See You Later, Alligator!

Marrakech has been a lot of fun. Tomorrow we take the bus to Essaouira at 8am in the morning so it should be a challenge to make sure we wake up with no alarm clock!



There are some great values here in Marrakech. First, the fresh squeezed orange juice. In Djemaa el Fna close to our riad, there are multiple OJ stands selling glasses of fresh squeezed juice for 3 dirham (there are about 8 dirham in a dollar). Also, mint tea (made with fresh mint leaves) is the main drink here which you can get for just a few dirham. It is served in pretty little silver tea pots with lots of sugar. There are also fabulous dates here. There are also many, many stray cats. The most difficult thing to get used to is probably the squat toilets. Yeah.





We walked over to the new area of the city – Gueliz – yesterday and even though we were following a map, we managed to walk literally about 4 miles out of the way. The temperature read about 45 degrees Celsius in the sun. We tried to ask for directions several times but were having a problem with the language barrier. Finally, we ran into a group of school children. One of the boys said hello and asked where we were from, etc. It suddenly dawned on Steve to ask the boy where McDonald’s was (as we had read that the only McDonald’s in Marrakech was in the center of Gueliz). The boy pointed us in the right direction. As we predicted, all kids worldwide understand “McDonalds” and how to locate it. We probably looked like insane American tourists wandering for miles in the desert sun just to eat a double cheeseburger.





Although, French and Arabic are the predominant languages, one phrase we heard in English several times in the medina was "See You Later, Alligator!"

We’ll post back soon (if we have internet)!