With a combination of all of these, we missed our bus back to university even though we had about an hour or so to have done this. Unfortunately, it was the last bus heading to our town and the next bus wasn't until 5 hours later, at 6AM. So yes, we were homeless for a day and stayed at the airport overnight. I'm usually an easy sleeper and I can sleep just about anywhere, but in public is definitely the opposite for me. Instead of getting some rest, I stayed up the entire 5 hours on the internet and what not. We had about 4 hours until we had to head to a different London airport to fly out to Marrakesh. During that time, I repacked clothing and printed the rest of my flight tickets and got to sleep very little.
You would think it would get better from here on out, but it only got worse and worse. Everyone has seen that movie scene where people are rushing through the airport to catch their flight. That was us. We got at the airport an hour or two earlier before boarding, but had made a mistake (which the airport didn't seem to check right before security). The screens told us to go straight to departures, as in, don't go to the check-in desk to get your papers stamped twice. By the time they looked at our papers to board the plane, we had 20 minutes to run back to through security and back to the check-in desk to get two lousy stamps and back through security again (which the beeper went off on me so they had to feel up my entire body) and into the gates. The funny thing is, the lady at the check-in desk felt so bad for us, she didn't even bother checking our passports and went right ahead on stamping our boarding passes.
You think it would get better once we landed, but we ended up getting lost finding our hostel. First because the building the hostel told us to look for was under construction. Secondly, you can easily get lost in the small streets. But I kind of figured we'd get lost finding our hostel. Staying at the airport didn't phase me, running through the airport was kind of funny, but taking forever to find our hostel just did it for me. By the time we got to the hostel, I had quite a mental breakdown and had a consolation from one of the dearest persons to me from back at home.
I can say now that from here on out my time in Marrakesh was bliss. Although the stores are basically all the same, I didn't get sick of seeing all the colored lamps, the pretty jewelry, all sorts of fabrics, and tons of leather. It was a combination of antique and everything else that I love to see. What made being there all more amazing was the experience. Traveling is no fun to me when you simply look at pretty things and take pictures of famous monuments and such; it's getting engulfed in the culture that really gets me and Marrakesh swallowed me whole. I was asked if I were "Japonese" far too many times and on the occasion when I replied no, they would ask... "Chinese? Samuri? Ninja? Jackie Chan?" It was quite humorous. There was one occasion when we stumbled upon the many, many orange juice stands and all the owners of each stand are trying to lure you in to their stand.
Morocco is all about haggling. I think it's in my nature as an Asian to know how to haggle already. I've known of it since I was young and have always witnessed it from time to time. And here was another thing that my New York trip has taught me (more so, Michelle has taught me), haggling. Though, I didn't do any haggling in Chinatown in New York, I spent some time with Michelle who's really good at it. One of my main priorities was to get a scarf and it was my first haggle ever. Through out the entire trip, I did all the haggling for my travel friends. Sometimes it would take 10-15 minutes just to get a good price. Other times, it was just too easy. But it sure made for the experience in Marrakesh.
Just before we left, we got to ride camels, which wasn't as fun as riding a donkey because of the view in Santorini, but was an experience nonetheless. I definitely want to come back to Morocco again and love to see all the other parts of it.
Sorry for such a long post! I just really loved my time in Morocco. I'm finally done with classes! It's odd to go from finishing classes in June at UCSD to finishing classes late May, and now finishing classes at the end of April. The school system leaves the entire month of May for finals and I only have one final two weeks from now that's going to be easy peasy. Other than that, I'll be finishing up planning my big trip a month from now, exercising, and absorbing myself with learning new things about photography. I actually miss home soooooo much and was over living in London about a month ago. Surprisingly, I really miss working. I worked a lot at Peet's and it gave me the energy to always be busy. So not working and not having a constant income makes me want to go home already and start the next chapter of my life.
0 comments:
Post a Comment