Meknes!

I went to Meknes yesterday. It's about 30 minutes away. We had fun. We took the train. It ended up not being at the time it says online. That happens now and then. So we are good at adapting.

After we got off the train, we decided to walk to the old city. On the map it looked straightforward, so down the hill we headed. And after a bit, we started to see more people and stuff. And we followed a direction with more people and more stuff and found a covered market. It was cool. I got Valinda a present there. I think it's cute. We also got little bags of popcorn there for about 5 cents each. After wandering a bit more and seeing cool stuff, we stopped at a cafe and had coffee and tea (we shared a little pot of tea that would be two American cups and it was only 5 dirham!)

Then we decided to figure out where we were, because we were certainly not in the main part of the old city, as we had planned. We showed a map to some guys and asked them where we were. They looked at it as if they'd never seen a map of their city. And maybe they hadn't. Because, for a lot of people, why would you? You learn where you need to go, and you get there. There aren't a ton of street signs or anything. And some people live in the same city their whole lives, so it's not like there is a big need to learn how to read a map of a bigger area. Plus, honestly, the map wasn't that helpful. They did know the name of the square we were on, and it was nowhere to be found.

We thanked them and left and decided to just ask a taxi driver. He similarly didn't know what to tell us about the map, but did know where the old city was. We decided to let him take us. Which may have been a bad idea, but we didn't realize it at the time. Think about it: You just told a taxi driver that you have no idea where you are. And how does a taxi driver make money? By driving you further. We are quite sure that he took the verrrry long route to the old city because when we left it in a taxi to get back to the train station, we realized that we had approached it from the west with him, though we had definitely gone too far east while we were walking. Ah, well, supporting the economy, etc, etc.

The medina was cool, though. We walked around, bought some stuff (we had all heard that it was easier and cheaper to buy stuff there than in Fes b/c Fes is so much bigger and more popular with tourists - I mean it's a UNESCO site and the largest car-free city area in the world. Who wouldn't want to come???) And we had a good lunch and then went to a museum that was in an AMAZING building built toward the end of the 1800s by some crazy rich guy. There was a sign that said no pictures. And then one guy told us pictures of the building were just fine, but not the exposition. And then we came to a room that was hard to tell which category it would fall into... and I will post the pictures for you later :) I just didn't think to bring my camera card today.

We had fun with the rest of the afternoon. Walked more, bought more, got told a thousand times to eat at the restaurants in the touristy area (we didn't) and went into the covered food market area. I feel weird about taking pictures of people I don't know going about their everyday jobs, but I certainly considered it in there. There was a whole row of cookie-making people. Soooo pretty and soooo tasty, I'm sure. The problem is that the bees agree with this tastiness. It used to creep me out a lot, but then you kind of get used to bees being everywhere. But there were more here than anywhere else I've seen, due to the density of the cookie people. Still, we walked through, drooling, and decided we'd come back. We passed some vegetables and meat and then it happened. Another girl said 'ah!' and looked like she almost tripped. The Moroccan guys who saw her said (in French) 'it's ok, he fell' and I'm thinking, 'what? yeah, it's ok, but SHE is fine and didn't trip.' Then she asked if we could see a bee stinger near her collarbone. Oh, THAT 'he' fell. So I guess the bees aren't as friendly as I'd like to think. We waited a bit before we got cookies, and we got them from a stand separated from the rest (and therefore with much fewer bees.)

In other news, my class schedule changed. Now it's 10-12 and 2-4. Gives me a nice amount of time to eat lunch and then get back. I am off to a nearby hotel and see if I can get a pool membership for 3 weeks. We'll see how it goes. There's a rumor that it's $13. And another that it's $13 EACH TIME you go. I'm good with the first, not the second. And I do have lots of sunscreen, don't worry :)

***UPDATE**** Neither rumor was true. It's *just* $11 per swim. (grumbles rude things about snooty hotel)