This is the educational experience. We should have read up more on the culture of haggling specifically to Morocco. I'm not into that, based on my experience in Mexico, where I'd rather pay a bit more to support a family in a poor economy. It's the social worker in me. I once got too good…

The Medina has areas dedicated to specific craftsmen. For example, in the leather souk the morning starts with the leather auction, skins brought from the tannery by donkey.  The craftsmen make the stock distributed to the individual stalls. Besides leather, there is the metal workers souk featuring Moroccan lanterns.  The spice souk Is located in the…

6:30 a.m. is wakey wakey at camel camp. It was different being on the camper end of things after so many years as camp staff. They wanted us up dark and early for brekkie – bread and coffee or tea – so we could see the sunrise and get back to the minibus for the…

Have we only been in Morocco for two days? We've done so much in that time. Back to the camel ride. We gallomphed into the sunset in our caravan until we arrived at camp. Actually we were heading out of the sunset but 'into' sounds better. Look at their soft little two toed feet, not…

I never thought I'd hear myself say that I'm going to spend a night in a Berber camp on the Sahara and we'd be riding camels to get there. Today's the day, it looks like it's really going to happen. We were picked up by a driver at 7:00 am, dropped off at the staging…

Chuck has a new persona. No longer called Hemmingway, as on the Camino, in Morocco people call to him "Ali Baba!" It's the beard.  Back to the tour. We walked through the Jewish Quarter ins on to The Bahia Palace, built in the 1800's by Si Moussa, the Grand Vizier of the Sultan, and named for…

This is how we were awoken at 6:00 a.m., all was dark. It's the Muslim call to prayer, heard five times per day. We didn't realize we were so close to the loudspeakers in the mosque's minaret. When you think of the intention, a call to prayer is a nice thing to be witnessing. It…

We spent more than we needed to for an airport transfer through Viator. It was comforting, in an unfamiliar foreign country, having the security of someone waiting with your name on a sign while you go through the long lineup for Morrocan immigration. I believe that nearly all world passports are machine readable, but for…

October 22 Waiting for our flight to Casablanca where our feet will first touch a new continent, the airport sign seemed unreal.  By the end of the day we're scheduled to be at Riad Al Jana in Marrakech. I'm told by a fellow passenger that it translates to a house like heaven.  We read that…

Another example of the stretch of the Roman Empire and its impact on infrastructure. After 2000 years, amphitheatres, roads, bridges, aqueducts and other buildings still stand.  Tarragona was the ancient Roman city of Tarraco. Today's city was built right on top of the original settlement. Like the picture of the bank in yesterday's post, there…