Toronto, Canada

Most happy to be home and working with a familiar keyboard. The last few days have been insane yet hilarious in retrospect. I'll leave these pictures as a starter.

1. This first picture is of the enormous mosque we went to in Casablanca, the only one open to non-Muslims in the entire country. The only other mosques we set foot in were a ruined one in Chefchaouen and those that were out of commission in various buildings turned into tourist attractions.

2. Inside the museum of Marrakesh which our tourguide did not want to take us to, so we explored ourselves. I thought this had the most gorgeous interior of all the ones we saw, at least this chandelier really impressed me.

3. This is one of the souqs to which I constantly refer. You can see some men in the more traditional dress, and the way the spaces between stalls are covered with wooden slats or reeds to keep the streets nice and cool.

4. Random shot from a window of a medersa (or madrissah - an old Koranic school).

5. View from the train window - looking out, I could almost imagine we were on Mars sometimes, it was all such a dusty, dry, dry red. It was hard to imagine this land supporting a population similar to Canada.

6. These next two are of some of the art we saw along the way. I love the geometric patterns.

7. The mint tea I fell in love with.

8. A and K looking at carpets in the medina of Meknes.

9. One of our first traditional Moroccan dinners (Meknes). We were inside a family owned restaurant. Our first time trying couscous and harira.

Rabat, Morocco

We're now in the capital city of Morocco, having just arrived last night. It is starting to rival Fes as my favorite city just for sheer hassle-freedom and because no one has tried to cheat us!!! It's such a relief to be able to relax and do the tourist thing rather than being constantly on guard and paranoid. (Same Français type keyboard still, je peux faire des accents! èàé... anyhow)

After the day of running around after the guide in Marrakesh; we took the next day to explore the remaining sites on our own. THe first place was the world-renowned Marjorelle Gardens (30 Dh taxi to get there - we got so pissed that day for getting ripped off every single ride we took; realistically each ride should have cost 10Dh). They were pretty but not mind-blozing as we had expected for the entry fee; The buildings were painted a gorgeous shade of blue (by the painter:artist who put the gardens together - apparently it is knozn as bleu Marjorelle;

The next set of gardens were the Jardin Menara (sp?). Both the hustler outside the last set of gardens and the taxi driver tried to convince us that it was not zorth going to, but we were curious cuz the book said a lot of native Marrakeshi went there to relax. Turned out to be a lovely relaxing place full of picknicking city-folk: It's places like these where you're not constantly heckled with 'sayonara'; We walked around a somewhat murky pool which was filled with large unseen fish eating bread throzn at them; Then, we just sat under an olive tree (yes! I've seen olive trees for the first time in my life! lots of exotic fruit trees everyzhere - olives; lemons, pomegranates, oranges, coconuts, grapefruit, figs, dates - I've only got 30 pics left on the camera - I'm trying to hold out for Spain) and watched the locals go by. Happy families with absolutely no vested interest in tourists - my favourite type of Moroccans. Their dress is a complete mixture of traditional and western style - the greatest contrast I saw zas a young wo,an zearing a zhite head scarf zith a white Nike cap on top: After, we went for a stroll through the olive groves and took a taxi out:

A refused to let K take a camel ride in the gardens. Being in this country has opened up so many moral issues just being tourists. Do you give to the beggars? Do you buy the gorgeous wood if the guidebook says it may be endangered? It is thuja (pronounced two-yah) that apparently in danger, I refused to in the end, but it is soooo pretty. The guy said the little boxes I got were cedar, hopefully that is not another word for thuja); Are animals treated well - is paying for a mule, donkey or camel ride encouraging animal abuse?

Our final destinations in Marrakesh were a museum and a ruined palace. When you go to the museums, often the buildings themselves are the highlight rather than the exhibits: Often; they are housed inside grand old houses belonging to rich ministers etc: It was the case with this one - the renovated central courtyard was huge - lit with a golden yellow by the sun through a canopy hanging over top: Hanging from the center was the biggest brass chandelier we had ever seen. The ruined palace was also very impressive. Loquax - storks nesting everywhere on the walls. I can't believe I was searching for storks in Holland when they're everywhere here; They are called cigognes and we even passed what our tourguide said was a hospital for the birds. The storks build these gigantic nests on the battlements. They,re very impressive in flight and they make this clacking sound by opening and closing their beaks as they throw their heads back.

Insert so,ething on Cascades D'ouzoudes

Our stop yesterday was Casablanca which everyone refers to as Casa; I have not done my dissertation on transportation through Morocco yet; but at the non-CTM (ie non govern,ent run) bus stations, rather than official announce,ents over a loudspeaker; you get these guys wearing blue who come into the waiting area and announce the destination of the leaving bus three times, so you hear 'Casa, Casa, Casa' or 'Fes, Fes, Fes!'

If the remainder of Morocco reminds me of China (moreso the countryside) then Casa reminded me of HK though the buildings are shorter. I have not been to enough Mediterranean European cities to compare to them. We were only there on a stopover for the day to see the famous mosque, but we also took a short tour to see the architecture using a recommended walk from Lonely Planet; This is the first time I've noticed how well designed the modern parts of cities here as well as medinas are designed for the heat. Newer buildings are built sort of indented about 2m all along the ground floor facing the street and there are pillars running at the edge supporting it all; This provides shade all along the sidewalk as you walk. Casa was actually amawingly cool after the heat of the inland cities with a constant breeze from the ocean: We had gotten used to sweating in the heat of the previous week. We have not bought papers so I do not know how hot it actually is: It is a nice dry heat though, so you are never sticky, just damp; The 40C zith hu,idity in Toronto is much more unpleasant. I went through approx. 1.5L of water everyday (inc; teeth brushing) along with usually an OJ, mint tea and maybe a soft drink. We made our way through the main square of the city zith it's many impressive buildings.

The taxi driver who finally brought us to the mosque was the single person who made me the angriest on the whole trip. Complaining aside, I'd kept my cool up to that point, but he made me lose my faith in human beings for a good few hours. We had agreed on 20Dh before the trip, and brushed off his atte,pts to give us a tour of the city. When he arrived at the mosque, I gave him the 20 and he gave it back; saying that it was 20Dh par personne; I told him he had never said the words par personne. He said if you want to pay, pay, if you want to leave, leave. We were in shock. We knew what we heard; we would have never gone for 20 a person, and we knew taht was an absolutely unbelievable price. Besides; petit taxis (ie intra-city taxis vs. the grand taxis which go between cities) don't charge by person!! I shoved the 20Dh at him and left. Obviously since he did not press the issue, he was the one cheating us. BTW, on the ride back, we insisted on going on the meter and it came to under 8Dh, we tipped that guy. 20Dh par personne my à$$. He left a bad taste in my mouth for the rest of the day.

The mosque was as grand as the tour book said - 3rd largest in the world after two in Saudi Arabia.

Out of ti,e for the hour, will finish sometime.

`You have no boyfriend? I be your boyfriend!!` (Marrakesh, Morocco)

Can you tell thqt men here are really forzard? A went out shopping alone while K and I took some afternoon siestas and received 3 marriage proposals. I received the above when the 3 of us were browsing in Fez: It;s positively insulting at some level at this point: We,re pretty sick of the constant ,Japon? Japon? India? India? Pakistan? Pakistan? ` becquse now we know that it is not so much a welcome as a plea for us to get into their store; buy their orange juice, etc. It,s a constant barrage. European or generally white tourists are not subjected to the sa,e thing: The only thing i heard was some girls who looked a little S. A,erican get "Shakira Shakira" tonight. I hate how all tourists are seen as walking money bags though. It,s actually much better in the local souqs than those geared tozards tourists; cuz the ppl there realize we will not be buying their cuts of meat, or zatermelon, or random household items; They did try to sell us Chinese tiger balm though... However, since all of us have pretty much filled our shopping quota or airplane weight limit, ze do not have to deal with it unless we feel like we have the patience:

Dinner tongiht was interesting: My stomach is not doing too zell =( so i,ve broken out the immodium (to my parents who i didn,t quite catch on the phone an hour ago; i am still alive and it,s not that bad) Anyhow, we decided to have Moroccan soup (harira) with their bread for dinner (bread here is quite good, flat round loaves that are nice and soft zhen fresh):We went into the enormous market square and went to the harira stall with the most locals: Here we learned that harira is not served with bread but zith these fried dough things covered zith honey and sesame seeds: According to the Casablancan couple seated across from us; these are the first two things that ppl here break fast at Ramadan with: We had a little bit of trouble understanding them, but it seems that he may have been an imam (holy man): He looked quite young though, maybe early thirties: In any case the first thing he told me zas that in their culture they do not eat ziht their left hands: This is so,ething that we had seen in the guidebook; that you should never reach into a communal dish zith your left hand; because they use their left hand for ablutions after using the toilet (I am not sure quite what this entails; but my practise has been to scrub both hands with soap and zater...) Anyzays, i switched hands so as not to offend them; We asked general questions of each other: He was trying to get K to sing so,e Bollyzood song.. K does not knoz Bollyzood songs: Then he started asking about religion in India; who is their god? zhat do they practise? We told him that most ppl there are Hindu and that Hinduism has multiple gods: He asked us how it was possible for there to be ,ultiple gods; and he made an allegory to a land zith ,any kings: We were not entirely sure whether to enter into this discussion, but their was a slight language barier anyways: In the end; they had to get going. We then got co,pletely overcharged for our food. We were hopping mad, there was no way that should have cost ,ore than 5Dh; but we were stupid once again and did not get prices dealt with before the meal.

I guess that is why I was a little pissed again at the beginning of this email: We got gypped several times by what was supposed to be an official guide to the city: We only wanted him to show us the monuments; and insisted we did not want carpets. The deal with this is that guides will often kill your time by bringing you into artisinql shop after artisnal shop; to herbalists and ultimately carpet stores; where it is nearly impossible to leave politely for at least half an hour: We pretty ,uch raced through the different sites: We ended up in one artisinal ensemble: He put us into a taxi to another place and we were beyond overcharged for that: 50Dh could have gotten the 3 of us to the next city at least. We're quite sure ,ost of the ride was just driving in cricles: Somehow we got roped into lunch with the guy:We had the presence of mind to settle on prices before we started eating: He started at a ridiculous 33Dh each for omelettes (it was not even a touristy place!! Also note that each store; restaurant or taxi ride taken during a tour; the guide receives a commission) but when we balked; it zent down to 15Dh: It ended with him wanting to show us a Touareg house (we were pretty sure it was a carpet store, but he insisted it was to see the place): Touaregs are the nomadic Berbers fro, the desert; the blue men. For whatever reason these ones picked up and bought a house in Marrakesh: What do you knoz? Carpet store. We spent half an hour in there before we convinced guide and mr. Touareg that we did not intend to purchase anything. Tour pretty much ended there, it went over the proposed half day by half an hour; for which he wanted to charge us. We said we spent half an hour eating: He said there were many more sites to see and that we should do a whole day. At this point I pulled the sick routine and said I had to return to the hotel: We finally settled on 170Dh rather than the original 150Dh: Lesson learned - no more guides. This one was so much sketchier than the Fez one:

Overall, my favorite city remains Fez for the atmosphere. However, Marrakesh has an amazing public square that is jammed with ppl for every square meter at night; Apparently it has been going for some 900 years and at some point there was discussion of turning it into a parking lot; but it was decided to keep it as it is: There are rows of fresh OJ stands; stands selling dried fruits; fresh mint, snake charmers; henna painters; fortune tellers; story tellers; acrobats; drummers, dancers; watersellers, ppl with leashed performing monkeys; ppl who take bets on boys boxing each other; carnival type ga,es zhere you try and fish for coke bottles; and finally food stands that go up in the evening and make the air all smoky: To see this from a restaurant terrace is absolutely amazing: The sheer nu,ber of ppl boggles the mind: Think SARStock pictures; but every night of the year; From this square extend the twisting zinding streets that house the souqs - here they have souqs for leather; metalwork, babouches (pointy toed shoes = it's funny, they remind me of clogs; but locals actually weqr them), clothing souqs (i bought one of those cotton chemises but not a full blown djellabah), cloth souqs, herbalists, all sort of craft stores and of course; carpet stores:

Random Note

I cannot seem to type pswds correctly through these keyboards (at least email ones) so I have not read mail.

Azrou, Morocco

This is not a qwerty keyboqrd so forgive ,e for random mistypes: We,ve just had q slightly frustrqting evening, the ,ost frustrqting so far in fact. I think I was almost pickpocketed and we got almo;st diddled severql times at the restqurqnt: Other than tonight, hozever, things have been going surprisingly s,oothly: We,ve managed to get to each destination; had q clean (enough)room to sleep each night: TOO MUCH SHOPPING!!! Wer,re starting to get the hang of bargaining; but we are reaizing we are still getting good tourist prices rather than real prices: ah well, i love my rug and pottery. the souqs are always buzzing; even late at night: i think this is because this is the coolest part of the day: it makes for difficult sleeping zhen we are living inside the medina though (medinas are the old part of town). the architecture is naturally gorgeous: i love the patterns: i think it was so fitting that i zent to the Escher ,useum in the Hague before coming here since so ,uch of his inspirqtion for his 2D space filling designs comes from Islamic motifs though he took it beyond their geometric patterns: the people of Morocco, where to begin the description? For stqrters; one of hte things we had been wondering is how ze zould be treated as Asiqns (2 chinese; 1 indian). Whqt we have discovered is that there are many Japanese tourists thqt co,e here in the fall: A and I are constantly assailed with cries of Sayanara, arigato and konichiwa, while K is greeted zith Namastay (?) and Bollywood singing: For the most part ppl are very helpful and polite; though they can be very insistent when they wish to sell you something: A and I plan to write a dissertation on the art of bargaining when we get back. She and K have it down quite well:

Food ) I have not gotten sick yet! cheers! though tonight,s restaurant sort of really sucked; we have had so,e excellent tajines (stew type things) as well as couscous: I love couscous with raisins (had that yesterday night). The cooked salads are excellent too: Fresh squeezed OJ is everywhere and we have also been buying liters and liters of wqter (brands: Ciel; Sidi Ali; Sidi Harazen). And the MINT TEA!!!! I am addicted to this stuff: Iùve declared it the one item I will ,iss the ,ost when I return:

Hoping everyone gets their postcqrds: I have been diddled by corner stores for stamps a couple times now. One thing we,ve learned is to always always add things up for yourself; They tried to charge us 112Dh for our bad food tonight. It was supposed to be 75Dh: (1CAD=7.2Dh) It,s cheap; but as A says; it is a matter of principle: we,re foreigners but we are no longer fresh off the boat:

i,m not really having a bad time at all; do not get me zrong; i am very happy to be here. i just cannot believe we have been more hassled in this town than in the big cities: i think i am done trying to type now, i think i,ll do more exhaustive posting when i get ho,e and get a chance to sift through pics:

In Algeciras, Spain

Currently at the port of Algeciras waiting to board the ferry for Morocco. We have the tickets now, but we are waiting for ROSI to awaken so that A and K can sign up for their final year courses. Between the 3 pages of Spanish-English phrases in our Spain guidebook, we have somehow gotten this far. Now the most interesting part of the journey begins. Wish us luck.

Still in London

Going to see Cambridge today.

In London, England

Writing from an internet cafe within a McDonald's right now. I'm waiting for the bulk of rush hour to pass before I finally make a decision as to where to go. I just got into town yesterday, and after a slightly nervous ride through the underground (this section was actually overground) I got to my hostel in one piece with all my luggage. Then, I went on a mega walk.

Started by hitting Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. Saw the Kensington Palace from the outside, the ponds, the overly ornate Albert Memorial and the Albert Hall. Then, I saw someone running who looked a lot like someone from nsci, so I randomly shouted out his name (cuz you never know.) And it was! Ron from nsci nano was taking a jog through the park - apparently he's working here for the summer before settling down in Toronto. We might get together in a couple of nights to see some music or something.

Continued down to the Palace. Impressive, but a little empty. There were just tourists out front, two guards randomly marching back and forth inside, and some policemen guarding the gate. The police are plentiful and pretty highly visible (they dress in shiny yellow jacket/vest things).

The aim was to see sunset from the bridges. I wandered in a direction I hoped was south and suddenly came across Westminster and the Parliament buildings. Big Ben was gorgeous in the setting sunlight, all that gold trim really showed off. Eventually found a bridge and watched the sun set behind the Parliament. Eventually made my way to the Eye ferris wheel thing and took the tube home.

No pics, because these computers not only have strange keyboards (ie shift + top row of keys = !"£$%^&*(), (I'm hoping these show up for you all as different, otherwise I'll just feel stupid), but I can't access USB ports or cd drives. The only way I've found to get photos off my camera is at photo shops who can burn from card to CD for £5-6. Pricy. Even then, I can't get them onto a computer... ah well, I'll have to be satisfied with descriptions. No idea what I'll do in Morocco.

Going to check the weather in Winchester, think I might head there.

Antwerp, Belgium

Stopover in Antwerp on our way home from Bruges. The first two shots are of random Tintin things that we saw. (Herge was Belgian). The third shot is of the Antwerp harbour where we just happened to catch a bridge raising to let boats through. You can see the procession of boats in this picture. Final picture is of the busy shopping/pedestrian street between the train station and the old part of town.

Bruges, Belgium

I realize that I spelt the name wrong in my postcards (Brugges is incorrect).. the English spelling is Bruges and the Flemish spelling is Brugge. Here are some views of the town - the last picture is a chocolaterie.

Pics from Delft, The Netherlands

1. Molen Roos - Delft's own windmill, now turned into a pet store.

2. Sunflowers in the flower market.

3. View along one of the town streets.

4. View from the belfry - worth the climb!

5. Houses near the market square.

Blogging from Delft

In Joyce's room in Delft, the Netherlands right now. Saw Amsterdam over the last couple days, walked around the old area of Delft today and headed to Belgium tomorrow. Here are some quick pics from Amsterdam.