Marrakesh and the beginning of a week long adventure

Marrakesh was the first stop on our Moroccan adventure, and i have to say it was my favorite city overall. the people were welcoming, the sun was shining, and the food was delicious.. what more could you want?

In order to get there though, i left lyon and headed to paris to meet up with my parents the night before because our flight was going to be early in the morning. i almost messed the trip up completely by showing up to the wrong train station in lyon (part dieu instead of perrache) because it's what i'm used to and closer to my house. good thing the train stopped at it anyway, and so i simply got on a stop later. a little extra stress, but overall it ended up alright.

upon meeting up with my parents i learned we would be having to leave my mom's friends house at about 5am to get to our flight in time. yes, i may have been the one to book the tickets, but no, i did not realize how early i was going to have to be waking up. i was not entirely pleased. i may be a morning person, but waking up before 5am is not morning.
so we got up and got to the metro before it was even open (the first metro came later than we expected), found the bus to take us to the airport, and arrived with a little bit of time to spare.

my favorite part about this plane adventure though, was that i finally got my passport stamped again!

the plane took off a couple minutes late due to some discrepancy between the number of people checked in and the number of people on board. not sure how that happened. makes me wonder if they just forgot how to count for a little bit.
otherwise the flight was fairly uneventful.

so we arrived in marrakesh and went through customs which led to me receiving another stamp!

soon our host met us and we were in a cab on our way into town. we first got out of the cab near the main plaza Jamaa Elfna.

we took a short break and bought some of the most delicious orange juice i have ever tasted. seriously. it was so good. and a big glass was only 4dh! which is about 40 cents. amazinggggg.

next we headed into the souks (the market). now i have to say we probably made about a hundred turns passing even more shops before reaching our destination. there was no way i could have gotten us out again if i tried, because i just really had no idea where we were anymore. old marrakesh is all enclosed within big walls, and it truly felt like a maze to me. i'm so glad we were with a local because otherwise i'm not sure we would have made it to the rest of the places on our trip! i felt completely lost, but in awe of the city at the same time. i loved the colors and the atmosphere. you could find almost anything you needed there! shoes, clothes, food, scarves, copper, silver, teapots, anything! assuming you know your way around of course..

but anyways. we got our little tour on the way to our host's (Khalid) beau-frere's (Saiid 1) family's house. (beau-frere meaning i guess that they shared each other's mother's milk when they were babies and were basically raised together). we were given our first taste of moroccan tea there, some conversation, and a little bit of time to relax. moroccan tea, by the way, is delicious. and we were provided with lots more as the trip progressed.

next up was food. i was glad because i think it was about 3pm by then and i was starving. let me start by saying moroccan food is amazing.

after a while, we decided to explore some more and khalid took us to the shop his brother (Saiid 2) runs and he his an artisan. we of course were provided with more tea. all three of these guys were super nice and so generous to us. calling me la princesse, my mom la reine, and my dad le roi haha. we even tried to buy a teapot from them to thank them. they in turn decided we could have it as a gift plus stuff to go with it, and not sure what happened in between, but i don't believe we ended up with it at all! oh well. it's the thought that counts i guess. (pictured is saiid 2, khalid, saiid 1)

then we headed to a cafe to get some coffee, or in my case some lemonade. i liked this place a lot. it had a giant teapot for a rooftop decoration, and hats for us to wear!

as the sun set, there was also a lovely view :)

because we were actually going to be staying outside of the main city of marrakesh, we got to wander through the maze again in order to find the main gates.

to get to where we were actually going to be spending the night, we had to take a cab. now in marrakesh, and much of morocco, a cab can have 6 passengers, and because each person pays only a small amount, they always want to make sure the cab is full. well we hadn't quite figured out the best way to squish four people in the backseat yet, and so we decided that i would sit on my mom's lap.

we later realized this wasn't one of our brighter ideas when mom realized she couldn't feel her legs as she exited the car. personally, i thought it was hilarious as she stepped out and suddenly fell over a bit, tried to stand up again, and once again fell over. i really wish i had had my camera out and on video at that moment. don't worry, she didn't get hurt or anything, so it is ok to laugh. probably a 'you had to be there moment', but it was still funny a few days later. we did, however, realize we were going to have to figure out a better way to get four full grown people into what i believed was a three person backseat.

when we arrived at khalid's house i learned that he actually lives with his mother and saiid 2 and three other brothers. and this is perfectly normal for a moroccan family. they welcomed us to their home, made us more tea, and i even got to practice how to pour it. i must admit i wasn't very good at it. then we got some dinner, which of course was delicious, and eaten with our hands in true moroccan style.
we showed off california books that we had brought as gifts and got to show a little bit where we are from.

finally, our first day was over and it was bed timeeee. only problem? my parents snored like monsters. which means i didn't get as much sleep as i would have liked that night. oh well.

oh, and some new words we learned in arab!
chokran: merci: thank you
biciha: sante: cheers
salame: bonjour/au revoir: hello/goodbye
souk: marche: market.