Un week-end a Londre et 5 jours a Marrakech

So vacation 3 has came and past (oh how time goes by so fast - couldn't help myself). I do not recall if I have explained how the system works in France, so I will do that quickly now. Approximately every 6 weeks, the kids in France (or at least in the Parisian area) get 2 weeks off of school. So they had 2 weeks off in October, 2 weeks at Christmas, 2 weeks in February, and the next one is 2 weeks in April. I am lucky with my host family in that I get one of these two weeks off every time (yes some au pairs are with their kids this whole time). And I also get the weekend around that - so, you know what that means, 10 days to travel! I am also lucky in that the other week the grandparents have came down every time and I have only had to work 1 or 2 days (and do the lovely laundry and ironing, my two favourite pass-times since being in France - jokes).  Anyways, the vacations just kind of fell into my lap (again) and I already don't really know how they worked out so perfectly. I went for a 3 day weekend in London first, where I met the lovely Conny (who has already been in a previously blog, and is one of my closest friends here, from Germany) as well as a few of our french friends. It was a lovely time and, as you are about to see, we were blessed with 2 and a half days of sun in a London winter (apparently rare, though I can't be sure if the "rainy London" is just a stereotype or not).


So I arrived Saturday morning to Kingscross station where I met Conny who had been there all week visiting a friend from England who had been an au pair before I arrived and had went home already. We found our hostel (that Conny picked magnificently to be in downtown London) and were off to wander and enjoy the sun! We thought a beautiful day where we barely needed a coat merited a stroll through the lovely Hyde Park. Oh how I've missed English style gardens (not a phrase I would have imagined coming out of my mouth before moving to Europe - did I even know there were these "genres" of gardens?).

English Garden. I learned about the difference in my Art History class as well. Pretty simple really - English gardens are a non-symmetrical yet ideal presentation of how nature "naturally" occurs. They showed up in the early 18th century spreading quickly across Europe and replacing the more formal "jardin a la francaise".

Me at the French gardens at Versailles in September. I'm sure you can already see the difference. The French gardens are symmetrical and planned. Beautiful in their own right, but in no way natural-looking. 

There was also an evil swan in Hyde park, well many evil swans. People have been feeding the animals too much. These swans resulted in me almost falling into a pond (long story).

Evil-looking right??! Or am I the only one who feels like this swan was coming at me with a death stare?

Anyways, back from my non-sense rants to guiding you through the streets of London. After Hyde Park we wandered to Buckingham Palace - the official residence of Queen Elizabeth II :) (and the British monarchy in general, including Prince Philip).

Me at the magnificent gates.

Buckingham Palace

Make a wish! (at the fountain outside Buckingham Palace).

ET phone home...

Just enjoying the sun sitting by the fountain in front of Buckingham Palace :)

The beautiful Conny and I.

Enjoying wandering through the road that seemed to be closed everyday and offered great views!

We ended up going back to Buckingham Palace everyday trying to see the Changing of the guard, which is when the old guards exchange duty for new guards. It was ridiculously crowded when we did see it, but it was neat to watch a bit of it. There was a procession of horses as well as a band. It was a little bit more extravagant then the one in Ottawa I used to watch on my lunch break from work at PCO. But, I must say, I still like the nice little Ottawa one as well :)

Back to the first day. After Buckingham Palace we continued to look at Westminister Alley and Big Ben. I was quite excited to see the famous Big Ben. For those of you who don't know, Big Ben is the nickname for the great bell of the clock at the north end of the Palace of Westminister. Apparently the tower holds the largest four-faced chiming clock in the world, and is the third largest free-standing clock tower. I will now take you on a visual tour of the rest of our walk in the sun that day (the sun literally made me so happy! I am tired of rain).

A typical London street, with one of the awesome double-decker buses. The double decker buses are the local transport buses, which I thought was super cool. When we were going distances too far to walk, Conny and I tried to get on the double-decker buses instead of the Underground or "the tube" (what they call their metro) as much as possible.

Definitely had to get some photos with the infamous red telephone booths. I actually LOVED them. They are so cute on the sides of the streets. I have to say, what made London a unique city to me was how they have the double-decker buses, the old 50' model taxis, and the phone booths. I think it is awesome how they have kept these more "stereotypical" London icons present all over the city :)

Here are some examples of the cabs. All the cabs were of this same model, which made the streets look really neat (a lot better than the ugly yellow taxi cars in a lot of cities). One night after we had been out for a few drinks, Conny and I took a cab home and I asked the driver a bunch of questions about taxis in London (sometimes I am too curious). Anyways, among that information was that all the cars are of this 1950s model that was chosen because they can (surprisingly) do very sharp turns apparently. Also, to become a cab driver in London is apparently quite difficult. I believe he said it takes 2-3 years including many tests and needing to know basically the whole city by heart (a lot of the cabs don't have GPS). Anyways, not sure everyone will be as interested in the London cab system as I was, so I will spare you more details than that!

Here is Westminister Abbey. We wanted to go in it, but it was so expensive. I believe it was around 20 pounds, which is even more in Canadian dollars (as it is even more than that in Euros). Anyways, instead we went in a smaller lovely church beside it that was free :)

Me chilling with Big Ben. Reminded me a lot of the Canadian Parliament buildings. But, as far as we could find out, you can't go up this clock tower. He is, however, a fair bit larger than the Canadian version as far as I could tell. But, did slightly make me miss my old home.

I just thought the little crowns here beside the Westminister bridge over the Thames River were super cute. Also, the Thames River made me think of "Thames River Melons" which is my neighbour's fruit farm that I used to work for :) ALSO, a fact Conny and I read when we went up the Tower Bridge (pictures coming up) was that sea horses live in the Thames River. That surprised us both, as when I think of sea horses, I think of tropical places like Australia. But apparently, they also live in London!

I just liked this little boat. It kind of makes me want to sketch it.

Here is the Underground as well as the London Eye (the Ferris wheel).

This is Piccadilly Circus. Apparently it is considered to be the center of London, as Notre Dame is considered to be the center of Paris (and I think many Parisians also consider it the center of the world).

The lovely Trafalgar Square. It has a great view of both Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. Also, one of the days we were there there were bands playing which was nice to hear briefly. Especially since the sun was also shining .

That night we went to a bar called "Drink Shop Do" that was really neat. It had like a little craft shop, a little cafe type upstairs with games to play, and then downstairs was a club. We got together with a few of our French friends that had also came to London for the weekend, as well as Conny's English friend and a friend of hers.

The second day we first went back to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the guard, but it wasn't on that day. So we went for a little walk to Trafalgar Square again, and then took a double-decker red English bus to The Tower of London. It was again very expensive to enter so we just walked around the outside, and then went up the Tower Bridge (which also had an exposition of old pictures of London up top).

Before going up the Tower Bridge, we went for lunch and got my favourite: burgers! I have been on the hunt for a good burger since I have been here because I am really missing Canadian pub burgers. The burgers we got at this place called GBK were really good! I was quite satisfied. It reminded me a little bit of The Works (minus the 100 choices).  Plus, I loved the ketchup dispensers :)

The Tower of London.

Conny and I at the Tower Bridge :)

A closer view of the Tower of London.

One of the views from the Tower Bridge.

Getting up close and personal to the Tower Bridge.

After we had finished visiting Tower Bridge, we walked towards London Bridge where I had planned to meet a friend of mine that I had made from backpacking New Zealand. It was not the best idea to say London Bridge, as it is quite a large space to meet someone in. Then, of course, Conny's phone was acting up and mine does not work outside of France for some reason (and also happened to be dead). I was lucky we actually ending up finding him! It was really nice to catch up with someone I had not seen in almost 2 years and to so any familiar face!

My English friend Eamon, who is from a London Suburb, works near Saint Paul's Cathedral shown here. He showed us that you can go up the roof of a nearby mall to get this view. Lucky for us too, it was a beautiful sunset that evening.

More views from the roof.

Eamon and I on the roof.

Just catching up and enjoying the views. Eamon has done a fair bit of traveling, including living in Australia like me. I love exchanging past and future traveling stories - gives me more ideas (not that I need any help with that HA).

I love this picture. The architecture of this building (the mall) was well-planned. Not only do you have a lovely roof view, you also have the beautiful reflections.

After St. Pauls' we went and looked at Abbey Road - where the famous Beatles poster was made and where they did a lot of their recording. We tried to re-inact it, but even in the late evening it was difficult.

This was our attempt. Mind you, it is very hard with cars coming and many other tourists trying to do it at the same time! I think Conny has an even better picture, but I haven't gotten it yet (so we shall see).

The real poster. We were somewhat there? Just some bad spacing!

I forget when, but also at some point we visited Platform 9 3/4 from Harry Potter located in Kingscross Station! We actually had a little bit of a difficult time finding it (ironic), but we did!

Pushing the trolly just like in Harry Potter! I want to go to Hogwarts :) (this one is for you Bridgey Widgey).

The last day was when we finally saw the changing of the guard, did some wandering, and went to the well-known London store called Top Shop. I really liked it, but it was quite expensive! I did manage to find a lovely shirt on sale, that was like a shirt I have been looking for anyways (so it all worked out - whenever I wear it, it shall remind me of this lovely voyage).

Then, not long after, it was time to head back to Paris.

But, no worries, I was only home for one day to do laundry and such and was off to Marrakech, Morocco with Shannon!! :) So the story continues.... my first trip to Africa (continent 5 for me - North America, Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Africa)!

Shannon and I arrived in Marrakech to a cab we had ordered from our riad. We were (or I was at least) very amused by the motor bikes that were all over the streets. They weren't much bigger than bicycles but had motors and it seemed like at least half of the locals were driving around on them - men, women, even children with their parents (we even saw one small boy asleep on the back off one, which actually scared me a bit).

I suppose I should explain what a riad is, as I didn't know before I went. A riad in Morocco today is basically just a hotel, but the term riad actually refers to the layout of the building. It is a traditional Moroccan house or palace that has an interior garden or courtyard. This is because the word riad comes from the Arabian term for garden "ryad". A big part of this form of architecture that was created back during roman times, was to allow Islamic women privacy inside residential gardens. The lovely thing about riads in Marakkech is that they cost less than a 6 bedroom hostel in Paris. Hence, Shannon and I decided to live like queens for 2 of our nights and get a more upscale riad (that was 30 euros a night - score!).

Anyways, back to the beginning. We first went to a nice rooftop terrace restaurant and had our first moroccan couscous and tagine. I am sure you all know what couscous is, but maybe not tagine. Tagine is a Berber dish from North Africa that is named after the special earthenware pot in which it is cooked. When they are made in Morocco, they are slow-cooked stews braised at low temperatures, resulting in tender meat with aromatic vegetables and sauce. Here was our first Moroccan meal.

The tagine. This one was chicken. They were also often cooked in Moroccan curry, which was a lovely mild sauce.

The couscous - often covered in mounds of cooked vegetables and/or raisins as seen here.

After we ate we decided to wander the streets of Marrakech. It began with my first "scam" in Morocco. Everyone on the streets tries to get money from you by selling you things or giving you directions. And as many of you probably know, I have a very guilty conscience and also a nature to want to help people (slash I am also not so good at saying no). Anyways, these ladies came up to Shannon and I giving us a "cadeau" and saying "no pay, for good luck. If you don't take it, bad luck". We tried to say no and walk away, but they wouldn't let up. Then I felt bad for taking it and decided I should buy something. Another tactic you often see on the streets is people saying they don't have change so they get more money from you. They just offer you more things for the change they should have given you. Long story short I gave her 40 dirhams when I only wanted to give 10 or 20 and she kept it by giving me more bracelets. Good thing that 40 dirhams is only 4 euros, but after that I learned my lesson that you have to just ignore them or walk away, even though it broke my heart a little to do so at times.

We went to a Palace later that day called Palais Bahia. There wasn't much to see except the archinecture, but it was worth the visit. There are a lot of mosaics and wood in the Marrakech buildings, and most have beautiful courtyards that were lovely in the good weather there. After the palace we went to the markets that are called the Souks. They are even bigger than I had imagined; they seem to go on forever. They sell scarves, keychains, jewelry, shoes, spices, natural remedies, tea pots, and much much more. You could wonder looking at the items for a full day or more. Only problem is that it can get pretty tiring as almost all the vendors try to convince you to come in and look at things (and sometimes even harass you with names - Shannon and I were called, amongst other things, Barbie, Shakira, Lady Gaga, and sluts - yes, sluts; I don't think they understand what it means. Needless to say their perception of westernized cultures is a bit skewed).

The Souks market in the Medina.

After having our share of the market, and wandering also by the second biggest mosque in Morocco called La Koutoubia which is beautiful from the outside, as you can see below (we could not go inside, only look around the outside), we went for more traditional moroccan food at a restaurant in the Souks (where we sat on the second floor by the window overlooking the markets so we could people watch). The only problem was, by the time we had finished eating, it had gotten somewhat dark (which happened a lot quicker than we had imagined) and we were a fair ways from our riad.

Me at the mosque.

Of course, as I am sure you have guessed, we got lost. The streets in Marrakech are extremely confusing as they have no streets signs for the most part, and when they do, they are in arabic which I can definitely not read. And of course, earlier that day, we had a confusing encounter. Basically, we were lost another time and a young man ended up touring us around. He showed us a big Spice Market that was set up and is not always there. Apparently people from the mountains come every few months with spices to sell in bulk in the city. He did not ask us for any money for touring us around, leaving us by just saying have a nice day. This confused us because we had figured people would ask for money and weren't sure if the locals just liked showing off their city and meeting and talking to foreigners. But we learned that night that he must have just been super nice.

The atmosphere on the streets of Marrakech is difficult to explain. Basically, you are walking down the street and all the men and even boys are like "Square this way", "Markets this way", "Palace this way", assuming you are lost (because most of the time you are). For the most part it was "Square this way" (referring to the La Place Jemaa el Fnaa, which is pretty central) as this leads to the mosque and the Souks.

The square. There are people all over doing things to make money - such as "snake taming" and selling things such as freshly squeezed orange juice. There was quite a wide variety of activities and items going on in the square.

This is one example. There were monkeys all over, some dressed up as this one is here. I don't really approve of this, but this gives you a real picture of what it was like in Marrakech.

Anyways, they often won't leave you alone with trying to give you directions - they will just start walking in front of you as if they are leading you even if you said that you know where you are going (we started only asking tourists for directions, which is apparently the norm). So basically this happened that night. A guy was like follow me, I know where to go when we said we were going to this parking lot located by our riad. Then it just went on too long even when we first tried to say no. We ended up figuring that it would be worth just giving him a few euros to get us back in about a quarter the time it would take if we turned in every direction until we found the right one. There were two awkward things about this situation in the end. 1) I am pretty sure when these people take you where you want to go, they purposely do multiple circles so that it seems like you were further away than you were and you feel "ulitmately grateful" for their help as you would "never have made it on your own". I am pretty sure we were about 5 minutes away and it took about 20 minutes to get back. And also 2) The two last roads leading to our riad had no street lights and high walls so we could barely see our feet. Luckily, by the time we got to the parking lot we knew our way, but he insisted on making sure we got there (of course to get paid), so we knew he wasn't just taking us down some awkward dark alley to kidnap us. Also, he did have a flashlight randomly (or not randomly, as I think giving directions like this may be these young teenage boys' jobs). But it was really awkward because we gave him like the equivalent of 2 euros because we didnt have any small bills, and also you can take a 10 minute cab for 2 euros, but he was not impressed. He basically said that was money for babies and so forth. We were lucky to have rang the doorbell to the riad before having paid so that the owner let us in and told him to go away. And after that night we went back to our riad before dark and stayed in all evening (as you will see, it was extremely torturous to be in a jacuzzi and sketching in beautiful hang out areas - never again ;) ).

The next morning we left for our desert tour! This was what I had been most excited for. It was A LOT of driving, but completely worth it. The scenery changed every hour or so - from rolling green hills, to rocky mountains, to red sand hills, to snow-covered mountains, to kasbahs, to the desert - it was magnificent. Here is most of the changing scenery we saw in order for those visual learners out there!

Just outside of Marrakech.

The beginning - green hills and gorges.

A little further and closer to the Atlas snow-covered mountains.

Getting nice and close to the rocky, snow-covered Atlas Mountains.

The landscape that was more like dirt mounds - no more rocks.

Getting to the more red part of the landscape.

At a famous Kasbah called Aetben hdomd. We learned that a kasbah just means a building with 4 towers.  This kasbah has 50 inhabitants made up of 10 families. It was built in the 11th Century. Even cooler fact, many films you will know and have likely seen were filmed here including: Prince of Persia, Indiana Jones 3, and Gladiator. The inhabitants are always extras in the films! We were mingling with celebrities.

Here's one of the displays they had of Gladiator. Look familiar?

Ummm... you can't go to a kasbah and not rock it. I really hope you all know this song, if not - il faut que tu ailles sur ce site-web (was randomly feeling the french as I feel now as if I live in a world of franglais - just check out the video as I will now be listening to it on repeat until I finish this blog)!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ9r8LMU9bQ&ob=av2e

Next landscape looked as seen above. There were a lot more palm trees along the journey than I had imagined. At one point there was even an area that was just like a huge forest of them.

Fell asleep for a bit and woke up in this rather large city considering the landscape we had been in all day. It actually quite reminds me of Florida. The village was called 'Ville de Zagora' and there was even  a Shell gas station, which I found quite surprising.

And then we hit the terrain where "we needed these as sand would be flying in our faces" - the desert. Turns out, this was also a money grab as there was absolutely no sand near my face and my scarf fell off within the first 5 minutes of being on the camel, but Shannon and I ended up really loving these scarves and I will be bringing mine home to Canada, so we let that one slide.

In the desert with my camel whose real name was BooBoo, but I liked to call "Abu" or even "My boo".  I must just point out that riding a camel is fun, but can be quite painful. I found Abu to be quite on the bumpy ride, whereas the one I rode the next day was a lot more comfotable. I think some have humps that are more pronounced. Anyways, Shannon and I were complaining of sore thighs and backs for a day or two. I took some videos that i will try to upload to facebook sometime in the near future.

Just being our silly selves in the lovely desert. Can never have too much fun while in the middle of nowhere!

An interesting photo of our desert guides. As most of you know, I am way too inquisitive and I thus, of course, asked them as many questions as I could about their lifestyle. Here are some of the random facts I managed to discover in a crazy jumble of French, English, Berber and Arabic. 1) Since I already mentioned languages, I will start with the language system that takes place, at the least, in the cities surrounding the desert. I was told that if you are not Islam, you speak Berber. If you speak Berber, the next language you learn is Arabic. However, if you are Islam you speak Arabic and you tend to not learn Berber. Berber languages are a family of closely sounding languages that are native to North Africa, for those of you who were not aware (which I would imagine would be most, I had no idea what it was). The next language you would learn is French; in total you would do 6 years of Arabic and French at school. Then if you continued school into the 7th and 8th years (which, from what I gathered, is not most), you would learn English. Then if you did college or university you would also have the option of Spanish. But the guide I was talking to said they learn a lot of the languages they know, or the bits of the languages they know, from tourists which is pretty cool. 2) Marriage for them is actually pretty much the same as in North America (not the actually ceremony as they sang us a song while playing the drums around a fire that was a traditional song a man would sing to a woman right after marriage and then the woman would respond) - they said that they can get married whenever they want or not at all if they don't choose to. 3) Just a random fact - one of the guides cousins married a Quebecer. He also told me that if he could go anywhere he would go to Spain, as he has friends there that he made during a trip like ours. 4) Our guides actually did not live in the desert, but instead were from a town 6 km away. 5) If we had gone into the desert 10 km further into the desert there would be no phone service, but where we were apparently there still was phone service! 6) The summer in Marrakech is too hot for tours, so the guides have to go to Marrakech to find work, for example in restaurants. But they prefer the tours. 6) Nam - yes; La- No (but I am not sure on the spelling)  7) They like telling random jokes. And I will end my rant on that.

Shannon and I decided to contribute to the festivities when asked to do songs from our countries with -"What would you do" by City High and "Lose yourself" by Eminem. Not at all from our countries, but we did know most of the words and it was extensively entertaining (for us at least). This was preceded by a "Guess what song I am playing on the bongo game" which I would not suggest, as it is quite difficult slash bordering impossible.

And this is one of my favourite pictures of my whole time abroad. This moment was magical (cliche, I know) and just made me remember why I love traveling. I can now use this memory as a motivator when being an au pair gets difficult. Would I ever take back the experiences I have had due to the fact that some of my time here has been rather difficult? Definitely not. I have to admit, I have been super lucky to experience all that I have and to be able to learn and grow as much as I have.

And this is where we ate breakfast in the desert. They did a good job 'pimping' it up, I must say.

And we had to say goodbye to the desert :(. This is me (left) and Shannon (right) riding our way back to our tour guide who, I almost forgot to mention, did not speak English. We were not told this in the beginning, so it was rather confusing as we were trying to speak to him in English and he was basically just not responding. Eventually we did figure out he spoke French. This was one of the first times I actually realized how useful my french can be; we literally could not have communicated with him otherwise, which is one of the first times I have experienced that. Also, Shannon and I were in the front with him for the two days, so it would be have been really weird to just have never talked. He ended up loving us. He gave Shannon and I one of his CDs of Moroccan music we had listened to on the trip and his Morocco keychain right off his keys. We ended up giving him a good tip, as he also ended up getting in a traffic jam driving us to our second riad (long story - basically construction made it hard to get through a street considering they are tiny as it is and we were in a big tour van, and we ended up blocking the entire road. It was awkward hearing him do what we believe was cursing in Arabic for about 20 minutes at everyone around).

And I ended up finding the picture of the palm tree oasis. Turns out I took it on our way back into Marrakech. Probably the most palm trees I have ever seen in one place.

After our desert tour we were in an amazing riad. We did not really look like we fit in at the riad with all the rich French tourists there, but we did not even care. There was a jacuzzi on the roof and multiple little pools, as well as awesome little nooks for hanging out. The first time we realized we were slightly out of place was our first night there where I was not feeling so well and we were tired and not that hungry, but wanted a snack (but did not want to go out onto the dark streets again). We asked for bread and jam and butter at the riad and they were shocked that we wanted that for dinner. Then they didn't know how to charge us for that as it is "breakfast normally not dinner", so gave it to us for free. The workers were still teasing us about it the next day. But we ended up befriending some of them - I think they liked that we were actually young and friendly and nice (and not just expecting to be waited on, as it appeared many of the guests did).

Breakfast at the riad was lovely. It was on the roof, and you could eat anywhere you wanted. We got Moroccan style pancakes which had a somewhat stretchy texture (but not in a bad way) and looked as if they are left to cook without being flipped (one side was extremely bubbly), as well as an assortment of pastries and breads. We started are first day back in Marrakech by leaving the old city or the Medina (where we were staying) to visit the Jardin Majorelle and the new city (also known as the modern city, which includes leaving the wall of the old city).

This just gives you an idea of what the gardens were like. Not exactly what I had expected, but they were quite lovely. I really liked their choice of colour scheme.

Shannon and I :).

As I am sure you can see from this picture of Shannon and I in the new city, it is quite the contrast from the old city.

And there was a La Senza. I couldn't believe it. There isn't even a La Senza in Paris. Mind you they had next to no selection and very little underwear (mainly bras), but there was one none the less. This is the first one I had seen in nearly 7 months.

We then of went to see the wall leading to the old city, as we decided to walk all the way back. We finished they day with the Museum of Marrakech, which was neat, as it had lot of Moroccan art. I had learned a bit about Morocco already in my art history class, as there was a stage of time in France where the French were extremely curious and fascinated by the orientals. Hence, some famous French painters spent time in Morocco painting the woman and the daily life.

At the wall surrounding Old Marrakech.

One of the pieces of art in the Museum of Marrakech that I quite liked. This was, however, done by a Moroccan (not a French painter as I explained earlier).

The museum building was itself a work of art, as you can see here.

This is the view from the roof of our hostel - spending time here was more than okay with me.

What we did that night.  After spending time in the jacuzzi, we had a glass of wine and hung out on these awesomely patterned pillows by an indoor pool. I spent a lot of the night sketching the area, as I really liked it.

My final product :).

The next day I spent the morning lounging in the sun by the pool and sketching another scene (from the roof and of the pool). Then Shannon and I took some pictures around the beautiful riad before heading to do our last touristic site in Marrakech before our flight out. We did the Ben Youssef Madrasa which was an Islamic college. It was founded in the 14th century by the Marinid sultan and was allied to the neighbouring mosque. It had 130 student dorms (which we visited) clustered around a courtyard (many of which were tiny and others that did not have windows). There were two rooms set up as they would have been back when the school was open - one set up as it would have been for a student who came from the city and the other for a student from a rural neighbourhood.

In one of the dorm rooms that over-looked the courtyard.

Hanging out in the Islam college. There were some lovely photo ops.

Looking out into the courtyard of Ben Youssef.

After that, we were back to the riad to collect our bags, say goodbye to our home of two days (that I wish could have been my home for a little longer) and to say goodbye to our new friends at the riad. All good things must come to an end I suppose, but every new beginning is some other beginnings end. And as I am finishing this, a few weeks later, I have already written a new chapter in my adventures of my year abroad - a day trip to Dublin, Ireland to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. So I know that this amazing trip in Morocco was not the end for me, not just yet. But I now have many new and amazing memories that will last me a lifetime. Hope you enjoyed this edition of Canny's Travels ;)

Goodbye streets of Old Marrakech, how I will miss your old charm, but not your ability to get me lost every time I step out onto you.

And goodbye beautiful and charming tea pots, as well as the most delicious mint tea I have ever tasted that you carried in your belly. How I will miss my mojito tea with fresh mint leaves.

But despite the many new adventures to come (and one even more recent already passed), I can't help but have part of me wish that I could re-capture this moment. But hey, can't blame a girl for dreaming can you?

A