A Midweek Excursion to the City of Light

Some time in August, in between trying to do a very difficult project and staring blankly out of the window, I decided to make myself feel worse by googling travel tickets I couldn't afford. Luckily, I stumbled across a Eurostar return to Paris for £69 in my Reading Week. Grabbing the boyfriend, we jumped on the deal, booked a cheap hostel in the 9th arrondissement and went back to crying in the library.

I've had to take some time off to study from home at the moment for health reasons, but as I couldn't bring myself to cancel the trip, we just took it very easy. This meant constant snacking and naps, so nothing too out of the ordinary.

Our journey there did not go to plan. The train was delayed by 55 minutes overall, so we were 5 minutes short of being able to claim a refund. We finally came out onto the platform and found we had to walk a long way down it to get to our coach. Once we were settled in, a couple arrived with the same assigned seats as us, and we realised we'd been looking at our return tickets...

So we dragged our bags off to the other side of the train to a coach that had three (three!) unhappy infants, and on arriving, I realised I lost my glasses. After going back to search the old carriage twice, I went to the information desk and found them waiting for me! Thank you, lovely passenger that brought them back. The ten-minute walk to the hostel in the dark, with our luggage, was pretty taxing, but we finally made it, although it took us another ten minutes and a trip back to Reception to get the key-card to work. Our view was a brick wall and the door of our en-suite didn't close, but we were just happy to have arrived somewhere with a bed.

Yay Paris! (It was very windy)

We were lucky to stumble upon most of our fun activities by accident, which I much preferred to an organised itinerary. We wandered through covered arcades (passages), rifled through old bookshops, ate well and read in cafés for hours.

It was strange how Paris could so resemble St Petersburg in some places, Madrid in others. Also since neither of us had been for a good six years, the influx of Vietnamese and Korean restaurants was interesting. 

We tried a few different restaurants and cafés, but definitely the best food was the fallafel spécial from L'As du Fallafel, or the Ace of Falafel. 

It's €5.50 takeaway or €8.00 to eat inside, which is worth a look for the pictures of Paris and klezmer bands, and one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. We went twice in the little time we had and I want to go every day for the rest of my life.

Second to the falafel, the best dessert we found was the macaroons from Pierre Hermé, in Le Marais. They're a little snobby and won't let you take photos inside, but the macaroons are amazing.

We got a salted caramel one, which has a really intense flavour so you'd better like caramel to try it, the Ispahan, which tastes quite like Turkish delight, but the chocolate and passion fruit was our favourite. That purply one in the corner got a bit squashed on the way home, so I still haven't figured out what flavour it is, but it was also quite chocolatey and fruity. 

Since it was our anniversary recently, we also added a padlock to Pont des Arts. I've seen so many in different cities, and as we visited the Kissing Bridge in St Petersburg this time last year, it seemed appropriate. Hopefully the authorities won't clip it off, as they've been prone to do in recent years. The place we chose also has a great view towards my favourite activity of the trip (apart from the falafel):

La Sainte-Chapelle! I absolutely love stained-glass windows and these are the most beautiful I've ever seen. They're currently renovating the chapel in part, so they're particularly bright at the moment. 

How is it so pretty? Also there is free entry for EU citizens, so just bringing your passport means you avoid the €8.50 fee for other tourists. 

We went up to Montmartre during the few hours we had spare on the last day, to see the Basilique du Sacré Coeur. I think even if I hadn't seen the glorious chapel the day before, I still would have found it underwhelming. It is beautiful inside, without a doubt, but the priest and nuns were singing and trying to conduct a service while a steady gaggle of tourists walked around the perimeter of the pews. I found the contrast of hymns and boisterous schoolchildren quite unpleasant, and I don't think that a tacky model of the basilica along with multi-lingual signs asking for donations should have a place in a niche of a place of worship. It was quite a sad representation of Paris' touristic veneer over a city that is quite possibly losing its cultural identity.

So, that was Paris. Where to next, for me..?

Visit to Granada

With both our exams over, we managed to cadge a trip to Granada (known locally as Graná) by staying with the parents of my family friend. I'd just met them once before, in Madrid, but they invited me and my boyfriend then to come and stay with them. God forbid we'd leave Spain without seeing their city, but really I'm so glad we didn't.

On yet another coach trip (one of five I've taken in the last month), we were by now well-prepared for five hours of sitting still. The best way to do it is take lots of food and water, a charged phone, books, music and pee at every opportunity. I haven't travelled with anyone I can't be around for long periods of time, but I imagine that's best avoided too.

The river, which is only about a foot deep

Sweltering

There seems to have been a bit of a heatwave in Spain recently - it hasn't been below 30 degrees for a good month - but it was even hotter in Granada. We got mild sunstroke wandering around the peaks of Albaycín, the old Muslim quarter, so the lovely abuela we were staying with gave us silly hats for the Alhambra.

In other news, my camera is still broken, but here are some shots I took with my phone around the city:

The Cathedral

El paseo de los tristes - BEANS?!

Inside the Cathedral

Arab Baths - the old hammam

Museo de San Juan de Dios 

Albaycín - the white houses are called Carmens

Dodgy shot of flamenco in a cave

The Alhambra
The best advice we got on going to the Alhambra was: book beforehand; put aside a whole day to go; take hats, food and more water than you think you need. We bought our tickets from an ATM outside a Caixa, and went by the town hall to get all the leaflets and maps they had from a very friendly lady. 

The gardens

Palacio de Carlos V - square outside and round inside

Most pretentious sentence ever

View of Albaycín

Inside Palacio Nazarie 

Paseo de los leones 

Petal archway

Generalife

Although Granada has a reputation for being a great place to ir de tapeo, it doesn't have the same generosity as Madrid. We did get some free tapas with drinks, but just nuts and olives, and the tapas for sale are mostly pretty expensive and full of meat. It reminded me of Valencia, with the clear blue sky and orange trees everywhere, and of Madrid with the streets full of little bars and Baroque architecture. Despite being a tiny city, it's full of character - sloping down the hills from the Sierra Nevada, and considered the jewel in the crown of Ferdinand and Isabella's kingdom. Besides obviously seeing the Alhambra, it's worth visiting to see this part of Andalucía, wander round the Moorish and Spanish architecture, watch a flamenco show, note the influence of Moroccan culture on the city, eat a lot of pricey meat tapas, appreciate the ingenuity of having cool water running everywhere in a hot climate (plus it's so pretty!), try pianonos; like a bizcocho-flan hybrid, and roast in the sun. What more could you want?

Marrakech - A Journey to the Red City

I was feeling a little restless in Valencia recently; it rained for a few days solid and I was obviously outraged. The chance of a spontaneous trip to Marrakech came at just the right time. As I was the only one of our group without copious amounts of work to do, I wound myself up researching the city in the few days between deciding to go and getting on the plane. My head was filled with tales of the various tourist scams, street harassment (all three of us were girls) and aggressive market sellers.

As soon as we got off the plane we were hit by the heat - at 20h local time it wasn't oppressive, but it did add to our fatigue and it would have had pink Brits scorching themselves on roundabouts in England. In front of the airport was the most beautiful smoking shelter I've ever seen - a black wrought-iron gazebo, and a whole host of taxi drivers waiting to rip us off.

My advice for the first couple of days there would be not to buy anything. You're especially vulnerable when you haven't got used to the currency or the usual prices of things, and they are very good at swizzling tourists. Morocco's main source of income is tourism and they have had centuries to fine-tune their haggling skills. Even with my WikiTravel print-out and knowing that a taxi ride into town costs the locals 20 dirham (2 euros) and 50 is a good price for tourists, we almost agreed to share a taxi with some Swedish girls for 30 dirham each. That's 15 euros for about a 10 minute ride.

Luckily, the express bus came at 22h (the schedule stopped at 21h30) and dropped us off at the main square. We then had to navigate our way to the hostel in the dark, through throngs of people, using the bare instructions we had been given.

Place Djemaa El-Fna at night. Dodgy camera phone shot.

I'd seen Marrakech described a number of times as an 'assault on the senses'. I wouldn't go that far, but it was disconcerting and incredibly exciting to be suddenly plunged into such a different culture, particularly at night and with no idea where anything was. The square was lit up by the food stalls and we dodged caleches, locals selling trinkets and henna, donkey carts and many, many motorbikes. Snake charmers' music flooded the square and we were distracted by the shouts of the orange juice sellers and the smells of roasted meat, spices and tagines. I was struck by seeing a woman in a niqab and gloves mount a motorcycle with a baby on her back and accelerate away through a crowd of people.

Eventually we asked a shop owner to point us out the café that should have served as a landmark in the square. It turned out we didn't see it because it was covered with a big white sheet that we assumed was for building works. Later we discovered it was the site of the Marrakech bombing in 2011. Nevertheless, Marrakech is considered completely safe to travel to, and it felt that way. 

We expected to schlep straight to bed when we got to our hostel, but we were given mint tea and cake instead. We were always given free tea whenever we wanted there, so I was drinking almost as much as I do in England. The hostel staff at Waka Waka went out of their way to make us comfortable, coming to find us all the time to bring us tea and answer all our questions about Arabic, Morocco and their lives. 

On the last night, the guys dressed in their djellabas so we could take photos and taught us to make mint tea. Abdessamad had forgotten it was his birthday until his mother called him and was very apologetic that he hadn't cooked us anything. We had tea and cake together and he told us all about his life philosophy - don't smoke or drink, be nice to people, don't worry about money, work hard for your family.

We took the first couple of days to wander around the souks - the labyrinth-like markets - and go to a traditional hammam. It was 1 euro to go in and 5 euros for the gommage (scrub), which was totally worth it. We followed two women (only one francophone) in, in just our bikini bottoms and were exfoliated hard with the gloves and black soap that we'd bought. It's good to do this on the first day because it took off all of our tan, and then made it easier to tan during the rest of the trip. 

There's no room for body issues or British squeamishness in these baths and I was really glad I'd spent two hours last term wandering around a Russian banya naked. The women scrubbing you don't care if your hand keeps banging against their breast, they rest your leg on their upper thigh to scrub you better and are prone to pulling your bikini bottoms down unexpectedly and then hiding them. To be honest, I don't see why it's traditional to wear anything at all since they scrub you *everywhere* anyway, or why I had a bucket of water emptied over my head ten times in a minute, but who am I to question their ways? It was hilarious and strange and extremely refreshing, as well as a great insight into one aspect of Moroccan life.

Koutoubia mosque

Saidian tombs

Badi Palace - rare photo with no storks

Rabbi's house - the Jewish quarter

It's impossible not to take everything at a slow pace in Marrakech. The locals famously step out to post a letter and spend the whole day having tea and cous cous with anyone that they run into on the way. We took a day to do some very relaxed sight-seeing and get lost. The only disappointment was that we tried to go to the Jewish cemetery on Shabbat, which was obviously closed. A local teenager heard me (very shakily) reading the Hebrew letters on the sign and offered to show us around the Jewish quarter. Although it had all the makings of a tour guide scam, he was lovely and just wanted to practise his English, and although he showed us his friend's shop before leaving us, there was no pressure on us to buy anything. Apart from the Rabbi's house, nothing in the area seemed very Jewish and my bagel lust went unsatisfied. Our guide told us most of the Jewish families had moved to Israel, which I can completely understand.

By Sunday, we were desperate for a swimming pool. Unfortunately we mixed up a swimming pool with a fountain called 'le Jardin des Jeunes' and ended up walking almost to the airport in the baking midday sun. However, some Moroccan boys who were walking just ahead of us ran and picked us a rose. We got some lunch and went back to our hostel to sunbathe on the terrace. The one weird point of the trip was a kid who was peeking at us from the neighbouring roof and his adult male relative who stood openly staring at us and smiling. We covered up but it was only when we asked him, 'Do you want something?' that he went out of sight, only to return about half an hour later. The next day, the kid came back and we sent Hossein to tell him off. 

Other than that, I honestly think I experience more street harassment in Spain or England than in Marrakech. Granted, we only went out in the night on two occasions, one of those with a boy, and I obviously wouldn't understand any Arabic slurs that might be whispered behind our backs. But the cries of 'gazelle!' or 'beautiful eyes!' just feel like a joke that you're in on, rather than a jeer or insult to make you feel embarrassed and laugh at you. The men doing this will look you in the eyes and appreciate a few words of Arabic, which seems like a fair trade considering we heard: 'Charlie's Angels! Hey Charlie, get me the angels!'; 'lovely jubbly!' and 'shufty, shufty?' I also got called Jennifer Lopez at one point (it's those fatty breakfasts) and we heard Lady Gaga, as well as Harry Potter - directed at a girl with round glasses.

At no point was I able to finish this. Cake??

A nice Australian we'd befriended at the hostel suggested we go on a day trip somewhere. We'd already had the Waterfalls of Ouzoud in mind and after a bit more haggling, we signed up for the Monday. The Brazilians from our hostel and an American group of various Middle Eastern and North African descent accompanied us there. As we were driving through the Moroccan countryside looking at the large purple mountains, Berber villages and trying not to throw up (a bumpy minibus ride is not what you want after a sugary breakfast and minimal sleep), we got a proper look at a more authentic side of the country and I felt some wanderlust creeping on.

Cobweb falls

The falls we swam in

Rainbow!

Our lovely guide Mahmoud

The waterfalls were so beautiful, with a very steep drop. Mahmoud kept warning us to be careful and stay away from the edge, which we largely ignored until he pointed out all the places where people had died:

'Over there, a girl 3 weeks ago...right here, a boy 2 months ago, I was at the bottom, I saw him hit the ground...'

After that, whenever he encouraged us to take pictures from a certain spot, we stayed well away from the edge. I didn't feel like falling to my death or standing where anyone had passed their final moments. 

Mahmoud, who spoke excellent English, French and Spanish, and had been stung by a scorpion in his house at 23h the night before and gone to hospital, showed us olive trees that were 950 years old (50 years away from dying), petrified rock that used to be tree roots, turtles, ancient Berber caves, and how not to die as we navigated the valley. He also pointed out the best places to take photographs and kept us laughing along the way:

'Britain...lovely jubbly! Marmite! Fish and chips! The Queen!'

Yep, that's everything in England! 

Listening to a storyteller

Snails

Whole/half/quarter of a sheep's head?

In the evening, we went to get dinner at one of the food stalls that pop up in the square at night. Each one has several greeters around it who try everything to get you to eat with them. We stopped to try some snails first, which were in a spicy broth and actually really good, even though their eye stalks are definitely visible on the way into your mouth.

The greeters are really charismatic and clearly appreciate it if you joke around with them. One popular joke was, 'Oh, you're from London? I'm from Wigan/Ipswich!' I told them I could hear the accent. One greeter told me that everyone in the stalls knows each other and it's just a massive game to see who can get the most people to their stall. As we stood deciding, we were surrounded by greeters promising us free drinks and olives, as the cooks in the stalls shouted and cheered. When we eventually sat down it was to pantomime-like clapping and booing. 

Caroline the chameleon

 On our final day, we headed out to tackle the souks. Having spent days practising our Arabic, researching what we wanted to buy and how much to pay for it, we were in prime haggling mode. Between us we got a teapot, some saffron, some Berber lipstick, Moroccan eyeliner (that men and women wear for its disinfecting properties in the desert), some jasmine and musk, a beautiful hand-stitched leather bag, some jewellery and a fragrant, carved box made of juniper. As we left all sellers looking unhappy, we felt pretty pleased with ourselves.

Marrakech was an entertaining, welcoming and lively window onto North Africa and Islamic culture, both of which I know next to nothing about, aside from a day-trip to Tangiers several years ago. I saw women in hijabs driving men around on motorbikes, taxi drivers held apart by their friends as they screamed at each other only to be hugging and explaining a few minutes later, Moroccans playing all kinds of games with the gullible tourists and sitting down to tea with the friendly ones. I could see exactly why Moroccan hospitality is so infamous and I wish we had time to travel to Fez, Essaouira, Casablanca...luckily we were invited to stay in our new friend's house if we're ever in Agadir, to watch his mother make argan oil. Bless.