The only words out of my mouth was: Alhamdullilah
For my first official weekend, a group of eleven of us went on a trip about three and a half hours north of Ifrane to a beach city called Asilah. It was the most beautiful little beach that had a feel similar to the Salisbury Beach in Massachusetts with a mix of Providence Town down at the Cape; just replace the rainbow flags with Moroccan cultural rugs and beautiful woven scarves.
The journey to Asilah was such an experience in itself! I guess the best way to describe it is an "adventurous rush"... literally. We were running late since Eli and myself had class on Friday until 4:45 but we were trying to beat the final 6pm train in Meknes. But we ended up missing that train since the cab ride to the city took about an hour and a half. Thus we ended up settling on the 1:30 am train to our final destination.
Meknes
To kill the 6 hour we had under our belts, we explored the city to find this little sandwich shop around a busy corner leading to the medina, where our group of eleven herded in to have dinner.They made some of the best sandwiches with every type of meat you could imagine: beef, lamb, chicken, and liver. The best part about this restaurant however was that it had the most delicious smoothies, freshly made with all organic fruits! I ended up getting the beef wrap with olives, peppers, onions, and other vegetables with an avocado and almond smoothie (which is my favorite smoothie here thus far).
After dinner, everyone was pretty exhausted from the traveling and all the good foods, so we made our way to the train station to purchase our tickets and wait out the last three hours before our departure on the platform. However, Tim and I figured since we were in Meknes for the first time we should explore the city until the train came. What I noticed about Meknes was that it was a city that's more subside than Boston but had a feel more like Cambridge, or in Korea, the less busy "gol mok" areas of Seoul: It was small with many residences, and at the same time, it was pretty industrialized, just like the shops along the streets of Allston or Dae Jyun. As we explored, we found awesome graffiti along the walls as well as a strategically established sports bar with a turf soccer field inside and a large projection screen on the other side for customers to watch major soccer games. As Tim and I were scavenging out a place to ralkin, we ran into some weird encounters. We walked down this very quite road where it looked like a bunch of residences and apartments on both sides. As we continued down this quite road, there was a Moroccan sitting on a stoop that shouted out to us and abruptly came towards us. Although Tim knew French fluently, which is useful when trying to speak to most of the Moroccans who could speak French as well, but the man could only speak Arabic. Therefore, we couldn't quite make out what he was trying to say to us. The only word Tim could make out was voleur, "theif", and the very bizarre and alarming strangling noise that he made with the strangling gesture he made with his hands on his neck. Yes, it was terrifying. So we just thanked him, turned around, and bolted towards the way we came from, laughing at this ridiculous situation.
As we were giving up on the idea of finding a decent spot, we came across this perfect little island of a "park" where we found benches and a perfect set of steps that were facing away the main road. It was very relaxing but yet there was an underlying feeling of excitement all at the same time.
Meknes is a small city filled with local businesses and lots of restaurants. It reminded me of a bigger version of Azrou but not as quite scenic. We ate dinner at this really good sandwich restaurant where they sold a variety of cold cuts, hot meats, and smoothies! I ended up getting a hot beef wrap with olives, spices, and other vegetables that I couldn't really tell what it was, with french fries on the side and an avocado smoothie with almonds in it. It was sooooo good. Afterwards, a friend and I just broke off from the rest of the group and went to explore around the town with about two hours to kill. Walking around made me realize just how small Meknes was, but it was filled with some cool bars and places to eat. We came across an awesome sports bar with a projection screen that was up for the customers to enjoy the soccer game that was playing and they had a turf soccer field that was caged so that people could enjoy a game of soccer. Next to the field was a blow up climbing course and a stage that performers could entertain the customers and kids could play on the course. It was such a neat set up. On the walls were some awesome graffiti that were legit works of art.
Meknes to Asilah
The train ride was the most crazy experience. A person might figure that a 1:30am train wouldn't have that many travelers but it was quite the contrary. There were so many people on the train that it almost impossible to find a seat. While our group was helplessly searching, Tim and I finally came upon a compartment where five guys were sitting as they were ralkining. It looked a little sketchy at first so we moved on to try to find another place to sit. The others, mind you there were eleven of us, finally settled on another small, seat-less compartment toward the back of the train, but Tim and I went to the nearly empty compartment with the five guys. Turns out, they were all from Tangiers, and traveling back home. As we talked to them (or attempted to since I didn't know much Arabic, but Tim knows French so it was quite useful haha) and what I noticed most about these guys were how generous they were to each other; unlike our western culture, especially the New England culture of individuality and self advancement it was quite eye opening to see that in the Moroccan culture, there is a sense of togetherness and family-like giving among the people. It got me thinking that although social security and health care is almost nonexistent here, it really has the people rely on their family and friends even more which unites the people together so much deeper. Of course, this isn't the only example on which I base my assumption on, but so far, everyone I have over and over again proved it to be true.
As the last hour of this train ride approached, our group finally reunited again as they came into our empty compartment and we settled in, and just laid across the train floor, compacted like sardines, and slept until we reached Asilah.
Asilah
Around 4:30am was when we arrived in Asilah and the train station, to our great surprised, was right along the coast of the beautiful Atlantic Ocean. We literally ran towards the beach when we arrived with the most beautiful stars above us and the cool, salty ocean waves splashed right in front of us. We felt so free and a sense of relief being in the open after that long, suffocating and exhausting train ride over.
We felt that it was too later, or too early rather, to get a hostel or a place to stay, so we ended up sleeping the remaining hours till dawn right on the beach. Of course, I couldn't help but to go for a swim, so Max the German and I took off running into the freezing water. It felt really refreshing really after being so close with so many bodies for hours on end.
The next morning, we woke up to the BEAUTIFUL sunrise right over the beach. The sand, you will notice, is very soft and thinner than the sand on the east coast of the US. It was so nice to wake up to the hot sun and as I looked around, there were the others still deep asleep on their sandy beds. It was the most unbelievable feeling. After we gathered ourselves and enjoyed the view, we finally walked over inside the city itself. As we walked down the beach strip, it reminded me of the beach strip on Hamption Beach in Massachusetts, the area of the boardwalk where there are many souvenir shops, food stands, restaurants and apartment houses. The only difference is that it was more desolated and a little older. The only words I could think of to describe this was "alhamdulah" ("thanks be to God" in Arabic).
As we ventured around the small beach town, we had to wait for Reda's friend, Tariq, because he had hooked us up with a house in town to stay. The only problem was we couldn't contact him right away so we went on to explore a little more. All around town we noticed there were very impressive graffiti on the walls and over the roofs hung the most intricately designed rugs and tapestries. On the doorways of some of the shops, scarves and silver jewelry decorated the entrance, and the shop keepers dressed in their Moroccan traditional clothing and hats welcomed us to take a look at his merchandises as we walked by.
After a while, Tariq finally called and he lead us to this beautiful door on the side of one of the buildings. The set up of the town of Asilah is engulfed around a wall and inside of it is like a maze. The buildings are so close to one another that the little alleyways are only wide enough to fit two people at a time. Around the buildings had the most beautiful and intricate doors that lead you into a house or an apartment and the shops were a "hole" in the wall. When we finally reached the house we were staying at, the beautiful door lead us into the most well furnished, magnificent house that gave off an Arabian Night feel to it. It had arced doorways and thick columns, and the design on the ceilings were outlined in gold lining and elaborate colors. Every bathroom had a shower, and there was one in particular with two shower heads! We lucked out to say the least. The best part was that between 11 of us, it cost us 100 dirhams each! I felt so blessed and the long trip definitely seemed worth the head ache.
For a few hours we just hung out in our mansion, ralkined, and hung out in this beautiful greenhouse area in the back. Afterwards, at around 3ish, we went set off to go to the beach.
The only way we could get there was by car, so we ended up getting this huge van, with a big compartment in the back with seating benches around it, where the eleven of us piled in. The ride there was pretty ridiculous first off because we got to ralkin with the driver and two, the roads were so bumpy that it was quite funny to see everyone bouncing around in their seats.
When we arrived at this beautiful beach right below a few mountainous hill where the beach stretched out really far and there were restaurant tent areas along the back of the beach. We set up on our spot and the rest of the day was filled with laying out on the hot, soft sanded beach, swimming in the cool, salty water, and playing ball games like soccer and football. Eventually, we set off to explore the beach a little bit more and that is when Tariq told us that there was a cave that we could go to that was about a half a mile down. So we followed him and we realized it was impossible to get there because of the high tide, so instead, we decided to climb over a mountainous hill to get to it. The climb was so exhilarating! It was hard because we were bear foot and there were lots of rocks, thorns, and glass, but exciting at the same time because of the adrenaline rush from the possibility that if we lost our balance, we could be in deep shit. It was such a thrilling climb. Eventually, when we reached the area that the cave was in, Tariq pointed down and told us we could scale down the side of the mountain to get a closer look. So of course I and a few others started our descent with Tariq in the lead. We were practically crab walking on our hands and legs down to the cave. It was kind of scary, I'm not going to lie, but it wasn't too bad. When we reached it, we were able to see the big opening in the rocks to this dark cave where the waves were crashing into it. It was quite a rewarding feeling to get there.
The climb back up was also a challenge in itself, since it was literally a rock climb without a harness. But to our relief, the climb up was easier than the climb down. By the end of this adventure, it was nearly 5 PM, so we stayed a few more hours, finished off with a satisfying sea food meal at one of the side restaurants where I got delicious fresh fish grilled right in front of me. I, of course, at it the Moroccan way, with just my hands (A lot easier than with a utensil, I got to say.) Tim, Nic and I finished off our beach day with an awesome gave to football as the sun set and afterwards, we headed back to our beautiful abode.
Once we got back to the house, we all had our last night fiesta until the next morning where we had to pack up early and head home on our long journey back (which was also an experience of its own where Tim and I had to sit in the aisle, and at one point, we just put our feet out the door of the moving train in order to have some room to sit. Tim was laying down beside the bathroom where people were going in and out and it smelled absolutely awful, but I guess we can laugh about it now! Oh, and our grand taxi ride back from Meknes to Ifrane broke down for like 5 minutes until thankfully the driver was able to start it up again)
Anyways..It was definitely a trip that I will always remember and a great way to start off this amazing abroad experience.
For my first official weekend, a group of eleven of us went on a trip about three and a half hours north of Ifrane to a beach city called Asilah. It was the most beautiful little beach that had a feel similar to the Salisbury Beach in Massachusetts with a mix of Providence Town down at the Cape; just replace the rainbow flags with Moroccan cultural rugs and beautiful woven scarves.
The journey to Asilah was such an experience in itself! I guess the best way to describe it is an "adventurous rush"... literally. We were running late since Eli and myself had class on Friday until 4:45 but we were trying to beat the final 6pm train in Meknes. But we ended up missing that train since the cab ride to the city took about an hour and a half. Thus we ended up settling on the 1:30 am train to our final destination.
Meknes
To kill the 6 hour we had under our belts, we explored the city to find this little sandwich shop around a busy corner leading to the medina, where our group of eleven herded in to have dinner.They made some of the best sandwiches with every type of meat you could imagine: beef, lamb, chicken, and liver. The best part about this restaurant however was that it had the most delicious smoothies, freshly made with all organic fruits! I ended up getting the beef wrap with olives, peppers, onions, and other vegetables with an avocado and almond smoothie (which is my favorite smoothie here thus far).
After dinner, everyone was pretty exhausted from the traveling and all the good foods, so we made our way to the train station to purchase our tickets and wait out the last three hours before our departure on the platform. However, Tim and I figured since we were in Meknes for the first time we should explore the city until the train came. What I noticed about Meknes was that it was a city that's more subside than Boston but had a feel more like Cambridge, or in Korea, the less busy "gol mok" areas of Seoul: It was small with many residences, and at the same time, it was pretty industrialized, just like the shops along the streets of Allston or Dae Jyun. As we explored, we found awesome graffiti along the walls as well as a strategically established sports bar with a turf soccer field inside and a large projection screen on the other side for customers to watch major soccer games. As Tim and I were scavenging out a place to ralkin, we ran into some weird encounters. We walked down this very quite road where it looked like a bunch of residences and apartments on both sides. As we continued down this quite road, there was a Moroccan sitting on a stoop that shouted out to us and abruptly came towards us. Although Tim knew French fluently, which is useful when trying to speak to most of the Moroccans who could speak French as well, but the man could only speak Arabic. Therefore, we couldn't quite make out what he was trying to say to us. The only word Tim could make out was voleur, "theif", and the very bizarre and alarming strangling noise that he made with the strangling gesture he made with his hands on his neck. Yes, it was terrifying. So we just thanked him, turned around, and bolted towards the way we came from, laughing at this ridiculous situation.
As we were giving up on the idea of finding a decent spot, we came across this perfect little island of a "park" where we found benches and a perfect set of steps that were facing away the main road. It was very relaxing but yet there was an underlying feeling of excitement all at the same time.
Meknes is a small city filled with local businesses and lots of restaurants. It reminded me of a bigger version of Azrou but not as quite scenic. We ate dinner at this really good sandwich restaurant where they sold a variety of cold cuts, hot meats, and smoothies! I ended up getting a hot beef wrap with olives, spices, and other vegetables that I couldn't really tell what it was, with french fries on the side and an avocado smoothie with almonds in it. It was sooooo good. Afterwards, a friend and I just broke off from the rest of the group and went to explore around the town with about two hours to kill. Walking around made me realize just how small Meknes was, but it was filled with some cool bars and places to eat. We came across an awesome sports bar with a projection screen that was up for the customers to enjoy the soccer game that was playing and they had a turf soccer field that was caged so that people could enjoy a game of soccer. Next to the field was a blow up climbing course and a stage that performers could entertain the customers and kids could play on the course. It was such a neat set up. On the walls were some awesome graffiti that were legit works of art.
Meknes to Asilah
The train ride was the most crazy experience. A person might figure that a 1:30am train wouldn't have that many travelers but it was quite the contrary. There were so many people on the train that it almost impossible to find a seat. While our group was helplessly searching, Tim and I finally came upon a compartment where five guys were sitting as they were ralkining. It looked a little sketchy at first so we moved on to try to find another place to sit. The others, mind you there were eleven of us, finally settled on another small, seat-less compartment toward the back of the train, but Tim and I went to the nearly empty compartment with the five guys. Turns out, they were all from Tangiers, and traveling back home. As we talked to them (or attempted to since I didn't know much Arabic, but Tim knows French so it was quite useful haha) and what I noticed most about these guys were how generous they were to each other; unlike our western culture, especially the New England culture of individuality and self advancement it was quite eye opening to see that in the Moroccan culture, there is a sense of togetherness and family-like giving among the people. It got me thinking that although social security and health care is almost nonexistent here, it really has the people rely on their family and friends even more which unites the people together so much deeper. Of course, this isn't the only example on which I base my assumption on, but so far, everyone I have over and over again proved it to be true.
As the last hour of this train ride approached, our group finally reunited again as they came into our empty compartment and we settled in, and just laid across the train floor, compacted like sardines, and slept until we reached Asilah.
Asilah
Around 4:30am was when we arrived in Asilah and the train station, to our great surprised, was right along the coast of the beautiful Atlantic Ocean. We literally ran towards the beach when we arrived with the most beautiful stars above us and the cool, salty ocean waves splashed right in front of us. We felt so free and a sense of relief being in the open after that long, suffocating and exhausting train ride over.
We felt that it was too later, or too early rather, to get a hostel or a place to stay, so we ended up sleeping the remaining hours till dawn right on the beach. Of course, I couldn't help but to go for a swim, so Max the German and I took off running into the freezing water. It felt really refreshing really after being so close with so many bodies for hours on end.
The next morning, we woke up to the BEAUTIFUL sunrise right over the beach. The sand, you will notice, is very soft and thinner than the sand on the east coast of the US. It was so nice to wake up to the hot sun and as I looked around, there were the others still deep asleep on their sandy beds. It was the most unbelievable feeling. After we gathered ourselves and enjoyed the view, we finally walked over inside the city itself. As we walked down the beach strip, it reminded me of the beach strip on Hamption Beach in Massachusetts, the area of the boardwalk where there are many souvenir shops, food stands, restaurants and apartment houses. The only difference is that it was more desolated and a little older. The only words I could think of to describe this was "alhamdulah" ("thanks be to God" in Arabic).
As we ventured around the small beach town, we had to wait for Reda's friend, Tariq, because he had hooked us up with a house in town to stay. The only problem was we couldn't contact him right away so we went on to explore a little more. All around town we noticed there were very impressive graffiti on the walls and over the roofs hung the most intricately designed rugs and tapestries. On the doorways of some of the shops, scarves and silver jewelry decorated the entrance, and the shop keepers dressed in their Moroccan traditional clothing and hats welcomed us to take a look at his merchandises as we walked by.
After a while, Tariq finally called and he lead us to this beautiful door on the side of one of the buildings. The set up of the town of Asilah is engulfed around a wall and inside of it is like a maze. The buildings are so close to one another that the little alleyways are only wide enough to fit two people at a time. Around the buildings had the most beautiful and intricate doors that lead you into a house or an apartment and the shops were a "hole" in the wall. When we finally reached the house we were staying at, the beautiful door lead us into the most well furnished, magnificent house that gave off an Arabian Night feel to it. It had arced doorways and thick columns, and the design on the ceilings were outlined in gold lining and elaborate colors. Every bathroom had a shower, and there was one in particular with two shower heads! We lucked out to say the least. The best part was that between 11 of us, it cost us 100 dirhams each! I felt so blessed and the long trip definitely seemed worth the head ache.
For a few hours we just hung out in our mansion, ralkined, and hung out in this beautiful greenhouse area in the back. Afterwards, at around 3ish, we went set off to go to the beach.
The only way we could get there was by car, so we ended up getting this huge van, with a big compartment in the back with seating benches around it, where the eleven of us piled in. The ride there was pretty ridiculous first off because we got to ralkin with the driver and two, the roads were so bumpy that it was quite funny to see everyone bouncing around in their seats.
When we arrived at this beautiful beach right below a few mountainous hill where the beach stretched out really far and there were restaurant tent areas along the back of the beach. We set up on our spot and the rest of the day was filled with laying out on the hot, soft sanded beach, swimming in the cool, salty water, and playing ball games like soccer and football. Eventually, we set off to explore the beach a little bit more and that is when Tariq told us that there was a cave that we could go to that was about a half a mile down. So we followed him and we realized it was impossible to get there because of the high tide, so instead, we decided to climb over a mountainous hill to get to it. The climb was so exhilarating! It was hard because we were bear foot and there were lots of rocks, thorns, and glass, but exciting at the same time because of the adrenaline rush from the possibility that if we lost our balance, we could be in deep shit. It was such a thrilling climb. Eventually, when we reached the area that the cave was in, Tariq pointed down and told us we could scale down the side of the mountain to get a closer look. So of course I and a few others started our descent with Tariq in the lead. We were practically crab walking on our hands and legs down to the cave. It was kind of scary, I'm not going to lie, but it wasn't too bad. When we reached it, we were able to see the big opening in the rocks to this dark cave where the waves were crashing into it. It was quite a rewarding feeling to get there.
The climb back up was also a challenge in itself, since it was literally a rock climb without a harness. But to our relief, the climb up was easier than the climb down. By the end of this adventure, it was nearly 5 PM, so we stayed a few more hours, finished off with a satisfying sea food meal at one of the side restaurants where I got delicious fresh fish grilled right in front of me. I, of course, at it the Moroccan way, with just my hands (A lot easier than with a utensil, I got to say.) Tim, Nic and I finished off our beach day with an awesome gave to football as the sun set and afterwards, we headed back to our beautiful abode.
Once we got back to the house, we all had our last night fiesta until the next morning where we had to pack up early and head home on our long journey back (which was also an experience of its own where Tim and I had to sit in the aisle, and at one point, we just put our feet out the door of the moving train in order to have some room to sit. Tim was laying down beside the bathroom where people were going in and out and it smelled absolutely awful, but I guess we can laugh about it now! Oh, and our grand taxi ride back from Meknes to Ifrane broke down for like 5 minutes until thankfully the driver was able to start it up again)
Anyways..It was definitely a trip that I will always remember and a great way to start off this amazing abroad experience.
