(Some good news: After condensing my thesis from 75 to 30 pages, redoing many of the figures and going through several editing cycles with my adviser, I finally submitted the manuscript to Landscape and Urban Planning on Friday. Now I just have to wait for reviewer comments and pray I can respond to them!)
Two weekends ago I decided to take a long weekend and head to a town called El Jadida south of Casablanca on the coast. Misty was going to Rabat for the weekend with some friends of hers, and Julia was talking about driving to Rabat on Saturday to listen to a band play at a bar there, so the plan was that Sam and I would head to Rabat either on the train or in Julia's car, hang out on Saturday in Rabat, then I would take off Sunday morning on my own down the coast. However, Saturday morning we still hadn't managed to get ahold of Julia (we were getting a message in French on our phone that we were sure was a problem with her phone, but it turned out we were out of credit), Sam decided she didn't really want to deal with public transit to Rabat, so I jumped on the 9:00 bus to Rabat by myself Saturday morning.(Nothing is heated here, including busses. If you go for a coffee, the people serving you are wearing scarves and hats. The bus was shivering cold until we got down to the valley.) The bus took an exceptionally long time to get to Rabat, for some reason passing through Azrou, which is not normally on the route. Hmmm. I got to Rabat, caught a petit taxi to the city center, got a hotel room, then received a call from Sam saying she and Julia were on the outskirts of Rabat and wanted to meet for lunch!! (I guess I wouldn't be able to relay that little tidbit about heating on busses if I had ridden comfortably with Julia and Sam rather than on the bus, right?) Lebanese food, crepes and several coffees were consumed with zeal. We even had some mediocre Thai food for dinner ... none of the food at this restaurant was great, but the place was really nice and the wine went down well. Sam and Julia headed back to Ifrane around 10:30 p.m.
Sunday morning I hit one of the major sights in Rabat, Le Tour Hassan (The Hassan Tower) before catching the train to El Jadida. The tower is a minaret that was intended to be the largest in the world back in 1200 AD or so, but then the sultan having it built died and the tower was never completed. The thing is still bloody huge. It stands right next to the ruins of a huge mosque that was destroyed in an earthquake back in the day and is now just a great plaza of columns. Opposite Le Tour Hassan across the ruins is the mausoleum of King Mohammad V, the grandfather of the current king. Non-Muslims were actually allowed to enter the mausoleum, which is rare in Morocco ... there was a brilliant coffin in the middle of a room ornately decorated in zellij and wood, and in the corner was a man singing from the Koran.
I got to El Jadida within a few hours of catching my train, caught a petit taxi downtown and grabbed a hotel room one block off the beach. Sort of a bizarre place ... there was a "restaurant" downstairs with a huge door that was closed all day long. When I first arrived, I poked my head in because I thought it was the entrance to the hotel, and everyone stopped and stared at me, old-west-saloon style. My hair is getting sort of unruly, so maybe they'd never seen the starts of a mullet before. The hallway upstairs was pretty dark, and there was a button you could push to turn on a light. However, the button was a little hard to find in the dark, and when one pushed said button, it made a huge cracking sound when the lights came on. Not sure what was going on there. Probably the most worrisome thing about the place was when I went downstairs around 7:00 a.m. Monday morning and found myself locked in with no one around to open the door. I went upstairs and pushed the light button a couple of times hoping the "crack" would locate the owner for me. I think he was showering, and he showed up fairly quickly, but still a little weird.
The strangeness of my hotel aside, El-Jadida was a really good time. I made my way to the Cite Portugaise (Portuguese city) and wandered around the ramparts for a while. The city was the main Moroccan trading center for the Portuguese, and the gate to the ocean is still there, though it was now a backdrop for a vicious game of football. In the center of the city were stairs leading down into the surreal Portuguese cistern underneath the city. Really cool, and apparently used by Orson Welles in his version of Othello. Grabbed some seafood at a roof top terrace (the first fish I've had in months ... not a lot of fish in Ifrane), had some really good ice cream (the first good ice cream I've had in months as well), then hung out on the beach until late. The moon was full and the tide was way out so the beach was huge, and I'm pretty sure I could see the lights of Casablanca up the coast. The beach seemed to be populated primarily by necking Moroccans. Perhaps the anonymity of darkness made these youts feel a little less apprehensive about showing affection in public? It felt a little like hanging out under the boardwalk alone. If Sam had been there, we definitely would have necked.
My plot was to take off on the 8:30 a.m. train, but sitting at a beach side cafe watching the sun rise and drinking some excellent coffees made me dally. I ended up walking the beach, exploring the tide pools and BARELY catching the 10:30 train to Meknes. I decided to jump off the train in Rabat for a couple of hours to grab some more Lebanese food (lunch AND take out for dinner) and visit the ancient necropolis of Chellah, a burial ground built on top of Roman ruins. Pretty nice setting for a falafel sandwich. Got to Meknes in the early evening, enjoyed one of the most terrifying petit taxi rides I've had here, then waited for a good half hour for a grand taxi to Ifrane to fill up, even though I bought two seats to speed the process. My love and I were reunited and there was much rejoicing.
Pictures here: Rabat II and El Jadida.
No comments:
Post a Comment