Marrakech
We came to Marrakech, MA on a train. Moroccan trains aren't exactly The Hogwarts Express by any stretch of imagination. We were in first class and good thing to because our little sleeper cabin (we were on the train over night from Tanger, the port town from Spain on The Straits of Gibraltar) was, if not unclean, drab and very much of whatever the word for can't lock the door is. Still, we had two full cabins to ourselves, and even though we got on the train at midnight, our parents still let us watch the premiere (for Season 2 anyway) of Once Upon A Time before crashing on our little bunks. We were pretty much in Marrakech when we woke up the next morning and by the time we had finished bumping our heads on the bunk above us, yawning, and rubbing our eyes, we had arrived at Marrakech Station (Gare De Marrakech in French, the almost national language of Morocco.) I had expected a whole ordeal with getting the Riad (It means Palace and is commonly used to refer to a family run hotel) to pick us up but I was happily surprised. The man was waiting for us in the station with a large SUV waiting outside. We had a quick drive to Riad Dar Patrick, where we were staying. As we were such a big family, we had all of the Riad's 3 rooms to ourselves. After a long and relaxing morning in the house, recuperating from the train, we went out to Jemaa El Fnaa, the main plaza in Marrakech. It was like nothing I've ever seen before. Snake charmers sat right there in front of you (I wanted to give them a talking to about staying a little CLOSER to their deadly serpentine friends and not going off to get people to take a picture with them), Henna artists (Henna is a type of non permanent tattoo that's very hip in Morocco), and people selling orange smoothies. I wish I had been a little braver with the snake charmer but what can I say, snakes scare me! We went to a restaurant called Taj'in Darna and we learned about delicous Moroccan treats such as Tajins (any type of vegetables, meat, of fruits stewed in a special pot, and Brochettes (skewers of meat.) We did this most days, went out to the Jemaa el Fnaa. In fact, I think we did mostely that same thing for 3 days strait. On out last day in Marrakech (our 4th day) my mom and sister went to Hammam which is a traditional spa in Morocco and the rest of us got a bad tour guide of a Karan learning school from the 12 hundreds. There were 900 students there at a time squeezed into 130 little study/cooking/eating/sleeping rooms located around the school's mosque. We left early the next morning to go to an ecolodge, resort thing. We really enjoyed Marrakech!