You know, like oversharing, but from the audience’s perspective. (Maybe it wasn’t necessary to spell that out.) On the train: -Man whispering gently into his iPhone -Guy to his friend: She was claiming that she had paid the landlord and he was screwing her sister, or something. On the street: -Teenager talking to her friend: I always tell my mom that she thinks of me as the bad kid, but really I’m the GOOD kid because I tell… Read more »
Posts By: Claire
Marrakech!
Getting from Chefchaouen to Marrakech involved multiple forms of transportation: bus from chaouen to Tangier, taxi from the Tangier bus station to the Tangier train station, overnight train from Tangier to Marrakech, and cab to the Marrakech medina before walking down the narrow streets to find the riad. The only problem was that you can’t buy train tickets online without a Moroccan credit card, and because of how stressful the bus station in Fes was, we did not go to… Read more »
Fes and Chefchaouen
Going from the desert to Fes was the only really long day of driving. It was about 7.5 hours, and Abdul dropped us off in Fes around 5 pm. What can I say about Fes? Not much, unfortunately, except that I need to go back. My time in Fes was analogous to someone traveling to NYC but only visiting Times Square and the Port Authority. I was there for about 15 hours and my heart felt like a clenched fist… Read more »
The Desert, Day 3
Question: Is it okay to ride a camel? I thought about this during our drive to Merzouga, while we rode the camels into the dunes of the Sahara (side note: when examining a map later, I discovered we were in a hilariously small piece of desert…still technically Sahara, though), and afterwards. It seems like there’s a spectrum: You don’t ride on dolphins. You don’t ride giant tortoises. You possibly shouldn’t ride on elephants (maybe? I think more people would say it’s… Read more »
The Desert, Days 1-2
On day 1 of the desert part of our tour, I had finally started to feel–not normal, again, yet, but like I could remember what normal felt like. When we left the mountains I figured I was on the mend, especially as we descended, but the overall nausea and lack of appetite continued as we made our way to Ouarzazate. And then in the middle of the night that night, I came down with a 24-hour stomach thing. Honestly, I… Read more »
The Mountains, Day 4
Last mountains, I promise. New topographies coming next post. The final day of hiking was also eight hours, and while eight-hour Day 3 was my favorite, Day 4 almost ended me. I’m not totally sure what happened–I want to say that I had altitude sickness, but we were only ever as high as 2500 meters, which isn’t really enough to do it. I already had a head cold when we got to the mountains, though, and that + the higher… Read more »
More Subway Stories
I sat next to a very charming child and her…babysitter? family friend? as they played twenty questions. The best questions were the child’s asides: “Do you know what stop is ours so that we aren’t on the train for THE REST OF OUR LIVES?” and “If you looked in them mirror would you be like, “ahh! I’m a monster!”?” Older woman, reassuringly, to her older husband, who had just been offered a seat on the train by a young… Read more »
The Mountains, Day 3
I’ve been trying to cobble together the route that we took through the mountains based on google maps, pictures, and my iPhone’s “Steps” app, which miraculously tracked how many steps I took even though my phone was on airplane mode, out of range of any wifi, and across an ocean from Sprint. We didn’t follow the planned route (which I have information about/names of towns) due to snow conditions and also lack of poncho conditions, so I’m guessing somewhat. Also,… Read more »
The Mountains, Days 1-2
When we left Essaouira we drove to the Atlas Mountains with our guides Hassan and Jamal, who told us upon meeting, “We’ve been awake for 24 hours!” Hassan began the getting-to-know-you process by asking where we were from, and then saying, “American, American. Yes. Lovely-jubbly.” Then he got a phone call from his boss and, after hanging up, said, “So, kidding. It turns out I am not your guide, actually,” because his boss had told them to go home and take… Read more »
Essaouira
We landed in Marrakech but left immediately for Essaouira, and spent most of the drive taking pictures out of the windows and trying to nail down the pronunciation of Essaouira. It’s hard to avoid metathesis leading to pronouncing it “Ess-OW-ree-uh.” It’s actually Ess-uh-WEER-uh. I narrowly avoided titling this post “It’s-a-where-a?” so that’s about all of the restraint I have to spare today. Pictures: (click through for more/commentary).
