Thursday, April 18, 2019

… We .. woke up.. you guessed it! EARLY. To catch a train to the country’s capital, Rabat. Once we got there, we discovered the train station didn’t have lockers or a place to put our bags like we had hoped. It immediately sunk in that we would have to have our bags with us for the whole day, which would have sucked for me, but also would have sucked 20x more for Evan, has he was carrying the large pack with all our clothes. We tried a couple of hotels to see if they would store our bags for us if we paid, however, after the 3rd hotel, we realized that no one was going to let us do that. So we had a brainstorm session and decided to hire a taxi to take us around all day and bring us to all the spots we wanted to hit. Which was 100% the right decision. There’s no way we would have survived walking around Rabat with our packs.

We grabbed a driver and settled on a fee and set out for the day. We started the day off at the royal palace. We had out passports checked and then walked toward the palace. It was really extravagant. 

Spot two was Chellah, which is a ruined city that was founded by the Muslim conquerors of North Africa. A complex that included mosque, minaret, and royal tombs. It was so interesting and quite beautiful to look at. Evan and I had a lot of fun walking around amongst the ruins. It’s wild for me for me to think that this complex was once thriving and highly decorated. We spent a little over an hour here, but definitely could have spent a longer time

Our third stop was the Annalusian Gardens and the Oudayas Kasbah. We entered through the garden and then walked into the blue narrow allies of the kasbah. The walls were painted a wonderful blue, and honestly, it got me really excited for our future trip to Chefchauoen. We walked to a look out and admired the ocean views. Walking through the ally we saw a little stall selling what looked like friend dough with sugar. They’re called sfenj. We got one to split, but devoured it and then went back for a second. It was soooooo goooooooood.

Our fourth stop was the Hassan Tower and Mausoleum of Mohammad V. The Hassan Tower was started in 1195. The tower was supposed to be the largest minaret in the world alongside a mosque. However the construction of the mosque stopped in 1199. The mosque was left incomplete, leaving hundreds of stumps that where intended to be columns. We were there during a call to prayer. Evan and I both learned that during every call to prayer, someone literally is doing it, we both had thought that it was a recording. 

And our final stop, was to be dropped off at a medina entrance, we walked through the streets. Contemplating if we were going to get food or not. We decided to not. And just walked around, it was a little overwhelming with our backpacks, so we didn’t stay too long. 

We walked to the 7th Art Cafe for a couple of virgin mojitos, yuuuum, and a couple of apps. We decided to catch an early train then we intended to Fes. Boy oh boy… Fes.  Didn’t start off like we had hoped… Rabat was really fun and I really enjoyed my time there.

We got a taxi from the train station “to our riad”. Our riad, Riad Scalia, was in the medina, and Fes has the oldest medina and the largest medina where there are only foot paths, and cars can’t get in. We got dropped off at one of the gates to the medina, which was still a mile away from where the riad was located and the taxi driver told us we only needed to walk 5 minutes into the medina, and we’d find it, but … that was not the case at all… we got really turned around, trying to follow the map on our phones. We were approached by a guy who offered to help us. At this point this had happened a couple of times and we got duped into “tipping” them for their help. We had made a rule earlier in the trip that this was no longer happening… but rules get broken when you’re really tired and need help because you’re completely lost. So this dude who’s face and outfit is permanent burned in my brain helped us find our hotel. Then he asked for a tip because he helped us find it, which we gave him. However it wasn’t enough and he wanted more, and we hadn’t asked for his help, but he was demanding it. We protested and then he spit at our feet and made some threatening comments, finally I was like dude just fucking take it, this is out of control. We gave him the money and then just walked to our riad. I was kind of on edge and wicked annoyed by the entire thing.

We got into the riad and the host was so kind, but however, had to tell us that he only had our booking for that night and not the next three nights. And we were like, how is this happening, so we went into detail to talk to us and said he’d try to help us find another place to stay because there was no way he would be able to host us. This whole day had been frustrating af. Obviously it wasn’t his fault personally but Expedia was screwing us over big time. Evan said he would book another place and we’d work on getting our money back from Expedia. Once we got into our room, Evan had booked a riad in Rabat, so we had to cancel that right away and started to look for a new riad and booked it. 

WHAT A FUCKING NIGHT, AM I RIGHT? Oh Fes.