thegreatadavanture - Tumblr blog

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Definitely going to miss this place. #thegreatadavanture #marrakech #honeymoon2k17 #morocco @authoritariananarchist (at Riad Dar Charkia)

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This little guy. #catsofmarrakech #catsofinstagram #thegreatadavanture #marrakech #honeymoon2k17 (at Riad Dar Charkia)

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Waiting out the rain before our desert trek! (at Sahara Desert, Morocco)

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You, Me, and Aziz (Day 1)

Aziz with his bright orange turban and even brighter smile picked us up at our riad this morning, exactly on time. As soon as we left Marrakech, I wanted to ask a million questions about everything we saw. Where are you from? Where are we going today? What's it like driving white people around Morocco? What are these crops? Can we stop so I can pee? We snaked through the Atlas mountains before noon, windows rolled down and our phone cameras always on and ready. We sped past Berber villages and stopped at the highest point on the highway to snap some photos (and to politely decline purchasing some geodes by pretending we didn't speak French, English, Italian, or Spanish). The first major stop was at a women's cooperative where we were shown how the Berber women use Argan nuts to make argan oil, soap, and nut butter. The woman who explained the process to us showed us all the products they have for sale. One of them was anti-wrinkle cream, and she said I didn't need any. So I bought a ton of other stuff. Have you seen Gladiator? Cool - I haven't. The Ksar of Aid Ben Haddou, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and actual former village still inhabited by 8 Berber families, is the site of several movie sets including Gladiator and The Mummy (and a bunch of others I hadn't heard of, let alone seen). The views from the top were gorgeous, and even though it rained a bit (and thundered and lightening-ed, when we were at the very top), it was a lovely experience overall. Next, Aziz drove us through Ouarzazate and The Valley of the Roses, which sadly had no roses. We were starting to feel a little more comfortable asking Aziz every weird question we thought of, so Adam launched into some questions about infrastructure (i.e. What's up with these bridges?) and I asked a few of my own about the animals and people we saw (typical). The final leg of today was driving through the gorges, which are basically as great as the Ithaca gorges. Our hotel room has a balcony that overlooks the gorge, which is pretty much the best. Sunset is at 7:35 and food will happen (for us) around 8. The Ramadan fast was broken every night in Marrakech by the call to prayer over a loudspeaker that you can hear from literally everywhere (even in Dreamland or Slumbertown). From the exact place I'm sitting, I can see at least two mosques. I'm interested to see (and hear) how a much smaller place breaks fast.

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Feeling good after buying some items on our lists! #thegreatadavanture #wanderlust #honeymoon2k17 #marrakech (at Coopérative Artisanale Ennahda des Tisserands)

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Made with real,100% natural peasant flavor!

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@authoritariananarchist watching the sunset in #marrakech again! #thegreatadavanture #honeymoon2k17 #wanderlust (at Marrakech-مراكش الحمراء)

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🇲🇦!

So it's a little bit of a cop-out, but on our first full day in Morocco, we ended up in.....a mall. Like, a big western style shopping mall. To be fair, we also spent a long time exploring the souks and eating lunch at a vegetarian café. But then we just started walking and realized we were near it. So we kept going. First of all, there's a terrace on the top floor with a food court and a great view. Second of all, it's Ramadan so very few people are here. Third of all, it's Ramadan so a lot of shops and restaurants are closed. The "mall music" playing up here is instrumental covers of movie themes, like Austin Powers and Beverly Hills Cop. I'm not hating it. The first level of this mall has a Carrefour, and if there's one thing Adam and I love while we're traveling, it's exploring big grocery stores. It's fun to see what products are the same in other places and what products are different, and what is different about them. A thing I noticed right away is that a lot of products at the Carrefour are in French only. This surprised me at first, until I remembered that as a former French colony, and being a French-owned store, most of the products are probably just the exact same as the ones sold in French stores. Welp I'm boring myself reading what I wrote. So far, Morocco is awesome and I can't wait to see more of it. Hopefully I'll have more specific exciting things to report back on in the future.

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New goal: pet every cat in Marrakech.

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I forgot to take a photo of our amazing breakfast this morning, so here’s one of Adam watching the sunset from the roof of our riad last night 😻 #thegreatadavanture #nofilter #marrakech #honeymoon2k17 @authoritariananarchist (at Marrakech-مراكش الحمراء)

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Sunset over Marrakech. Absolutely perfect way to be welcomed here. #thegreatadavanture #marrakech #morocco #wanderlust (at Marrakech-مراكش الحمراء)

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OUR PILOT'S NAME IS GASTON AND I'VE NEVER BEEN HAPPIER

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Springtime in Paris! #thegreatadavanture #wanderlust #paris🇫🇷 #eiffeltower #honeymoon2k17 (at Eiffel Tower)

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Hung out with our buddy Vlad for (literally) a hot second today!

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I ate this and I'm not ashamed.

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Day 1, in which Coffee and Jet Lag duke it out

You know those days that start off great and gradually get worse and worse? Yesterday was the exact opposite. 9:30am: After a night on the plane with basically no sleep, we touched down in Paris. 10:30am: Retrieved our bags after what felt like hours of waiting by the carousel seeing the same 3 bags go by. 10:45: Realized that we desperately needed coffee. Left the secure part of the terminal and immediately saw a Starbucks. Was really excited to order in French until I realized that all the drink names were in English. 11am: My jet lagged brain and I somehow figured out how to buy tickets for the RER (similar to the commuter rail that also goes underground like a subway). Got hit up by pan handler #1 of the trip; our cold Boston hearts protected us. 11:10am: Train left for Paris. Adam took lots of photos out the window, mostly of bridges and other pieces of infrastructure. After all, this was technically our first look of Paris. I pretended that I wasn't trying to fall asleep sitting upright. 11:45: Our Airbnb host had left the keys to his apartment at a cafe down the street. I successfully (and entirely in French) retrieved them. I won't go into every detail about how we ended up on the wrong side of the apartment building and tried for at least 30-45 minutes to break into someone's apartment we weren't staying in. But this all happened, and we assumed that the keys just didn't work or that there was some trick to the lock we couldn't figure out. Also, it was about 95 degrees in this building. Also, we had no wifi or any other phone access. Also, we hadn't eaten a real meal in hours. Also, we hadn't slept. All these things made this terrible. 2pm: We finally got into the apartment. This was a much bigger ordeal than it needed to be. 2:30: Ate a delicious, expensive, and well-deserved lunch at the aforementioned cafe where our keys had been stored. I had avocado toast, which basically means I'll never be able to afford a house. 3:15: A long-awaited hot shower for Adam 4pm: An even longer-awaited hot shower for me, after the hot water tank refilled itself. 5:30: We had plans to meet my cousin Jack and his wife at a restaurant near the Musée d'Orsay at 6:30. The restaurant was 15 minutes away, so, given how the day had gone so far, we figured we should give ourselves an hour. 6pm: An hour was definitely needed; we walked in circles around the metro station for way longer than we should have. We ended up getting there a bit early, so we wandered down toward the Seine and watched the river boat cruises go by. 6:30: Dinner with Jack and Kim, who I had not seen since the last time I was in Scotland 6 years ago. They happened to be spending the weekend in Paris, so because the world is incredibly small, we were able to meet up with them. They are absolutely delightful and lovely people, so I was thrilled to see them and for Adam to meet them. 9pm: 12 hours after landing in Paris, we had successfully stayed away long enough to go to bed at a normal hour. The moral of this travel fable is, drink enough coffee and you can turn any day around.

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Paris, 6am