Days 16 & 17 - More Marrakech Souqs!

We woke up to another enviable breakfast spread at Riad Boussa. I have to say, thanks to Morocco, I have fallen in love with pomegranate. Pomegranate, persimmon, dragon fruit and beets are all foods that I did not grow up eating, but have fallen in love with in my early mid (darn it!) late thirties. All of them have made the short list of "What I want to plant at the new house once we move in" (which btw, is about 6 months away).

After breakfast, we all headed back out to the souqs. Though I rarely get souvenirs, I could not pass up the colorful Moroccan handiwork. I've learned from past mistakes of getting carried away buying things, and then dumping them a few years later. So now I try to get items that are both beautiful and functional. Over the next two days we were able to get some pillowcases, a coin purse, winter scarves for Rich, my mom, friend Yuri and I, the wooden spoons for my parents, a mug for Joey, a few brightly colored geodes for Ryan, new winter hats for Ryan and a few pot holders. We also got some Fes pottery (dishes) and belts while there. Here are few pictures from the souqs and square-

We called this Olive Row. Nothing but olives, booth after booth...

Ryan is finally outgrowing his adorable critter winter hats from Uncle Joey, so we bought him one. 

We found a hat for me a little while later too! It was a challenge finding one that didn't make me look like I was a Rastafarian hippie.  

We had a pot of mint tea and cookies that evening after a day in the souqs and forgot that tea = caffeine. We were all wired that night. Asians are such lightweights. Cheap dates, but lightweights across the board.

Our last day in Marrakech we wandered around the square until around 1pm. Once again, a porter was summoned to help us with our bags (this was not something we'd ever requested, btw, but seemed to happen automatically at all of the riads)...but the upside is that a little someone beamed and got a free ride (well, not so free for the rest of us) again.

This is, hands down, my favorite photo of the trip. It captures the moment where my son is just silently soaking up the beauty, history and energy of Marrakech.

Waiting for a driver to take us to the airport

Coolest travel van ever

A few notes about our exit from Morocco-

I was exhausted toward the end of the trip, but I would have gladly stayed another 2-3 days longer in Marrakech. I absolutely loved the city, our riad, the food, the history and the high energy. 

I had written and posted pictures of the beauty of the Fes & Marrakech train stations (the Casablanca airport and train station were older/unattractive and not noteworthy in comparison), but I was astounded by the Marrakech airport.

The Marrakech airport...modern, but with the beauty of Islamic art woven into within the structure. I could not get a good photo because it was drizzling that day, so I got this image from here.  

It's unfortunate that only really stressful/negative experience of the trip occurred there. To make a very, very long story short- we were booked to & from Madrid on Iberia (a large Spanish airline). However, on the way home, the flight was a code share and operated by Royal Air Maroc. We could tell technology was perhaps not what it should be by the lengthy and slow lines to check in. I won't mention the other incompetence we witnessed, but I would not advise flying with them if customer service is a priority to you. However, since we were in line 2 hours early, we figured we still had plenty of time. 

Once it was our turn, a very sour-faced young woman handed our flight itinerary told us we had no reservation and handed our paperwork back to us. She said that we would need to call Iberia to straighten out the matter. This despite the fact that we had already stood in line for over half an hour, and would have had to find somewhere to buy more currency, a phone card, possibly have to quickly learn Arabic or Spanish, sit on hold for an hour, and then hop back to line, etc. In other words- uh uh. Not gonna happen.

So we smiled, insisted that we did indeed have a reservation, shoved our paperwork back at her, and told her that since it was their business partner, they could call Iberia and clear up their error. So she scowled at us, passively whacked a few keys on her keyboard, called a coworker over...and miracle of miracle...twenty minutes later...we had tickets printing! Missing tickets that according her, did not exist. But here's the good part- she insisted that Ryan (yes, 4-year old Ryan, who was on the exact same reservation with the rest of us) did not have a ticket. So we would need to get out of line and call Iberia. (Yes, that again.) We said absolutely not, that if she could find 5 of the 6 tickets, she could certainly find the 6th ticket too. She got very irate and started raising her voice and snapping at us. We asked her to call her manager. She claimed that she already did ten minutes ago, and that we should step aside. People behind us behind started telling us to step aside. We politely declined, knowing that we would miss our flight if shoved to the side. So Joey turned around to explain our dilemma, and one by one, people found other lines without harassing us any further.

After another 10-15 minutes passed, her supervisor came and within 1 minute, found and printed Ryan's ticket. Ms. Sour Face at least had the decency to look embarrassed and mutter, "Sorry." I softened my glare, but did not look grateful. She was mean, dismissive and uncaring. And because of her, we had to hurriedly huff and puff our way through security & immigration and made it to the departure area with about 1 minute to spare. Only the departure screens showed our flight and number, but no gate number. So we had to run past a few gates before we could find someone who could direct us to the right one...and thankfully, thankfully, the flight was delayed by about 20 minutes, so we had about 5 minutes to hang out before boarding. In that time, Ryan found a cute European girl who was shamefully all over him. :-) Last bit of insanity- despite the mean girl's claim that she could not seat us near one another (all 6 of us were scattered in middle seats everywhere), the plane was half empty. I could have throttled the woman at that point (well played, lady), but we'd already had them move Ryan to be near me, and that was all that mattered. My last "I will never fly Iberia/Royal Air Maroc again" rant- they ran out of food to buy...which would be more acceptable, except I was sitting in row twelve. Also, Iberia is the only airline I've ever flown with absolutely no drinks the entire flight unless you bought them (including water). Ugh. 

Our flight back to Madrid, and hotel (Arturo High Tech Hotel...it was high tech, a laptop in each room and a shower with 8 heads in it) were relatively uneventful. We were happy to be headed home and back to one of our favorite cities...NYC!