I thought driving in Belgium was a challenge, but driving in Morocco cannot be described. It makes Mexico look tame. Crossing the street is like being in the video game Frogger. Here is a picture of a rent a car place which looked a bit dubious, and then the ultimate Formula One training: learn how to drive at a driving school in Marrakech! What a great story that would be!
Two things that are noticeably different from 33 years ago are the satellite dishes that are on "every breeze block shack" (as one of our Irish cooking school students put it), and...drum roll pleeeze....ATM Machines! Next to the Oil Shop, where you go to buy your cooking oil in this case is a handy bank and ATM.
The other edgy thing was the "call to prayer" five times a day starting at 4:30am. Yes, you read that right. The five times are supposed to be consistent and they kinda are, like the 4:30am, noon-ish, and 7pm calls were the ones we noticed the most. Look at the picture below to see how close the mosque and minaret across the street were!
We were sitting in the sun by the pool after a "Royal Hammam treatment" (we are so full of it), wondering if the minaret callers had sound systems or were really yelling without such help. Just then we heard "phoooooffh......phoooooofffhh" like someone blowing into a microphone from the minaret across the street. A 500 Watt version of "Can you hear me now?" It was close to the noon prayer time, and about a minute after he started his chant unfortunately his mike went dead, so the sound guys were likely going to hear about it. The mosques and minarets are close enough together where they can compete a bit for the sound space. Since this guy's mike went dead, we could hear the next guy one neighborhood over. The 4:30am call to prayer was our wake up call to be able to catch our 7am flight home. It was right on time!
Two things that are noticeably different from 33 years ago are the satellite dishes that are on "every breeze block shack" (as one of our Irish cooking school students put it), and...drum roll pleeeze....ATM Machines! Next to the Oil Shop, where you go to buy your cooking oil in this case is a handy bank and ATM.
The other edgy thing was the "call to prayer" five times a day starting at 4:30am. Yes, you read that right. The five times are supposed to be consistent and they kinda are, like the 4:30am, noon-ish, and 7pm calls were the ones we noticed the most. Look at the picture below to see how close the mosque and minaret across the street were!
We were sitting in the sun by the pool after a "Royal Hammam treatment" (we are so full of it), wondering if the minaret callers had sound systems or were really yelling without such help. Just then we heard "phoooooffh......phoooooofffhh" like someone blowing into a microphone from the minaret across the street. A 500 Watt version of "Can you hear me now?" It was close to the noon prayer time, and about a minute after he started his chant unfortunately his mike went dead, so the sound guys were likely going to hear about it. The mosques and minarets are close enough together where they can compete a bit for the sound space. Since this guy's mike went dead, we could hear the next guy one neighborhood over. The 4:30am call to prayer was our wake up call to be able to catch our 7am flight home. It was right on time!
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