Thoughts on Morocco: Part One

First off, it feels great to be back in America. We really do have it good over here and sometimes I tend to take that for granted in my rantings, but when you travel and see how other people live you realize how good we really have it in spite of all the things our collective gov't has to do to maintain the status quo it's worth it.

My companion Professor Angry and myself set out of JFK on Friday 4-1-05. Being that there aren't any direct flights to our destination (Marrakech) we had to transfer at Casablanca. While we were in the unorganized line at Casa I noticed that there were a lot of black Africans going to Europe. It was like 125th Street up in there. Professor Angry was not pleased at all, so she decided to cut the line; successfully she was able to obtain our broading passes. Later on we find out that we could have avoided this by having our boarding passes printed at JFK.


Arrive at Marrakech around 9AM. Getting a cab (a Mercedes no less) was very easy. We make small talk with our driver who's English isn't half bad. Months earlier we reserved a room in a riad. For those of you who don't know what a riad is; it is a home that has a garden, but the gardens in most riads are organized around one central courtyard. Now that's the definition I found in a tour book. What they don't tell you is that most of these riads are in the medina which is made of a maze of alleys called durbs.




Getting to the riad was an adventure. We pull up on the side of the street and get out and our driver walks us down this tight serpentine alley. On our way there we were almost hit by several mopeds (EVERYONE IN MOROCCO HAS ONE) and had to squeeze by several European golfers. Finally I see a small sign under a blue door that says Hotel Sharharazad. Finally we're here we knock on the door and there's a nice young lady there at the desk who checks us in. The inside of this riad looks fairly decent and exotic but it's nothing like the internet. So now we meet a nice young man who takes us to our room in where we had to go out the front door of the hotel and then go next door and up some steps to our room. The room is bare bones at best. Very small, no dressers and a very nice bathroom. The only thing I had a problem with is there was no TV, and the lock on the front door was crap. Welcome to Morocco b*tch, we're going to need a guide or something.

To be continued.