Spring Break in Morocco: Fes

My Spring Break this year was spent in Morocco, Africa! It was a very cool trip spent learning about a culture much different than all the European cities I have visited so far, and it was an experience I will never forget. There was a ridiculous amount of travel time spent on the bus, from 6 hours to 24 hours at a time, but it was all completely worth it.

The trip started off with a robbery - this time my wallet on the metro on my way to the bus. The line that goes from my house to the city center is always packed and I had a ton of luggage, so I was struggling and my wallet was stolen. Sad times :( Luckily the jerk didn't get my passport, and my spending money for Morocco was with my program directors.

The bus into Morocco in total took about 24 hours, starting at 10pm in Madrid. The first 9 hours were spent in Spain, where we then took a ferry from Algeciras to Tanger. The ferry ride was miserable because we had to stand in a line that lasted forever to get our passports stamped, but we were all exhausted from the bus so it was probably the worst part of the journey all around. When it was time to head off of the ferry, my friends and I got a little lost. We were trying to find a short cut out of there to by pass the herds of people in line at the exit, and ended up down at the bottom of the ferry with all the busses and cars. Oops! Some man that worked on the ferry yelled at us when we were trying to find our way out...great start to Morocco!

Finally we were back on the bus IN AFRICA, and headed to Fes. We arrived at the hotel in the evening and immediately ate before going to bed super early. ISA warned everyone multiple times before the trip to be careful with the food in Morocco, and my host mom drilled into my head that if something isn't cooked, don't eat it. "¡No crudos!"

Hotel Lobby

Monday morning the group headed out to see the Royal Palace - at least, the front door of it. It was a gorgeous...door...and the surrounding area was beautiful! We had a Moroccan tour guide that stuck with us all day, and he told us all about the Palace.

Palace entrance

Collette, me, Taylor, Carly, and Maggie

Our next adventure of the day was to the Medina of Fes. The Medina has been around since around the year 900, and it is this huge maze of market streets that almost seems underground. The guides told us if we got lost, we probably would never be found. So that was reassuring.

The day was spent visiting authentic shops throughout the Medina, but walking from shop to shop was almost the best part. At one point the guide showed us a shop that sold snails. The snails were live in bags, but some had crawled out of the bags and up onto the ceiling. It was crazy! Another thing I saw all around the streets was chicken stores...they had cages of live chickens and a scale. When you want to buy chickens, you pick some from the cages, weigh them on the scale, then the shop keeper kills them right there for you. Convenient and fresh! It was awful.

Snails

Kitties looking at the chicken scale

So there were snails, chickens, camel heads, spices, fruits, really any food possible you would picture in an African market. On top of the food, there were shoe shops, lamp shops, toy stores, leather stores, and again, anything you can imagine. This place was huge! And most of the shops were tiny, but stuffed to the brim.

Camel head

A couple more things about the Medina - cats are basically the African equivalent to pigeons and squirrels. They were everywhere! I much prefer cats to pigeons, so it was kinda cool. The roads of the Medina are so small that cars are not allowed inside, so the people have to use donkeys and carts to transport things. Each time one of these came down a road, people would yell "Balak!" meaning "Watch out, there's a donkey that is about to run you over!"

Typical Donkey

Men with carts outside of the Medina

Our first stop was at a pharmacy. This place was very cool; the shop keeper had us all sit around his pharmacy and then proceeded to basically put on a show for us of all his products. He was selling us green lipstick which when you put it on it turns pink, eye liner in the form of a powder with a stick applicator, argan oil used for your hair, lotion that apparently works wonders, some strange plant that when you smell it it fixes all cold symptoms and headaches..., mint tea, and spices. This guy was all up on his selling game. He had crowd participation and little helper men giving out samples to everyone - he was not joking around. Since he is so respected by ISA and it was a pharmacy, we were told not to haggle the prices down. I walked away with lipstick, argan oil, and tea.

Carly, me, Taylor, and Maggie at the Pharmacy

Next we headed to a rug store. This place was HUGE and just covered in rugs. Again, the shop keeper put on a big display for us and gave everyone a glass of mint tea, what the locals call Moroccan Whiskey. It was so good, and I was happy to realize that the rest of the trip would be spent sippin on Moroccan Whiskey. A few people bought rugs here, after haggling them down by a huge percentile, then we moved on to the next place.

Rug store

A silver/jewelry store was next. Here, I realized that after all, I suck at haggling. I looked at some bracelets and rings but wasn't able to get them down low enough so I pissed off the guys working there each time I walked away from our haggling. One of their tactics was to light the rings on fire to show that they were real gems and nice silver. It was strange. After giving up on the super expensive jewelry, I noticed that they were also selling tea pots. The kind that looks like it came straight from Aladdin. So I was able, finally, to haggle down to a reasonable price and got a Moroccan silver tea pot!! Yay!! Then I attempted to get some cheap glasses to go with it, and apparently offended the man with my starting price so much that he kicked me out. Oopsie...

Tea cups that got me kicked out

Our fourth shop was a tannery - a leather products making place. The shop keepers led us upstairs to a lookout point, and as we walked onto the lookout they handed us mint leaves to smell. Those were a preventative to not pass out over the nasty leather/dead camel/dead animal smells going on down below. It was a crazy sight; there were buckets and buckets used for dying, stripping, and making the leather that would then be made into jackets, bags, wallets, shoes, etc. We then went inside and I bought a wallet, this time without offending any workers. I figured it would be good to replace what I lost back in Madrid...

Tannery

The final stop before lunch was at a traditional clothing and fabrics store. The shop keepers had two volunteers try on the traditional arabic outfits and then we all got to wander around trying them on. It was a super stylish store, to say the least. Downstairs they sold tons of scarves, and they showed us how they are all made. I was able to get a really pretty pashmina for a reasonable price, and my shopping was done for the day.

The Madrid Ladies!

Makin some scarves like it ain't no thang

Lunch consisted of pita breadish things, couscous, some meat and cooked veggies, and oranges. This meal was repeated multiple times throughout the trip. We were all wary to not eat the raw veggies, and realized at the end of the meal that our African diet had started.

The last shop of the day was outside of the Medina at a ceramics store. We had a tour of the place consisting of how they make the clay, form it, cook it, paint it, and so on. It was really cool to be able to see every step in the process as well as the final products. Also, we saw kittens in one of the rooms, and they were adorable! The end of the tour was conveniently situated at their store, and I window shopped some fancy fountains that I will eventually custom order for my home when I become a gazillionaire ;)

My future fountains

On the way back to the hotel we stopped at a great panoramic view of the city. It was a day well spent in the Medina, and it was such a crazy culture shock to Europe.

We again had dinner at the hotel, then headed out to see an authentic belly dancing show! We went to this place that serves dinner and a show, and we got some free mint tea and lemon cookies as we watched three different belly dancers perform with crowd participation. There was this one man at one of the tables that was not with ISA that was just way too excited to dance with the belly dancers - he was picked every time! At one point a drum trio plus a man playing scissors as kind of a tambourine came out. This part was super cool because they did all kinds of tricks with their instruments and the scissors guy kept freaking people out pretending to cut things. At the end, there was a show with one of the ISA directors dressed up in traditional clothes and it looked like a wedding. We all got up and formed somewhat of a conga line to "celebrate their wedding"...it was strange.

Belly Dancer

Band

Fes was a very very cool place, the Medina was awesome and the haggling was tough. The next morning we began the bus ride out to the Sahara!!!

Mussels in Brussels

This post is LONG over due, so I'll keep it fairly short. After the weekend in Amsterdam, my friends and I took a late bus to Brussels, Belgium for a couple days. It was interesting going from dutch to french in just a few hours, and the city was much more than we had expected.

Our hostel was pretty small but it was right around the corner from Grand Place, a square with a lot of magnificent buildings surrounding it. The way our room was designed, I ended up sleeping in a loft with a window and my own little light. It was cool!

Sunday we started the day off right - with some Belgian waffles. They were scrumptious and covered in chocolate and icecream! We then decided to wander around the city to find a few big monuments. First, on the way to the Cathedral, we found a cute little street market typical of all European towns. There were a couple stands with bird noise makers and tons of art. The Cathedral was very pretty, and at the time we went mass was about to start so we heard the organ!

Bird Noise Makers

Me, Taylor, and Carly in front of the Cathedral

Afterwards, we got lost looking for the famous Manneken Pis, a little statue of a boy peeing. We wandered around the city for awhile and somehow found the little bitty guy in a corner, surrounded by people. It was St. Patrick's Day, so he was all dressed up in proper attire.

Festive Manneken Pis

Clearly our next stop was to find some amazing Belgian chocolate. Our hostel had told us about some random street that had stores from all the main brands, so we went and sampled our way through the chocolate of Brussels. It's true - Belgian chocolate really is amazing!! There were cheap brands like Godiva and Leonidas, and extremely expensive brands like Neuhaus and Pierre Marcolini. Basically this part of the day was like walking through dream land.

Chocolate shop!

Towards the end of the afternoon it started to rain a little, so we found shelter in Little Delirium, a bar full of Belgian beers, like Delirium. We spent a few hours here getting cultured on Belgian beer before we left when creeped on by some Croatian balding men.

We ended the day with some fries - also largely known to be great in Belgium for their wide selection of sauces. As we walked home the little Manneken Pis guy was naked, stripped from his Irish attire.

Monday morning Taylor and Carly left, and I stuck around to spend the day with my friend Nicole, who is studying in Louvain-la-Neuve, a college town about 45 minutes outside of Brussels. The day was spent wandering around the city and catching up on our study abroad experiences, and ended with some delicious mussels! The mussels in Brussels for some reason are known to be fantastic - and they were! Nomz.

Nicole and I at Manneken Pis

Brussels was a very gastronomic city and very quaint. I kept thinking how weird the culture is; it's this small little country that speaks french with people that could be from anywhere. It was definitely an interesting place to visit! If I ever find myself back in Belgium, it will probably only be for a few hours - just enough time to grab a waffle and some mussels!

Mussels!!