From Madrid to Marrakech

Now, as we lie in our mansion-like Marrakech Riad room, relaxing after a boiling 39 degree walk through the new town, we’ve completed the last major leg of our ‘European’ part of our trip and will only return for short detours to the Low Countries before flying to America. Europe has been amazing: but I will leave our final thoughts on the continent for when we depart for the last time. For now, I’ll recount how we traveled from Granada to here, in North Africa.

Madrid

After our breathless train trip, we arrived in Madrid uneventfully. Our hostel was luckily just across the road from the train station (and the Reina Sofia), so we didn’t even have to walk far with our packs. We were received by a little old Spanish woman who possessed no English whatsoever, but that was fine as we really just needed to be shown to our rooms and left alone. Although I will say that attaining the password for the hostel’s wifi was a little more difficult; we eventually discovered that in Spain, it is rather comically pronounced ‘wiffy’.

We were never expecting much of Madrid; everyone we spoke to reinforced that it is simply an anonymous, faceless metropolis that could be anywhere, and they were right. There is nothing wrong with Madrid, and I’m sure it is quite a livable city, but it certainly lacks any notable landmarks or points of interest to distinguish itself from virtually any other city on the planet. In fact, as we turned one corner and spotted a ubiquitous double-decker tourist bus that you’ll find the world over, it seemed like we could have instantly been back in London – minus the heat, of course.

The reason for our stop in Madrid was not the city, but what is near it. We were using it as a base for daytrips to Segovia and Toledo, much nicer historic towns which are both less than an hour’s train ride away. Which is another reason we were so close to the station. So after exploring Madrid on our first evening, we decided to travel to Toledo the next day, and Segovia the day after.

Toledo

Described by our Lonely Planet guidebook as ‘a corker of a city’, Toledo is a walled fortress of a town that boasts a long history of inhabitants, from the Romans and Visigoths to the Jews, Moors, and Catholics. It’s very scenic, true, but I don’t think either of us were amazed by Toledo. The small, winding cobbled streets are lovely, and the history of the place is astounding, but with all the tourists and the lack of clear attractions it is definitely a place to only spend an afternoon in. We snuck into the otherwise expensive church for free, and decided that we wouldn’t have paid anything for it anyway, and were lucky enough to visit the very interesting Synagogue for free, it being Saturday afternoon. But just as we were running out of things to do, the heavens opened up and it started to pour with rain. It was then a case of migrating slowly from bits of cover to others; I should also note that it was actually really windy and cold, too, and as everywhere else we’d been in Spain was boiling, I had no jumper with me so began to freeze. I was actually quite worried about catching a cold: regardless of the severity of a sneeze, it is not advisable, and sometimes even not possible to enter countries with an obvious cold/flu type thing at the moment. I would not like to complicate our journey to the States by catching a common cold. However, we both seem to be okay, which is a relief.

After spending quite some time in the shelter of a tourist information booth, and having whiled away as much time as we realistically could by pretending to be fascinated by its myriad of brochures on bull fighting and swords, we took an early taxi to the station and waited for our train home.

Segovia

When we got back to Madrid, we felt like we’d been rather unproductive for the day, so spent quite a late night figuring out our accommodation and plans for Belgium and Amsterdam, which included calling a hostel in Amsterdam at 11:55pm and pretending we were in a different timezone when we got a “do you know what time it is here?” response. We also went on a brief trip to an English-language bookshop called J&Js and swapped some of our sizeable traveling library for a pitiful 6.50 Euros of store credit and spent a good hour scouring their huge range of trash, rubbish and airport novels for something – anything – worth spending it on. I already mentioned that through this trip I’ve rediscovered reading, but I think it’s worth emphasising that as someone who had read one fiction book in the last two years or so, over the last three months I have read more than a dozen and have probably spent more on new books than Tash.

The upshot of all this was, of course, that we slept in the next morning, far too late to make a trip to Sevogia worthwhile. This was very unfortunate, as we’re told it is a beautiful city, but combined with our average previous day, and the fact that each way would cost us 11 Euro each even with our Eurail pass, we simply couldn’t be bothered. This is a brutal fact of traveling so intensely for such a period of time, and it might seem mystifying for anyone who hasn’t done so, but occasionally, even in Europe, in the most beautiful, historic and exotic surrounds, you must take a day to do absolutely – absolutely – nothing.

So instead of going to Segovia, we slept in, Skyped with Tash’s family for over an hour, and walked across the square for an afternoon of free entry into the Reina Sofia. The Sofia is confusing museum, as despite its huge size, it does not have any free maps of the floorplan. This made our trip quite a lot more like pot luck than any planned expedition, but we still saw some Dali, some Civil War-era art and photos, and Picasso’s famous Guernica.

In the evening we found a ‘Version Originale’ cinema and saw ‘The Boat That Rocked’, which was quite a lot like Curtis’ ‘Love Actually’ in that it had a completely muddled plot, a fair dash of sentimentality, a too-famous cast of British actors, and was a hell of a lot of fun. The soundtrack was really very good (though you’d be worried if it wasn’t, considering it is about 1960s British pirate rock and pop radio) and we’ll have to get hold of it when we get home. That makes it the third film we’ve seen while traveling (after Watchmen and Star Trek) which for us have been well-spaced slices of normality.

Marrakech

Instead of the original plan to make our way slowly down Spain and ferry across to Morocco, we took the infinitely quicker, and in all probability cheaper route of flying direct to Marrakech with EasyJet. On landing for our first time in Africa, we immediately discovered that Tash’s French would be far, far more useful here than in our time in Paris. Everyone here speaks French, while only a handful know any English, which makes things interesting for me, as hardly any transaction or even a passing heckle to purchase something passes without a short conversation. Indeed, before we were even at our Riad Tash had spoken more French than she did in Paris, with a full and long conversation with our Taxi driver.

Everything in Marrakech is unlike almost anything we’ve seen before: it is all one long and stunning sideshow. The main square of the Medina – the old town, where we are staying – is incredible in itself. For movie buffs like ourselves, it’s the square where much of the first section of Hitchcock’s ‘The Man Who Knew Too Much’ takes place. It feels like any carnival you’ve ever seen, but taken to a unique extreme. A journalist once said that listening to Bob Marley was like tuning in on a radio to a current that had always existed, an original as old as humanity. Well, if you take the same meaning, you can apply it to the main square of Marrakech: it is so alive and brimming with energy that it feels like any other carnival you’ve seen is a lesser copy of it. There are stalls, of course, selling jewellry, food – tagines, cous cous, orange juice, mint tea, snails, sheep’s heads – instruments, clothes, souvenirs, and appliances. But there are also storytellers, musicians, henna-tatooists, monkey-wranglers, and somewhat frighteningly, snake-charmers with draped pythons and dancing cobras. All of these people consider photo-taking to be a chargeable service and will vigorously pursue their revenue, so any photos we have are taken covertly, and thus are perhaps not as good as they might otherwise be.

Immediately, we spent an afternoon in the markets and spent far, far more money than we’d anticipated on souvenirs and gifts. This means we’ll probably have to get more out, as both our Riad here and our place in Fes, our next stop, only take cash. We’re staying in the best room we’ve had – and probably will have – on our trip so far. It’s huge, with high ceilings, a sitting area, and another, unused bed, while our own is big enough to warrant posts and drapes. We get a great breakfast in the morning served at our table by the Moorish fountain in the courtyard: and all of this for about AU$30 per night.

The whole city simply reeks of a wonderful chaos: the traffic alone is incredible. It isn’t like the Asian chaotic traffic, where as a pedestrian you simply have to be brave enough to step out onto the road, after which everyone will stop and let you through. Here, it is more like you have to step but still avoid cars and bikes, as they will only alter their course – or heaven forbid, actually stop – if there is certain, unavoidable death ahead. You can forget pedestrian crossings, also, as what few there are seem to be only colourful stretches of normal road to Moroccan drivers.

There isn’t that much in terms of general attractions here; like Granada and many other places we’ve been to, it is enough to simply be in Marrakech. To sit at a restaurant in, or overlooking the square, and watch a completely different world whirl by is enough. Yesterday, we tried going to a few attractions, such as the palaces and gardens, but were largely unsuccessful in much except getting lost. We were amazingly invited into a local’s home, an offer which we would normally have refused, but in this case, it felt rude as he seemed very nice and genial, and we didn’t have anything better to do. So we went in, were kissed on the cheek by his 7-year-old daughter, chatted for a while (or rather, Tash chatted, as he only knew French) and had some of his Berber tea, which was very nice and different from the mint tea they serve the tourists here. Eventually, though, it became clear that he very much wanted to sell us something – anything at all, really, from oils to spices to tea to necklaces. This made us quite uncomfortable, as we felt that having entered his house we couldn’t really bargain to a price we could actually afford – even if we wanted anything in the first place, which we didn’t. We made our excuses and left, which left him quite disappointed, unfortunately. I’m certain that it would have been polite to buy something, and fair, as well, but I don’t think that it would be often that backpackers as low to the bottom of our financial barrel would pass through Marrakech, so I don’t blame him for misjudging our level of spending power. We both felt rather rude, but it couldn’t be helped; it would have been just as rude to walk away in the first place, as at that stage, he didn’t seem to want anything from us except company.

Tomorrow, we leave on a seven hour train to Fes. We’re traveling first-class here for the first time on our entire trip, as it was quite cheap and we were advised that as tourists it would be much more advisable. Apparently, Fes has quite a different feel to Marrakech, which will no doubt be interesting, but is a touch more dangerous, especially after dark. We’ll see.

So, onwards and upwards for this African section of our so-called European trip: we’re off to find some dinner in the square and avoid, as best is possible, having a python draped around our necks. Until next time.

To view more Madrid photos, click here.
To view more Toledo photos, click here.
To view more Marrakech photos, click here.