Casablanca, Morocco... and Marrakech

First stop in Casablanca was the obligatory leather shop, to try on cheap leather jackets.  Major swankage ensued...

Walker: the dude, abiding.

Ollie the hipster and Vivi the hipsteress.

Vivi and Adler Rock the Morocc-an leather look

Rachel was attacked -- no seriously -- by the Henna Hyenas -- ladies who will apply henna without asking you, smiling all the while, then say you owe them fifty bucks.  No really.

Genevieve was also attacked by a Henna Hyena.

Because if you haven't been to Casablanca, your curiosity just has to know: is there really a Rick's Cafe?  Answer:  No, there is not.  But there is a movie called Casablanca, entirely filmed on sets in America and that features a bar called "Rick's Cafe."  And there are some clever entrepreneurs who opened a bar called "Rick's Cafe" in 2004 in Casablanca to cash in on dumb tourists who don't mind paying double-to-triple the going rate for lamb couscous in order to say they ate Moroccan food at "the original" Rick's Cafe in Casablanca.  Ah capitalism!  Ah media!  Ah life!  

We did find some tasty authentic food, a bit pricey, at a waterfront joint called La Sqala that served very good food at a price point between tourist rip-off and where the rich-locals eat.  Still and all, a very nice ambience and excellent food and service.

Tajines lined up for the imminent arrival of hot couscous.  Not since my college days studying in Grenoble, France, and traveling over spring break to Rabat and Fez, have I eaten food this yummy.   

Given the exchange rate, we took the younger kids on horse rides.

Jasper got a full sized horse.

Genevieve had to tell her pony who was boss...

... and he got the memo.

Adler didn't have to do nuthin but sit there... most likely because the pony couldn't tell that he had a rider.

Ollie got the same full-sized horse as Jasper

Our friend Talal came on this adventure with us, and if riding a horse wasn't enough, we decided to ride...

...the ghetto camel...

The Ghetto Camel was not my name for it, but our taxi driver's name for it, because it was, in actual and horrifying and amazing fact, a camel that lived in the ghetto, and its owner who lived in the ghetto was only too happy to find some American tourists to ride it.  

Other students on Semester At Sea actually went to the desert, actually rode on camel treks for 1, 2, or 3 days at a time, and paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for the privilege.  We spent one hour, all told, on the ghetto camel and paid a ghetto price, and realized just how smart it was of George Lucas to model the tauntaun noises in Empire Strikes Back after actual camel sounds.  The whole time I kept thinking, "I've got to get to the Dagobah system."

On the seafront wall of Casablanca.

The traditional Moroccan restaurant we went to in the heart of the city, and the one that every taxi driver is paid to bring you to.  I forget the name, but if you ever go, just get in a taxi and tell them you want to eat at a traditional Moroccan restaurant.  We were taken there twice, independently, by two separate drivers on two separate days.  

After lunch we all got scrubbed, beaten, washed, rinsed, and repeated at the gender-separated Turkish bath that we jokingly thought was named after my spiritual hero, St. Stephen Gauthier.  We spent two-hours-plus in there and came out ten pounds lighter.  

That night, on an absolute whim, we took off on a public bus for Marrakech, and spent the night in the one room available at the Marrakech Youth Hostel, which introduced us to Aicha apricot jam, our new favorite.

Oliver under the Olive tree.  Dad, that's so goofy!

The adventure gang on our journey into the casbah

The kid's favorite part of Morocco: the labyrinthine casbah markets: the smells, the sights, the objects, the people, the food, the prices, the haggling, the weirdness and awesomeness and the HeyDadNess! of it all.  

Yes, they sold anything you wanted, in any amount you wanted, for pennies a very few dirham.

Handmade gun replicas, all sorts of awesome for a three-year old.

Super-sweet real-sugar glass-bottle Cokes for super-cheap:  all kinds of awesome for Oliver and the other sweet-toothed kids.

Awesome couscous, and curries, and other wonders for lunch.

The spice shop across from our restaurant -- the owner on his lunch break at the time of this photo.  Security consisted of the neighboring stores keeping a casual eye on things.

One of dozens of hand-made wooden box stores.

With some interesting designs that had a before-and-after fold-out feature like this...

Which returned to this when you folded it flat.

The cloth and tablecloths were also beautiful, affordable, and negotiable.  

The Marrakech train station entrance:  we came there on the bus,  and left on the train in order to experience both modes of travel.  Both very interesting, the bus a little more exciting because the mid-journey "rest stops" included butchers slicing hunks of beef off a hanging cow that would then be ground up and cooked in front of your eyes for dinner.

Vivi starts feeling hammy on the train...

...and goes into full-on hipster rockstar mode before too long...

...only to be joined by Adler who "wants to be a professor" when he grows up...

Casablanca the next morning... after being served at an outdoor cafe, we looked around and realized that Rachel and Genevieve were the only women in the whole place.  Faux posse alert!  But they didn't seem to mind, and nobody glared at us, even though we were the only obvious tourists in the place.  Still we left feeling slightly sheepish...

Cappucin-bros.

Rachel in her cafe life element:  Where are the Djarum Blacks?

On my last day, I soloed around the city and got trapped by the inevitable carpet salesman technique:  we will show you 300 carpets, pretend that you are rich, then make you feel rich by obliging you to buy one at prices so low you'll actually believe you are rich.  This was an education:  I paid ten times the price for a carpet in Casablanca as I'd paid for one in Fez back in 1990.  So either times and economies have changed, or the price is dictated by the perceived age-to-wealth ratio of the tourist.  When I was a 20-year old student and said I was poor they believed me, and I walked out only 30 dollars poorer.  Not so lucky this time.  It did help, and then it didn't, when I said I had eight children and couldn't afford very much.  Allah be praised! they said, but of course you must be rich if you have eight children!  And by how many wives do you have this many children?  Oh my...

This is the one I got... not because I liked it the most:  because it was the one that reminded me most of the really nice cheap one I got back when I was in college!

...even though this (right, foreground) was the one I wanted (ten times again the price of what I paid for the other one), but couldn't afford because it was "handmade, silk, and made from the tiny and delicate fingers of a thousand Berber village girls who were living in a mud hut at the top of an inaccessible pinnacle in the middle of the desert as far as camel could travel in a thousand days of..." well that was something like the official story, of which I believed every single word, of course.  Still, it was the prettiest one there, and I wished I could have surprised Rachel with it, who would have loved it.