The City of Lights

And what an appropriate name. Flying into Paris at night, I was able to see the expansive, glowing puddle of gold splattered over the pitch black landscape around it. While it was nice to see the city after dark, it unfortunately made it difficult to get from the airport to the hostel. I had my navigation via metro all ready, but I hadn't accounted for a delayed flight and an early closure of the city trains. Had I not met a friendly French student outside the airport who accompanied me all the way to the hostel, it probably would have been a repeat of the Barcelona fiasco.

When researching flights to Morocco one night, I found a very cheap plane ticket to Paris (only 15€) and booked it immediately. I had no one to go with, no where to stay, and no return ticket. It was my first time traveling alone, but I figured I always met friends in hostels and would be able to do so again. Plus, doing a solo trip could be an incredibly introspective experience. I figured no matter what, there was plenty to do in Paris to stay entertained whether I was alone or not. 

Le Louvre. The building itself was
 one of the most impressive parts.

The activities during my trip consisted of all the main tourist attractions. I spent the first day at the Louvre, which really requires many days to see the whole thing. I was able to see the most well-known exhibits, and after being there, my opinion of the Mona Lisa is that it is overrated. I know that it was a groundbreaking work from an artistic standpoint, but there were so many other paintings that just blew me away. The building itself and the architecture outside were probably the most astonishing parts. It was still nice to see the most famous painting in the world, and imagine Leonardo da Vinci himself painting the piece I was seeing. 


To really see as much of Paris as I could in my few days there, I took a walking tour of the city (in Spanish, thank you very much) that included all of the biggest sites: the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, Champs-Élysées, the Pantheon, Notre Dame, and others. My hostel was located in the Montmarte district, so I was able to explore the area famous for hosting artists such as Dalí, Picasso, and van Gogh, as well as being the setting for movies such as Moulin Rouge, Amélie, and La vie en rose. I also went to the cemetery, famous because Jim Morrison is buried there. Definitely grab a map if you go, and make sure to see the Holocaust memorials; they were haunting sculptures. 

One of the Holocaust memorials in the
Père Lachaise Cemetery

Real French crêpes

I was told eating in Paris was unbelievably expensive, which is definitely true in the restaurants. Traveling alone made it less tempting to go out to eat (who really wants to ask for a table for one?), so I ended up buying food at grocery stores and just cooking in the hostel with others there, which is substantially cheaper. But, local cuisine is a fundamental part of being in a foreign place, so I made sure to indulge myself as well. I probably ate two pastries a day, on top of my morning croissant. I couldn't go to France and not try snail, so I shared a plate of escargot with some friends--and it is delicious. But the best food was probably from the bakery. You have not tasted real bread until you eat a French baguette, and I am baffled as to why all bread doesn't taste this divine. 

Morocco, Days 5&6

After camping for the night in the desert, I was definitely in need of a shower the minute I got back to Marrakech. Unfortunately, getting hot water was difficult there, so the hostel employee directed us to another hammam that he said he used every day. I wasn't sure exactly what he meant at first, since our first hammam experience was a touristy-spa site, and not something you would do over and over again. It was a public one, he told us, and cost only one euro to use it. I would have paid a lot more for a hot water, so I went to check it out. Going in, I immediately realized this was a real Moroccan hammam. There are two chambers--one for men and one for women--where you go in and dress down to either boxers or swim shorts. Then, there are three connected sauna rooms that get hotter as you go in further. I'm pretty sure there's some method on how to use the rooms, but I didn't really understand the instructions they gave me. They provide you a bucket, and then you go in and can fill it up with hot water to bathe yourself. The real "hammam" part is to get one of the workers to scrub you down for a full cleansing, but that costs a few dirhams extra and I was on a budget. Plus, it wasn't even necessary. The other people in the room were happy to scrub their neighbors back if they needed help. I looked like a lost idiot in there, since I didn't have shampoo or soap, but luckily after a couple of minutes of just rinsing off, someone pitied how pathetic I looked and came over to lend me some. It was a community experience, and this is the way that people in the city bathe. Most houses don't have hot water and showers, so they all go to hammams. Personally, I really enjoyed it, and went back the next day to clean off again.


Mountains of spices in the souqs



Gardens in the Palacio Bahia






Our last full day in Morocco was spent sightseeing around Marrakech, shopping for spices, and enjoying the delicious food while we still could. We went out to eat in the Square again with some new hostel friends, and then ended the night with a little hashish and watching a meteor shower in the African sky. Morocco was, without a doubt, one of the best trips I have ever taken in my life. Before coming to Spain, it was a country I knew I wanted to visit while I was studying in Europe, but I wasn't sure if I would ever actually make it there. Now, when traveling in the future, I'm going to have to resist the temptation to keep going back to Morocco so I can try and see new places instead.

Morocco, Days 3&4

Sunday morning we began the early morning excursion to Zagoura, a city about 230 miles southeast of Marrakech, right at the Sahara Desert and close to the border of Algeria. It was a long trip by bus that took several extra hours since the vast majority of the trip was spent traversing windy roads through the Atlas Mountains. Even though it felt like a neverending trip that took about ten hours total (we didn't arrive until sunset), it was still a fairly interesting drive.

Snow-capped Atlas Mountains

Of course, I got to see the mountains, and also a lot more of Morocco that I would have never seen had I just stayed in Marrakech. I definitely wouldn't call Marrakech a wealthy city by Western standards, but I could see the difference between the tourist urban area and the rest of the small towns we drove through. A lot of residences I wouldn't even call a town; many were just buildings on the side of the mountain where maybe a few families resided. A lot of the homes and buildings looked like dilapidated ruins, and if it weren't for the livestock outside and the children's toys piled on the porch, you would assume they had been abandoned years ago. Differences in social customs were apparent also. In Marrakech, it isn't weird to see women with uncovered heads, or even cruising on their motorcycles through the main square. After we had left the city, I don't remember seeing a single woman without a hijab the rest of the drive. There weren't even really women that I saw walking or associating with men. Of course, there were also many "normal" events I witnessed too: kids playing football, women hanging laundry, friends sitting in the shade to get out of the heat. We even got to visit the site where Gladiator was filmed.

Our new Berber friends

After finally arriving in Zagora, we were able to ride camels to our campsite in the moonlight. There we ate a delicious meal, and then these Berber nomads sang traditional songs while playing the bongos around a huge campfire while everyone danced. The best part, however, began when the rest of the visitors went to bed. A few of the nomads took just the four of us out into the sand dunes. We spent hours with feet buried in the sand to keep warm, while they regaled us with stories from the desert, told us nomad jokes, and smoked hashish. They even valiantly tried to marry the girls. Plus, their language skills were incredible. They live in the desert, don't attend school, and haven't studies languages. Yet they could still speak fluent Berber and French, and were conversational also in English, Spanish, and Arabic. It definitely makes me feel worse about struggling with my Spanish. It was a very educational night, and we all learned a lot about their culture, which is almost completely the opposite to our own.

The next morning we all awoke early again, to watch the sun rise over the hills. In daylight, we could see that all of our surroundings were desert, and the area was known as the mouth to the Sahara. We were all dreading the 10 hour bus ride back to Marrakech, but at least the night before made the long trip worth it. As we were boarding the bus, a huge group of little boys and girls ran up to us, begging for any kind of trinket: money, food, valuables, even the clothes on our backs. It was pretty heartbreaking, and we were told not to give anything because it would make no difference since there were so many more in the same situation. But if you have the capability to help, even if it's just one person, isn't that difference enough?

"Yes, but this is one child we can help! Here!"
-The Constant Gardener

Morocco, Days 1&2

Arriving in Marrakech was a new experience for me in many ways. It was my first time in Africa, my first time in a Muslim country, my first time in a country with a dominant language(s) that I didn't know (the main tongues of Morocco are Arabic, Berber, and French). I knew before I left it would be a completely different experience from anywhere I had traveled before, and it didn't disappoint me.

After being dropped off by the taxi, we were led to the hostel by a pre-teen boy looking to make a little money from lost tourists. We were walking down a street with all of our luggage, being stopped by street vendors at every shop and trying to avoid the speeding motorbikes coming from all directions. Down a couple of backalleys, we finally arrived to the best hostel I have ever stayed in. I don't want this to sound like a review for hostel world, but in short, there was free tea and shisha all day and night, an incredible breakfast prepared every morning, the most amiable employees you could imagine, and an overall amazing environment that really fostered friendships. Plus, the location was right in the middle of old-town Marrakech--called the Medina--and only a few minutes walk from the main square: Djemaa el-Fna.

Tagine with lamb

At dusk, no fewer than a hundred stands set-up in the square, each selling typical Moroccan dishes and all eager to get customers by any means they can. The servers follow you through the square, make-up special offers, and will even pull you with physical force into their little "restaurant." The two main dishes that seemed to be ubiquitous throughout the whole city were tagine and couscous. Both are delicious, but there was also seafood, skewers, lamb heads, and a sweet cinnamon dessert dish that was actually grilled chicken. But I think the best part of all was the orange juice; we literally went into one of the vendor's stands to verify he wasn't adding sugar to the drink because it tasted so sweet. We ate good every single night, because it was all so cheap too. You could easily fill yourself on 3-5 euros or dollars.

The next day we explored the souqs, a huge marketplace with hundreds of stands that winds like a labyrinth through the Medina. You can buy instruments, clothes, shoes, spices, jewelry, lanterns, and all kinds of other items. Haggling is necessary, and the difference between the starting and final prices was always pretty substantial.  I wanted to buy a leather book bag that the seller was asking about $40 for, and I ended up buying it for $16. Another part of Moroccan culture we wanted to experience was the hammam (which is originally a Turkish custom). We went to a spa that did hammam, and I went in completely clueless to what a hammam actually was. Basically I was just bathed by an attendant in a sauna with a massage afterwards, but they thought my friend and I were a couple and they did us together. It was definitely an intimate experience. And this was only the first hammam experience of the trip.

One of the souqs

I was already exhausted just from a day and a half in Marrakech, so after going to a local restaurant to watch the Madrid-Barça game (qué pena...), we went to sleep to prepare for our early morning the next day.