Morocco

Continuing on from a couple of posts ago . . . After our long day in Granada and a visit to the Alhambra, we hit the sack pretty late and woke up very early to drive an hour away to Algeciras, Spain to catch a boat to Tangiers, Morocco.  On a clear day we could see Africa from the balcony of our condo in Spain, so we decided, why not cross the Strait of Gibraltar over for a visit.  We got out of the house just a little later than we had anticipated and all the roundabouts they have in Europe slowed us down a bit too, but we ended up making it to the harbor at 8:45am for a 9:00am departure.  The problem was that we hadn't even purchased our tickets, or checked in at the gate, or been through security/customs, etc.  With the help of a gate personell, we were able to make it on the boat just in time to leave.  This guy led us to the front of an enormous line and zipped us right onto the boat, and we were the last ones on.  The ride can take anywhere from 1 hour to 2 1/2 hours depending on the size and speed of the boat.  We opted to take the fast route with the kids.
Please note: Rachel wanted me to disclose that this was a no shower, no make-up day due to how fast we had to leave in the morning.

It was a little brisk out in the morning as we crossed over from Spain to Morocco.  Here is Andrew's face again that I described as his "hurry up and take the photo already, there is so much to see . . . "face.  I also think he is a little cold.  He insisted on staying out on the deck pretty much the entire ride over.  Because of the wind and cold, Rachel and Talia stayed inside the cabin.  When we arrived in Morocco we didn't rush to get off the boat because of the lines we would have to wait in to get through customs.  Eventually we left the boat and the lines had died down.  At the gate of entrance to the Port of Tangiers they checked each persons temperature to assure that no one was entering the country with the swine flu.  We checked out healthy and moved on.  After getting though customs, we were finally ready to explore... one problem, we have no idea where to go. We ended up talking with someone from the department of toursim who recommended Mustafa the tour guide to escort us around town. We hired him and one of the taxi drivers at the port to give us our own private tour of Tangiers.  We figured that would be the easiest way to go with two kids, strollers, backpacks, etc.  So we piled in the late 70's mercedes sedan and headed out.  Below are some photos of the rest of the trip.

First stop, camel rides!  Rachel had to remind me constantly throughout our day that we are not at San Diego Zoo and that I need to be careful.  I of course say sure, sure.  So Andrew and I pile on top of this camel and as it stands up, we just about lose Andrew.  But that wasn't the worst part.  After our ride, about 30 seconds after this photo was taken, the camel decides to sit back down and drops his front legs and puts us at a nearly vertical position.  Andrew goes flying forward and as he is just about to head butt the back of the head of this camel, the owner catches him.  I don't think Andrew had any idea he almost ate it.  He was ready to go again.  He didn't want to leave and only conceded on the promise of seeing more animals.

Camel ride on the beach.

After the camels and touring the city by car, our driver took us on foot through the ancient streets of Medina and Casbah. It was incredibly beautiful, and we have most of it on video so it's hard for me to portray how intricate the tile work was, and how neat the architecture was since I don't have the pictures to post. Hopefully we can get some video up on the blog here soon.

A view of the Mediterranean in the Medina

At the entrance to the old town of Medina, there were some snake charmers.  We sat and watched them for a while.  Rachel hates snakes!  If you enlarge this photo you will see that this snake this guy is holding is some sort of cobra.  We were about 10 feet away watching as this snake danced on the ground, snapping at the drummer.

Andrew was amazed and feared nothing.  We didn't let him play with the cobra, but this old man pulled out a different snake and brought it over for him to pet.

This guy was trying to put the snake on Rachel and she kept saying NO and hiding behind me, so I ended up letting him put the snake around my neck.  We have some great video of the snake charming and Rachel trying to avoid this guy.

These were tight quarters in here. In fact the streets of Medina are walking streets only. I can see why, they are only about 6-8 feet wide at the most. We came to Morocco on a Sunday and Sunday's are their market days, as you can see from the picture above. The streets were extremely crowded and with our double-wide stroller, we crowded them even more. We weren't able to get many photos walking around the streets, because the people here are very conservative (Arab country with women covered up head to toe) and don't want to be in any photos. We did get some good video though, because they couldn't tell if it was on or off. We would just leave it running as we walked the streets.

All the walking around made us very hungry so we headed to lunch for some incredible Moroccan cuisine. This was a very nice restaurant and we came parading in with two kids, dressed like backpackers, trying to contain Andrew from jumping all over the place...obviously not what they are used to seeing, but they were extremely nice to us.  Here is Rachel trying to feed Talia while Andrew plays with her iPhone.

The food here was delicious, here is our main course consisting of couscous, chicken, cabbage and carrots. If you look to the left you'll see a bottle of water with Arabic writing on it, for some reason seeing water, cokes, etc...with the Arabic writing made all of this seem so real since being there felt more like a dream of some sort.

There was a traditional band that played at this restaurant and they asked if Andrew could come up and play a couple of songs with them.  The people of Morocco were very nice.  Many came up to us to greet the kids and thanked us in their broken english/spanish for coming to visit and for bringing our kids with us.  Again, we have some great video of Andrew strumming the guitar with these guys.  Disneyland could not have drawn a bigger smile on Andrew's face than the smile he had on this trip.  Of course, when he's smiling, so are we.

Andrew insisted that we all play as a family.

After lunch we hit the streets again and Rachel wanted to try and buy some souvenirs but knew that would be difficult with the kids. I don't know what kind of smile Andrew has on here, but this photo was taken inside an artisan shop where we purchased some stuff.  "Don't touch!  Fragile! Don't drop that!"  These were common phrases Andrew heard while in these shops.  Luckily, he didn't break a thing.

This shop had everything you could imagine pertaining to Morocco. We were attended by several sales associates, these guys were true business men trying to make a deal. It was overwhelming because they wanted to sell you everything, this is when having kids pays off because needing to cut things short due to a crying baby or restless toddler ended up saving us money. We did get some traditional clothes for the kids, leather wallets, coin purses, mantel, ceramic drums, emroidered shirts and stone carved camels to bring back home.

The kids had enough fun for the day.  I can't believe how good they did with the long days leading up to this trip as well.  As you can see they were out cold after a long day in Tangier.

Tired and worn out from walking for hours and hours pushing the stroller up and down the crowded streets and sweating from the very hot day.  We are in the port ready to head back to Spain. We got in trouble for taking this picture inside the port and were told by security to put the camera away immediately.

I managed to slip in one more photo of Talia asleep while waiting for the boat to show up.

Here comes the boat off in the distance.

Here is Talia in her Moroccan attire, when the sales guy showed us this shirt, he just laughed while he held it over Talia, and we had to buy it.

Andrew decked out in his hat and outfit

Another cute picture Rachel captured of Talia

The best photo yet, apparently Rachel bribed Andrew to pose like this by being able to watch his favorite show on TV afterwards, whatever works I suppose...And that is Morocco in a nutshell. Up next, adventures in Gibraltar...and I'm talking real adventure!