So, after spending much of the last year staring out the office window daydreaming about the days when I had no responsibilities and my only worry was whether the waves would be big enough to surf, me and my backpack are finally on the road again!
The destination is Morocco and I'm off for about three weeks! I hope to also take in some of Southern Spain and maybe even get over to Portugal if I have the time!
So after a comically complicated journey (I had to go to Luton Airport via Oxford to get my backpack) and no sleep (the 6am flight from Luton cost 99p plus taxes so was the obvious choice) I arrived in Marrakech at 8:30am this morning.
After a 10 minute bartering session with the taxi drivers, I headed off in a battered old Nissan to Djemaa el-Fna, the main square to try and find my hostel. The square is an absolute overload of activity! Its crammed full of market stalls, fortune tellers, acrobats, snake charmers and food stalls.
After feeling quite impressed with myself regarding my bartering skills with the taxi drivers, I was quickly brought down a peg (or 7). First by an old lady giving henna tattoos, who said hello to me, grabbed my arm and started painting it before I even realised what was going on. That cost 60 Dihram. The second time was by a snake charmer, who I had just happened to stop and watch, who charmed a cobra onto my foot while telling me not to move or it would bite me. That cost 80 Dihram.
The hostel's website provided directions for how to navigate the winding backstreets to find the place which started from there. Unfortunately they were 2 pages long, involved lots of u-turns and were at least 20% in French!!! After getting lost for about 30 minutes and attracting a large crowd of kids offering to show me the way (probably due to the fact that I had walked down the same street about 6 times) I ended up paying one to show me the way. It took him 3 minutes.
The hostel I'm staying at is right in the heart of the Medina and surrounded by streets upon streets of market stalls selling everything from rugs to crystals. I spent the afternoon wandering around the markets and chilling out on the rooftop terrace at the hostel. Tonight I'll be heading back to the square as apparently it gets lively at night (it was pretty lively already!!).
View across Marrakech from the roof of the hostel!
This stall had every kind of lantern imaginable!
A stall selling lots of colourful dried fruit
The view out of the hostel window
My "lovely" henna tattoo...it won't come off no matter how hard I scrub...I feel violated!
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