Traveling Fool

 I've been home for four days now and I think the jet lag/travel fog is finally lifting and the laundry is done. I have some final thoughts on the experience which may be helpful for my future travels or perhaps even yours. I normally don't do group tours for the whole of my vacation, and I've now done two in less than 12 months (the baseball tour in July and now Morocco), and I'm still not sure they are for me. I mean day tours are one thing, maybe 8, 10 hours at the most with a group of people, but 7 days with 20-30 people on a bus, at meals, on tours is a totally different beast. There are definitely pros: everything is pretty organized, I didn't have to worry about connections, hotels, finding the highlights, and all at a fair price I would say. The cons: well, you are stuck with the same people for a long period of time (and they are stuck with you), there is some flexibility, but you are in the city as long as the tour is planned, you can't really extend i...

 It was so hard to believe that our whirlwind tour of Morocco was over. One more day, that was it, and then the long trip home. But let's not get ahead of ourselves and take the time to enjoy the beautiful sunny day we had in Casablanca. We had to leave Marrakech promptly in order to get to Casablanca for our tour of King Hassan II Mosque, the only active mosque non-Muslims can visit in Morocco.  It is the largest active mosque in Africa and has a total capacity of 105,000 people, 25,000 inside and 80,000 in the outside areas. Construction began in 1986 and was completed in 1993, which is incredible given the size and the craftsmanship. It's on the sea and the exterior views are almost as beautiful as the interior. As we entered, we removed our shoes, and you could hear the collective gasps from our group as we looked around, above and below. There are so many facts and figures, and you can look them up (plus more information) on the mosque's website  The Hassan II Mosque...

 I will spare you all the details of the seemingly endless drive from Fes to Marrakech; I don’t mind long drives, I mean the drive from Apple Valley to South Dakota is long and mostly boring, but this was interminable. Nothing to be done about it, however, and we did get a distant glimpse to the High Atlas Mountains and experienced quite a number of service station facilities. We finally arrived in Marrakech in time for dinner and an early night for me. It was another full day of experiencing a centuries old city in less than 24 hours; sensory overload would be the theme of this trip - the pictures don’t do it justice because you don’t get the sounds, the smells and even the feel of the thousand year old stones under your feet, but I’m trying. We met our local guide Abdullah who was like a walking fortune cookie, he had aphorisms for every situation, a great sense of humor and history and the coolest accent. Our first stop was the Koutubia Mosque, built in the 12th century, and it’...

 To say we had a full day would be a huge understatement; we walked around, through and over the Fes Medina, shopping and watching craft demonstrations and that was all before lunch. We walked through the Jewish quarter in Fes, but like the other Jewish quarters we have seen and will see, the Jews have been gone for fifty to seventy years. There have been a few exoduses, beginning with around the time of Israel’s independence in 1948 to the 1960s, with Moroccan Jews moving to Israel. They weren’t asked to leave or forced to leave, though, and now many Israelis of Moroccan heritage are returning to visit their homeland. If we didn’t have a guide, I don’t think I would be able to tell we were in the Jewish quarter, but apparently the Jewish apartments had balconies or different types of balconies, and some of the balconies had Stars of David in a corner.  In Sefrou (which actually came later in the afternoon) we also went to the Jewish quarter and went to a former Jewish childre...