Continued from Fes Day 3 Part 2.

It’s been almost 10 years since I’ve worn a watch for any extended period of time. I used to wear a watch daily, but stopped wearing one when I had kids. The watch would always get in the way when I was constantly holding a baby. But last trip abroad, I got tired of taking my phone out of my pocket constantly to check for time, so decided to bring the watch back. This is the same watch that I wore when I was traveling through India, and it got partially dyed pink during Holi. The pink has gone away, the battery had to be replaced a couple of times since then, but it’s still my travel watch of choice. It also brought back the memory of how I used to start the trip at one strap notch, and as the trip went on, I’d lose weight from all the walking and that eventually I’d size down to a tighter fit. I have since sized down one notch since the beginning of this trip.

Last morning in this room. I’m going to miss this room for sure. This may go down as the most beautiful room I’ve ever stayed in. We shall see if I’ll ever find a more beautiful bedroom than this in future travels.

Fes, it’s been real. Didn’t know what to think of it at first, but leaving it with a good feeling.

KL takes pics of Fes.

Hot girl pose.

Hot girl pose.

Time to leave our beautiful riad and head to the train station. I was very excited that they had sprinkled rose petals for our departure…until RL reminded me that it was most likely for the newly married couple who had arrived last night…oh yeah, that would make much more sense.

Of course, can’t leave Fes without first walking up and down stairs with our heavy packs.

Bab Ziat (the name of this old city gate) out of the old city, then we hail a taxi.

In less than 10 minutes, we’ve arrived at the train station. For a city of over a million people, this is a very modest train station.

Must have coffee.

This will be our longest train ride on this trip. It’ll be almost 7 hours long all the way from Fes to Marrakesh. When I had booked our tickets online back in Austin, we were aligned seats from the ticket issuer seats that were not by the window, but by the hall way in the train. It’s not the worst seats, because we could be stuck in the two middle seats in the 6 person first class train compartment. We tried to change our seats yesterday, but it was a no go.

We were surprised when we came onto this train to find that the seats are arranged differently.

What’s even better is that our seats were actually the best seats for us. Facing each other with a table in the middle, no seats next to us, and by a big window. This is awesome!!! This will make this long train ride just that much more pleasant.

Still carrying the records that we got in Tangier by hand.

Our riad was awesome. Even though we told them last night that we didn’t need breakfast since we are leaving in the morning to head to the train station, they still packed us a picnic with pastries and water. This would actually end up being useful as the food choices on the train food cart was limited.

Excited for the train ride and to see more of Morocco by train.

Hot girl pose.

The 4 top next to us. Indian man, asian woman, white woman, white woman. All spoke German to each other even though I don’t think German was any of their native language except for one lady. How international!

Surprised find for RL on these gluten free digestives (cookies).

Vineyard. Probably for raisins and not wine.

Look at all that agave! So much agave.

Old trains with their old giant piston engine blocks still inside, but only the short block left.

Kids playing soccer in a patch of grass in the middle of no where.

Everyone got really excited and took picture of this modernist building. I have no idea what it was.

The Atlantic ocean.

The snack cart. I could have probably bought a sandwich, but for some reason I didn’t.

I did get a cup of instant cappuccino though. Just add water!

I believe this was either Rabat or Casablanca. Not much to look at by train. I hear Casablanca is not much to look at as a tourist either so we decided to skip it for this trip.

Sometime after leaving Casablanca and heading towards Marrakesh, the landscape started to change. Much more arid and fed soil.

It’s pretty deserty out here.

And yet, in the middle of all this dryness, they are still growing olive groves. I am guessing they are pumping ground water, but with so little rain out here, how sustainable is this groundwater source?

Went by this park by the railroad track, the conductor honked the horn the entire time. Was it to warn the kids from playing on the rail tracks, or was it to entertain the kids with the horn? I’d like to think it was the latter.

Marrakesh up ahead. Its been a really long train ride. Glad that we’ll get to get out of the train soon.

Outskirts of Marrakesh.

We are here!!

This is a much bigger and nicer station than Fes.

First thoughts of Marrakesh is that it’s cleaner than Fes, more crowded, and the taxi drivers are more aggressive.

Our taxi driver didn’t know how to get to our riad, so he asked to use my phone and my google maps.

Not too thrilled about a shady taxi driver holding my phone. I feel naked without it.

Marrakesh is definitely a richer city than Fes. Everything is a little newer, there are actually nice cars here being driven on the street.

Our driver picks up another passenger while giving us a ride.

Still using my phone, which means I can’t even take pictures. Also, please don’t scam me and steal my phone.

Reached the riad entrance and got my phone back. Marrakesh definitely has a very different feel than Tangier and Fes. It’s much more crowded with people and cars here.

I always think I look like a ninja turtle wearing this pack. It’s like a big turtle shell.

OK, this is nice. It’s not classically beautiful like our riad in Fes, but this is definitely nice is its own way.

Oh, a painting studio. We later found out that this is the riad owner’s own painting studio. She lives here in the riad 2 weeks at a time, and spends 2 weeks back in Paris where she’s from.

The riad owner’s dog.

Alright, got all checked in and time to head to our room. It’s been a long tiring day of traveling, we just want to get to our room and put our packs down.

We’ve got our own private terrace on the top floor and our room is that open door to the left. Cool cool.

This is what roughly $400 a night gets you in Marrakesh. It’s by far our priciest room, and it makes sense because we also found out that Marrakesh is the most expensive and most touristy city that we’ve visited on this Moroccan trip. With the high price we also bought privacy, with a room on our own floor far away from the other guests. It’s nice, after all, despite how beautiful our riad was in Fes, you could hear everything.

Nice a tub. We also really liked the smooth finish concrete walls in this riad.

Even has its own office/closet room. We ended up not using this room at all though. This riad may be nice, but us being the farthest room away from the center, we had very poor wifi signal, so for any blogging work, I had to take the laptop down to one of the tables by the pool side in order to get wifi. A shame really, would have loved to blog up here or on the terrace.

But is it a shame really? The center of the riad was also one of the best places to hang out at.

After a long day of train travel, we wanted some beers and snacks. Nice. This is quite nice. The small cauliflower flowerets with the orange colored mayo based dipping sauce was also a hit. We are both tired and hungry from our long day of travel. Neither of us really had lunch, just snacks and pastries here and there. We are getting hangry, and our brain isn’t working very well. We can’t really decide what to do and where to eat. We don’t want to walk anywhere, but we need to walk somewhere to eat, but yet we can’t decide or agree on where to eat.

Time to chill and relax some…until we need to finally get back on our feet and leave our riad to find food. RL thought this picture was really funny as the wide angle made her head look so tiny compared to her stretched out arm and legs.

The rear entrance to our riad is through this door and goes straight into the kitchen. This is the most direct way from our riad to the medina.

Hey look, we are in Marrakesh!

Lots and lots more mopeds wizzing by all around us. It feels super hectic here.

Lots and lots and lots of tourists here. Our first impression of Marrakesh is…we don’t like it. It feels like the super touristy parts of Thailand with all the foreign travelers who are traveling to somewhere far and exotic away for the first time in their life. They are here to party, they buy all the tacky local outfits that are only sold to the tourists and not worn by locals. If there’s a strong sex trade here, I’m sure all the white European men would flock here, it’s that kind of place. Oh no…this is disappointing. Kinda sad we are going to end this trip in this city overrun by the most unsophisticated type of tourists. Yeah, we are elitist for saying that, and at one point we too were those tourists that went somewhere far away for the first time. I guess our expectations of Marrakesh was that it would be more like Tangier and Fes, and not this party city lowest common denominator kind of stuff. Maybe Marrakesh was cool 10, 20, or 30 years ago, but it’s definitely no longer the case.

Tried to eat here for dinner, but it was closed for a private event. Ugh. We are tired and hangry, just want to pick somewhere easy and nearby to eat. Also, something that’s not a tajine, since it feels like it’s been the only thing we’ve had since coming to Morocco.

Getting more hangry. Does not look like it, but mopeds are constantly, and loudly, buzzing by us at high speed while swerving around all the people. Do not enjoy this hecticness right now.

Marrakesh is not Fes or Tangier. This place is tourist central.

OK, let’s try this restaurant on the top terrace.

Looks fancy…and it’s actually just too fancy. We debated about leaving but we were just too tired and didn’t want to walk around looking for a dinner spot anymore.

One single piece of fried chicken, I think this was like $15!!!!!

This was also $15!!!!! Then whole menu was also in French. Not the meal we were looking for, but at least it put some food in our stomaches.

After our let down of a small dinner, we decided to take a small walk to the edges of the medina just to get a lay of the land.

So far…extremely unpromising. The stores here are all new, it feels like we are at a mall.

Selling clothe that only tourists would wear. That’s fine…except it’s like that for every single store, which makes it a little less fine.

We came to Marrakesh thinking that we would be able to buy all the gifts and home decor we’ve been hoping to take home back to Austin on this trip. But it’s looking like that assumption may have been a mistake. Things are more expensive here than Fes, a lot more expensive due to all the sellers hoping to rip off tourists.

We came back to our riad disappointed. Have we messed up by saving all the home goods that we hoped to buy by waiting until Marrakesh (since it’s our last stop)? The above photo is a Moroccan style sink that RL would like to find and bring back with us but we haven’t been able to find anything like it at all. We asked the staff at our riad for help, and they’ll see if they can find something like it. Let’s see how it works out.

The rest of Marrakesh may have been a bust so far, but our riad has not been a bust. Perfect weather for sitting out on our terrace and chilling.

Ugh…maybe not yet perfect. Internet doesn’t really work well up here. We’ll need to make our way down to the tables around the pool to get better wifi.

Now down by the center courtyard a bit later. Keep those drinks flowing please, it’s been a long day of traveling, and we are kinda bummed out about Marrakesh right now.

This spot is pretty nice though. So much more peaceful in this courtyard, and less of hectic Marrakesh outside.

To be continued at Marrakesh Day 2 Part 1.