Morocco

I took advantage of our week long break and went to Morocco and Gibraltar! (Although it's a lot to talk about so I'm saving Gibraltar for another post.) We got into Marrakesh Thursday night and after finding our hotel we went out to the main market, or souk. We had some traditional couscous, tangine, freshly squeezed orange juice, mint tea, and snails. We think the snails were dead... at least that's what we told ourselves since they didn't put up a fight when we stabbed them with a toothpick to pull them out of their shells to eat them, face, antennae, and all! They actually weren't bad, but they weren't good either. They were pretty much just like calamari or octopus if they're not fried or anything, basically kinda rubbery/chewy.

We spent our first two days on a desert tour. We got to cross the snowcapped Atlas Mountain range, and went into the Sahara on camel back! (Riding a camel is very painful by the way.) On the tour with us was a group of students from Turkey who were studying in Portugal. They were awesome and we ended up spending most of our time in Morocco with them. They liked to sing Turkish songs (both traditional and pop) which were really neat to listen to, and also helped to pass some of the time in the bus and around the bonfire we had at our camp in the desert. One of the highlights of the tour was seeing all the shooting stars in the clear desert sky!!

After the desert tour and Marrakesh we went to Casablanca. It was gorgeous- I got to dip my feet in the other side of the Atlantic, we saw the famous mosque, walked around the old Medina and marketplace, saw the new/rich boardwalk area, and we saw an incredible sunset!

From Casablanca we took a train to Tangier. Tangier was also gorgeous but it was a completely different countryside than southern Morocco. Southern Morocco was all desert, but the northern part was very green, even greener than Madrid. From Tangier we could see the Strait of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, Spain, and Gibraltar. It was a spectacular view!

A few things that stood out from the trip include: 5am wake up calls as the mosques call people to prayer over loudspeakers, haggling over prices like there is no tomorrow, getting to use my French, meeting awesome Turkish friends, riding camels, eating snails, seeing shooting stars while lying by a bonfire in the desert, waves crashing into the rocks below the mosque in Casablanca, getting stared at because I'm the only white person in the group, gorgeous sunsets, and of course the experience of visiting another country!