When we woke up in the morning, we had a beautiful breakfast out in the courtyard of the riad. It was really special because no one was up yet and it wasn’t even a restaurant – it was just one of the owners of the hotel who set the table with beautiful deep red ceramics. We sat right by the pool and had tea, coffee with hot milk, freshly-squeezed orange juice, crunchy toasted bread, and piping hot crepes served with creamy butter and sweet apricot and strawberry preserves. It was SO simple, but definitely one of my favorite breakfasts of the summer. A funny thing that happened while we were eating was that the hotel employee who had been serving breakfast was doing some chores around the courtyard while we were eating…sweeping the ground, rearranging the furniture, etc…and then he goes over to a corner, picks up the pet TURTLE (which we had not seen before!) and proceeds to give it a little bath in the fountain before sending it on its way again. The turtle was so cute – and it just lives in that courtyard and gets a bath every day! Too funny.
That morning, Shannon and I split up from our other friends (who had to get back to Casa early), and went to see the palaces in the old city…they were amazing. Afterward, we spent all day walking around and taking in the atmosphere. There were markets everywhere and so much to see! We stopped for lunch around 2pm on a rooftop restaurant. We ate pastilla (like a savory baked pastry) with goat cheese and yellow peppers along with a lemon chicken tajine.
One thing that I’ve neglected to mention is that it was sooo hot during the day – someone told me later that it was 118 degrees in Marrakech that day. There was no escape from the heat because it was still at least 100 degrees in the shade. I don’t think I’ve ever been that hot in my life. I must have chugged like six big bottles of water throughout the day. It was almost unbearable. Egypt was hot, too, but in a different, dryer way – Morocco is hot and humid which makes it like a thousand times worse than Egypt. Ugh, I feel gross just thinking about it.
Shannon and I caught the 5 PM train back to Casa – it took almost 5 hours and by the time we arrive at the train station we were tired, hot, hungry, and in desperate need of a shower and some air conditioning. It took some arguing to get a taxi that wouldn’t rip us off on the fare to get back to the ship, which was frustrating, but we eventually made it! Too exhausted to do anything else, I had a quick dinner at the snack bar before showering, doing laundry, and collapsing into bed.
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