Morocco

I'm in Morocco. I can hardly believe it. I've been so excited about coming for so long. Now I'm finally here, but it seems totally surreal. We took an overnight bus from Madrid to Algeciras last night, then we took a ferry from Algeciras to Tangiers, then a train from Tangiers to Fès. So by the time we got to Fès, it was 6 pm(4 pm after the time change). We left Madrid at 10:30 pm last night. Yeah, that's a lot of travelling. Lucky for me, I can sleep just about anywhere, and after eleven days hiking, it was even easier than usual.

There are so many things I could talk about right now. I'm so excited to be here and I don't really know where to start. After we got settled in at a hotel, we went for a bite to eat. The food was amazing and really cheap. I had my first mint tea and it was really good. Then we walked down some streets crowded with all kinds of different shops selling everything from pottery, to musical instruments, to rugs, to spices. The shops seemed to go on forever. We didn't really stop to look at anything, partly because we didn't want to initiate the whole haggling process and partly because there was just so much, it was a bit overwhelming.

Tomorrow we're going to explore the city some more and find out where the nearest bathhouse (called a hammam) is. They usually have part of the day for men only and part of the day for women only. With all of the knots my back and shoulders have acquired from doing the Camino de Santiago, I am really looking forward to a massage.

If I haven't made it clear already, just being here is amazing. I'm really at a loss for words. There is so much that I haven't even mentioned. As I was telling Matt earlier today, I feel like I'm in the movie, "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (an Alfred Hitchcock film set in Marrakech). I can't describe it. And so, I think I will stop for now and maybe in a few days I'll do a better job.