The weather on Thursday was stormy and windy which delayed our ferry by about four hours. Once we were on the water, the sea rocked the boat the entire voyage, causing most of the passengers to feel ill. We met a bunch of interesting people while waiting for the boat to depart, including an old and partially senile couple from the Southwest as well as a pair of Royal Marines who were on leave. These two Royal Marines were wearing white suits with a red tie and packed no spare luggage besides a second tie. The boat continued to sway so much that one of the Marines spent most of the voyage in the bathroom. This does not reflect well on the British armed forces.

Our boat arrived extremely late in Tangier at about 8 p.m. Morocco is two hours behind Spain even though they have about the same longitude, so it gets dark very early. We went straight to our hotel and decided to skip any sightseeing. In comparison to the Europe, Morocco is cheap and we splurged a little bit on our accommodations and ended up staying in a palace (fancy hotel) with a very friendly staff and an awesome complimentary breakfast. We went to dinner at a seafood restaurant that served a four- or five-course meal.

Since we did not have dirhams, the currency of Morocco, we paid for our bill in Euros and over estimated the exchange rate and left much more than was necessary. We definitely were good tippers and it was nice to see the waiters face light up when he correctly figured out the exchange rate.

The next morning, we took a train to the city of Fes. It was a great way to see the countryside of Morocco, which is surprisingly (in the area we were in) not a desert and is more green than some parts of Spain. On the train we met some interesting characters and one convinced us to hire his friend's taxi for a tour around Fes.

Now, I know it sounds extremely dangerous/sketchy/stupid to hire a random person that you have just met on a train, but half the people of Morocco want to genuinely help you out and the other half want to ... And everyone wants to make a buck. The hard part for us, though, was figuring out which group this man fit in. We also came to the realization that we would not know if anyone we met in the city of Fes could offer us any more assurance of their sincerity. Plus, the two-hour tour only cost us about 5E a piece.

Fortunately, the tour turned out to be great even though our guide did not speak English, only Arabic and French. He kept trying to talk to me in French even though he knew I could not understand. It's OK because I tried speaking to him in English just same. We got to see some great views as well as the perimeter of the city. One of the highlights of the tour was a pottery factory. We got to see pots being spun on the potter's wheel, painted, and baked. We even stood in the kilns. The kilns reach 1200 degrees and burn wood and olive pits. Olive pits have oil in them which allow the pits to burn hotter. We also got to see a man make a mosaic and others chip out small tiles. Both jobs looked incredibly tedious.

The next day we met our guide (another friend of the guy on the train) and set into the Medina of Fes. A medina is a walled city in a Muslim country. The medina of Fes is the largest in the world and is like a time capsule. People operate and live as if it were still the middle ages. We walked around the walled city, following our guide, and were just amazed by everything that we saw. The streets are very narrow, only about six or eight feet wide and form a huge labyrinth.

Without a guide, we would probably still be there. Moroccans use mules to carry things place to place as cars are not allowed in the medina. (It's the largest car-free zone in the world). I was almost run over by a mule carrying about 300 sheep skins on its back. It smelled like 300 dead sheep on the back of a mule.

We also visited the famous tanneries of Fes, where they have been making leather products the same way for hundreds of years. Sheep, camel, and other skins are placed in huge vats of limestone and pigeon excrement. The pigeon poo helps break down the hair fibers. Workers take the clean skins and stand in vats with the leather and dip them in the dye. (They don't stand in the pigeon excrement as that would be a crappy job.) It was truly amazing to see leather being made in this very antiquated way. The whole area, though, smelled like, you guessed it, pigeon excrement.

Our guide then took us to a carpet store were we were able to see women making Arabian carpets. One carpet can take one woman about a year to make. One our way out, the owner of the store tried to hard sell us into buying carpets to later sell in the U.S. as an investment. We did not appreciate this too much.

One of our highlights of our trek was a Koran school. Our guide pointed us through a door and we found ourselves at the front of four-year-old Moroccans. They sang for us in French and then their teacher asked for money, which we obliged because we were so dumbstruck. Could you imagine four foreigners walking into an American kindergarten class?

We left Fes on a 1 a.m. train to Tangiers, where we raced to catch our 8 a.m. ferry. Ferry schedules in Morocco seem to be a suggestion instead of a rule. Our 8 a.m. was canceled since it was under-booked. So was the 8:30. And the 9. And the 9:30. And then 10. Every worker at the port told us something different about when we could leave. We were thoroughly upset and stressed as we had to catch a train. We finally left and caught a later train back to Granada. It was one of the worst traveling experiences I have ever had but it did not put a damper on our trip.

I am posting pictures of the Medina. I think that's the best way to describe what I saw. Morocco is definitely a different world. I was amazed to see actual poverty for the first time in my left. We all agreed that if we didn't gain a little bit of perspective from our travels about how good we live in America, then we never will.

I will post my Spring Break trip soon. I will probably not be leaving Spain for the rest of the semester, so my next entries should focus on my expierences here in Spain. I still have another month left in Europe and I plan to enjoy it.

Tangiers at Night	View from Train	Making mosaic	Painting pots
McDonald's!	Camel Head	Carpet making	Chickens for sale
View of Fez	Fruit for sale	Us	Schoolyard
Classroom	The Tannery	Mule	Our hotel lobby