Marrakech Express

Day 1 “We wanted something thoroughly and uncompromisingly foreign—foreign from top to bottom—foreign from center to circumference—foreign inside and outside and all around—nothing any where about it to dilute its foreignness—nothing to remind us of any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo! In Morocco we have found it. Here is not the slightest thing that ever we have seen save in pictures—and we always mistrusted the pictures before. We cannot any more. The pictures used to seem exaggerations—they seemed too weird and fanciful for reality. But behold, they were not wild enough—they were not fanciful enough—they have not told half the story. Morocco is a foreign land if ever there was one; and the true sprit of it can never be found in any book save the Arabian Nights.”

-Mark Twan, The Innocents Abroad

I’ve never been less prepared for a trip than I was for Morocco. I was tired of planning. I wanted to leave room for the unexpected, to be able to follow my whims and land where I may. When we docked in Casa Blanca I had no reservations, did not know the train schedule, and had no set plans whatsoever. Heck, I didn’t even know the exchange rate. I did, however, have a great group of friends to travel with and the express intent of landing, somehow, in Marrakech.

After leaving the ship and quickly getting some money (the exchange rate was 8.60 dirham to $1.00, by the way) we stopped by Rick’s Café for lunch before setting off on our uncertain journey. A former United States diplomat opened Rick’s in a restored riad in 2004 after realizing that a Casa Blanca without a restaurant tribute to the movie was leaving a gaping hole in the tourism market. It is decorated in a lush, art deco fashion that is both reminiscent of the movie and a comforting transition to the decorating style of Morocco. We ate in the cheaper rooftop café where I first began ignoring the ship’s warning about food and ordered a goat cheese salad. Food in Morocco is, in a word, delicious. It actually gives Italy a run for its money. The fact that a delicious, multiple course meal here usually costs less than a happy meal in The States only makes the food taste even better. After I finished off my fresh salad and washed it down with a “Casa Blanca” label beer we headed off to buy a train ticket.

Second class was all that remained for the day, so with a pinch of apprehension and a heavy serving of excitement, we all boarded the Marrakech Express second-class car. O.K., I’m lying. The Marrakech Express is actually the train that ran from Tangier to Marrakech during a time when Marrakech was one of the last stops on a popular hippie traveling route that winded through northern Europe to this oasis at the edge of the Sahara desert. “Colored cottons hang in the air, charming cobras in the square, striped djellabas we can wear at home…” Crosby, Stills and Nash immortalized the city in their popular song named after the train route and its destination. The name Marrakech Express might also refer to a particularly strong strain of hash. But, I was on a train to Marrakech and it made a catchy title so I’m going with it. So anyway, I’m on this train, talking to all sorts of interesting people and watching the hazy plains turn into dusty deserts and finally melt into the red walled city of Marrakech.

By this time it is dark and beginning to rain and we still have no reservations. My new favorite way to travel… A man approached us offering a taxi large enough to take our group and asked for the address of our hotel. We tell him we still needed to figure that detail out. He immediately offered up a riad for 150 dirham per person per night. That’s less than $20, so we were ecstatic. Soon we found ourselves in a van whose floor was covered in Turkish rugs heading for the old medina of Marrakech.

This man named Muhammad led my friends and I through a series of tumultuously winding alleys to the riad we were renting. In Marrakech the streets are so narrow that in the old parts of town cars cannot go down them. Instead, a tangle of donkey carts, pedestrians, and scooters all pulse down the same narrow alleys usually without collision or incident of any kind. In one section of this zigzagged walk I was startled to find rows of butcher shops packed with cages of live chickens and bunnies munching on clover and completely unaware of their impending doom. I also saw vegetable stands by the dozen, fresh fish that still smelled like the salty Atlantic, sweet shops displaying mountains of sugary and exotic delights, and small delis packed with fresh bread and meat ready to be taken home. I would soon realize that this series of winding alleyways is the collective public pantry of Marrakech. Everyone comes here to purchase the freshest food from the best vendors to take home for dinner. It is a bustling place packed at all times of the day with people ranging from little boys playing games in the street to women buying food for their families to old men sitting around, talking quietly in murmured Arabic and French about whatever subject fits the mood.

We finally arrived at our riad at the dead end of yet another winding alley. It was magnificent. As we toured the lush courtyard, the sitting room complete with our own personal water pipe, the kitchen that came with a live in maid, the four bedrooms all with lush bedding in vivid colors and massive, dark wood wardrobes, the three huge bathrooms with open air showers, and the rooftop garden that overlooked the chaos below, we knew that this place was way out of our price range. We were right. It took us an hour of negotiating to get the price back down to what we had originally requested from the taxi driver, but we finally did and proceeded to settle into our palatial lodgings. I was in love. I have begun to feel that I deserve some sort of business credit for the amount of negotiating, haggling, and overall diplomacy I have exercised on this trip. With the markets Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco as my classrooms, I have learned a lot about the art of negotiation and saved a bundle of money in the process.

Soon after unpacking our stuff we found ourselves exploring the city in search of some cheap dinner. I eventually decided on what can only be described as a Moroccan chicken sandwich and was soon off to bed. This is the point when I realized the catch of our great steal of a riad. There was no air conditioning. That was completely manageable in Italy, but in Marrakech the highs regularly ring in around the 120’s--not exactly a place you want to share a bed and have no fans or AC. I would soon learn that my assumption in Istanbul that I could never possibly sweat more than I did in the sauna of the Turkish bath was dreadfully wrong. I took a lot of cold showers this trip.

Day 2
The next morning we woke up to a delightful spread of fresh coffee from our maid Attika and assorted breads and cheeses courtesy of our riad’s owner. Soon after we set off to explore the souks of Jemaa el Fna Square. This part of Marrakech is Islamic culture filtered through the lens of Western imagination and realized in a blur of sensory experiences. It is the snake charmers in the square, the fortune tellers squatting on an oriental carpet, the spice markets packed with cures for every ailment, the bright, vivid colors adorning every door, the monkey trainers, the souks packed with enough leather goods to warrant substantial attention from PETA, the little boys playing in the street all day, the steaming tagines, the fresh couscous, the 3 dirham orange juice squeezed right before your eyes, and the endless array of souks full of exotic goods whose prices are always negotiable. In the evenings the Jemaa el Fna Square turns into a festive carnival packed with people from across the globe and natives to Marrakech alike who all swarm into the square for impromptu street performances, delicious and cheap dinner, and to take in the sights, sounds, and smells that come with such an entertaining evening. It is, quite possibly, one of my favorite shopping districts in the world. Where else can you haggle for a monkey, a chic leather bag, and organic eye makeup in the same block? Is there any other place on earth you can buy jewelry, tea and tortoises from the same store?

I took full advantage of the unique shopping opportunities of this area and spent the entire day with friends meandering in and out of the deep alleys packed with souks until I finally emerged weighed down with a small cows worth of leather goods, a henna tattoo, assorted jewelry, and even a few Moroccan organic cosmetics. All this and I still had cash in my pocket. Later that evening we returned to the square to experience the nighttime carnival. Every day at dusk hundreds of small restaurants are erected in the square and serve up delicious Moroccan specialties for around 20 dirham a plate. That’s around $2.50. We split tagines, couscous, and grilled eggplant and set off for our riad to get ready to go out.

After slipping into a dress and finishing off the wine we had bought earlier, we headed to one of Marrakech’s most popular nightclubs and danced the night away. While there we met some of our other friends from the ship and ended the night back at our riad talking and drinking until the morning call to prayer and the rising sun prompted us all to go to sleep.


Day 3

After an hour-long nap, red bird was calling and Leah and I had to pack our things to meet our SAS tour group. We signed up for this trip long before we left for the voyage, and did not want to miss out on our $250 worth of hotel lodgings and pre planned activities. We planned on meeting them at the Majorelle Gardens, a beautiful place designed in part by Yves St. Laurent. We waited there for over two hours, took a very brief nap on a park bench, ate a delicious albeit overpriced lunch and finally relegated ourselves to meeting them in the evening at the hotel and taking it easy for the day.

When we finally did catch our group it was time for dinner and we were ushered into a bus that took us to a section of town that was remarkably close to our riad. From there we walked through a series of alleys to a riad turned restaurant that was the most luxurious dinner I’ve had the entire trip. There was a belly dancer show, a liberal scattering red rose petals covering every horizontal surface, delicious food and excellent company. By the time we made it back to the hotel, Leah and I were delirious from lack of sleep and full from great food and passed out immediately in our beds. Tomorrow would be our last day in Morocco and we didn’t even have the energy to go out. Oh well, you have to sleep sometime…

Day 3
We set off at 7:30 a.m. to visit a berber village in the Eourika Valley in the Atlas Mountains outside Marrakech. Here I had the most authentic experience of my entire voyage. Our group was relatively small, close to 30 people, so I didn’t feel like a circus parading down the streets of this small village. Instead I was able to truly observe these people’s everyday lives as they collected water from the creek, began cooking lunch in tagines, and as little children ran around playing in the sunshine. Our tour concluded at a berber home, where our tour guide dropped in occasionally with groups but could never give notice ahead of time since they did not have a telephone.

Once inside we were all seated in the main living room of this red mud walled, multi story home and invited to share mint tea and fresh bread with honey. We sat for long time as an old woman named La La Fatima went to work preparing the tea. She set out three teapots and dumped a healthy portion of green tea into each. After this she went out to the garden and gathered an armful of fresh mint and verbena, which she divided into the teapots without ever rinsing off. I don’t know why that should bother me, since she probably got the water from the creek running outside their home. While all this was taking place, little kids began to wander into the room still in their pajamas and I got yet another henna tattoo from a bright-eyed ten-year-old girl. After savoring our delicious tea, it was sadly time to leave and head back for Casa Blanca.

I had planned on sleeping during this three-hour drive, but something terrible happened. The air conditioner stopped working. As the outside temperature wavered between a cool 106° and 112°, our bus had no cool air to keep us comfortable. Just as I began to hallucinate and feel unreasonably faint, our bus driver mercifully pulled into a shell station where I dug the remnants of my currency out of the bottom of my purse to purchase a liter each of room temperature water and orange juice. The water was gone before I exited the gas station and the orange juice I shared with fellow dying passengers on the drive home in a Juno, straight from the carton fashion. We made it back in one piece, but let me just say that if I were in America, subjecting us to that heat would probably be illegal.

Already I miss Morocco because besides the oppressive heat, it was my favorite country. I love the mesh of cultures, the vivid street life, and the fact that everywhere I went seemed to be a scene from a movie or my imagined setting for a good book. It was a magical piece of earth, and I wish I could have spent longer experiencing it. Now I am floating on the Atlantic, heading home with a head full of memories from a summer like no other. Some of these stories are becoming more vivid, standing out against the blur of sights, people, countries and cultures that have made up my Mediterranean adventures; while others are quickly fading into the background, only to be recovered by pictures and accounts in my journal reread for years to come. Now I can only look forward, rather reluctantly, to some return to normalcy. I am forever changed, but I will have to make that change work in my day-to-day life.

At least I know that I have seen and done what not many people have but what everyone should: I have traveled to cultures vastly different from my own and appreciated every second. Mark Twain wrote in his novel account of the first ever “pleasure cruise,” The Innocents Abroad, “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” I refuse to take the standpoint that this statement is entirely true for every person, but I do know that my travels have forever eradicated narrow-minded thoughts from my head and have introduced an entirely new set of big dreams and lofty desires into my ever growing list of aspirations. It has taught me that there is more to the world than the USA, but reaffirmed my lifelong belief that I am along the luckiest people in the plant to have been born in this wonderful, completely free country. This trip has been among the best experiences of my entire life and I am intolerably sad to see it pass away. For now I will do my best to use these last days to visit with friends on the ship and learn all I can from my professors before we part ways for our different lives at home. We will always have Semester at Sea…

With Love,

Bonnie

Egypt: Mummies, Pyramids and the Nile

I am sitting now on the top deck of the Explorer watching the lights of Alexandria disappear into the horizon as our ship pulls away from Egypt.

Writing about Egypt is a daunting task for me. Everything I’ve seen here has been so very different from anything else I have encountered on this voyage or ever in my life. In many ways, Egypt was a wake up call for me; an abrupt reminder that I am in Africa, in a nation that is home to one of the oldest civilizations on earth as well as much present political strife, surrounded by poverty, illiteracy, and a conservative Islamic culture that demands respect and adaptation on my part. Egypt is not a safe country, but I felt in awe more than I ever felt in danger. So many things that I saw-people, culture, sights, lifestyles, languages-lent imagery and experience to my previous impression of this country and made me oh so glad to hail from a country that has its act together at least in terms of economic and personal freedom. I sit here intrigued, shocked, and with an burning desire to learn more about the Islamic cultural norms and the constant political discord engulfing this entire region. For now I will write about what I have already seen and learned.

Day 1: Where in the world am I?!?!

We got off of the ship our first day in Alexandria with the intention of exploring the port area by foot or cab. On the ship they had warned us of crazy drivers and encouraged conservative dress, but beyond that we had little to go on. A large group of friends and I, nine in all, walked through the opulent port, past a huge gushing fountain, through throngs of tourist police wearing crisp, pressed, white uniforms until we finally exited the gate guarded by semi-automatic weapon carrying officers to the “real” Alexandria. At this moment, I realized immediately that any other time I had felt out of place on this trip, I was not. I felt foolish for thinking Spain had economic woes, for being baffled by the Greek alphabet, for believing that Turkey was not a western state. In comparison to the cities of Egypt, Istanbul is as Western as New York!!!

Alexandria is unlike any place I have ever seen. We took close to 10 minute to cross the street that was crowded with 10-year-old taxis, the oldest tram system in Africa, trash of all sizes and origins, the occasional horse or donkey, and other assorted motorized vehicles. Once across, we immediately realized that Alexandria was not a city we were prepared to walk, and we rapidly returned to the port to grab a clean, blue, tourist taxi whose fare might be more, but was regulated by the tourist police.

At this point most of the group had decided to join a Semester at Sea day tour of Alexandria, but Katie, Leah, and I had an itinerary in mind and chartered a taxi instead. Our first destination: the mall. Yeah, yeah, I know. But I had to ease myself into Egypt, and I know malls, so I figured I’d start with what I know. I’m calling it a significant cultural experience. Apparently I hadn’t packed enough conservative clothes on this trip, and my height and hair color had been warranting enough stares as it was. At the mall I was able to fill in my wardrobe at H & M and the Levi’s store while observing the many cultural differences and similarities here. First, I noticed how friendly everyone was to us. Despite my expectations, in my experience everyone LOVES Americans. They love our food, our clothes, our hair, our eyes, our president, and our seemingly bottomless wallets. They love to practice English with us, to tell us how beautiful we are and stare, stare, stare. By the end of the trip I was beginning to wonder if I had somehow become a YouTube celebrity and not known it for all the stares I was getting. No such luck, just my hair color, height and fair complexion.

Next we visited the Catacombs. Our cab driver, who at this point we referred to affectionately as “Uncle Khamis” and I decided looked like an Egyptian version of my Grandpaw, dropped us right by the ticket booth where we waited for a veiled woman to finish praying before checking our cameras and selling us our ridiculously cheap student tickets. A SAS trip had just left and we were very fortunate to have the entire place to ourselves. After descending a wide winding staircase underground into a series of tombs, I was met with what could have easily passed as an eerily lit set for an Indiana Jones movie. Seriously, this place was a series of ancient winding passageways all flooded with water so that we had to navigate on planks of wood. There were inscriptions covering some walls, intricate carvings on others, and some were left blank with modern, sharp edges that made me question the authenticity of the place. To make the entire experience even more eerie, there was a glass cabinet randomly positioned in one of the rooms full of human bones. It was such a cool place and seemed so much like what a movie producer would recreate as an Egyptian tomb that I thought I might be in a theme park. Of course, if I were in Disneyworld I would most assuredly not be one of three people in the entire place.

After that, we decided to hit up the Biblioteca Alexandria. This was such an unexpectedly modern site in a city that seems to be from a different era. This brand new library rises to meet the Mediterranean Sea in one of the most picturesque areas of the city. It is an extremely modern building of circular shape that is unlike anything I’ve seen before. Inside, it is the second largest depository of knowledge in the world, only behind the Library of Congress in D.C. I absolutely loved it here. Everything was so new and there were books everywhere. If I lived and went to school in Alexandria, I think I would be in this library every single day.

At one point I was separated from my friends for about 30 minutes and was wandering in the library by myself. This is a very safe, extremely secure place and I was not concerned to be alone in the least. I realized, however, why the ship stressed so explicitly that girls should never be alone in Egypt--I have never been hit on more in a library in my life. It’s the hair, I swear. But it was kind of ridiculous. Really ridiculous. I mean, I was wearing a skirt that went down to my ankles and a T-shirt that went up to my neck! Whatever, I guess I just look really different over here.

After our time in the library we found Uncle Khamis outside to take us back to the ship. Our trip to Cairo left really early in the morning and we hadn’t packed yet. On the way back, Khamis started digging around in the front passenger seat for something when all of the sudden…HE HIT ANOTHER CAR!!! Don’t worry, I’m all right. I mean, my Egyptian cabby just rear-ended a guy, but his bumper’s still halfway on, so it’s O.K. What does one do in that situation??? I sat there, speechless in the backseat and watched as the two parties involved shrugged it off in the middle of a side street in Alexandria. Oh Uncle Khamis…

Day 2: And I thought Alex was crazy!

My SAS trip to Cairo left at 8:00 in the morning and I was full of excitement for the next two days. We all piled into an air-conditioned bus for the 2 and a half hour drive to Cairo, during which we received a brief history lesson from our amazing guide. The drive from Alex to Cairo is kind of surreal. In many ways, Egypt is Western. Just like the states, Egypt has gas stations, KFC, and McDonalds sprinkling the roadways. Unlike the states, the entire country is covered in desert. Our drive went like this: desert, desert, dunes, desert, cluster of stores and a gas station with a splattering of small trees watered by hoses daily, desert, desert, desert…

I took a quick, or perhaps long, nap on the ride, and before I knew it I was in a metropolis of 20 million built along the Nile but very much so in the middle of the, you guessed it, desert. I’m not so sure that this was a smart idea. So many people in such a small space, surrounded by desert, fighting for precious resources, cannot make for a perfectly balanced, happy society. Issue number one (in my opinion at least): trash. Trash was everywhere. I wasn’t in the city for very long before our bus traveled a road which runs parallel to an irrigation canal that has turned into the city’s garbage disposal. Mountains of trash made up the banks of this mud colored creek. I couldn’t look away as we passed island upon island of floating trash. This was seriously the most polluted, trashed, yucky thing I’ve every seen. Occasionally I could spot a school of small fish just below the surface of the muddy water, and I could swear that they glowed. As we went further, I began to see something more alarming than any of the trash I had already passed: boys were swimming in this water!!! As polluted as this thing was, it passed as a viable recreational swimming area for the boys of Cairo.

Luckily, we were soon past the creek and at our first destination: the pyramids at Zoser. These smaller step pyramids often go overlooked by tourists, but were really very cool. We were able to go inside one of the pyramids where a guide showed us the intricate engravings on the walls and the paintings that after Millennia still contained vivid color. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would every be climbing into and around an ancient pyramid, but I did, and it was pretty darn cool. Plus, we were able to bribe the guide, or rather take up his offer, to take forbidden pictures of us inside. Not the last time I’d be bribing someone in Egypt, that’s sort of how they do things here.

Next we had lunch at a five star hotel and were off to the Archeological Museum of Cairo. This is the big daddy of all Archeological Museums. This is the place where all of Egypt’s relics are stored and put on display. It was vastly different from any museum I’ve been to in the states, partly because there was no air conditioning, but mainly because at every corner there was some relic or antiquity whose picture I could easily find on the pages of my world history textbook in the ninth grade. In my whirlwind tour I saw mummies, the famed coffin of Tutankhamun, solid gold thrones, statues of solid marble that were two stories high, ancient papyrus scrolls, ancient gold jewelry that seemed modern enough to be unwrapped from Tiffany’s today, and, strangely, the world’s oldest condom. Simply building the pyramids was not enough for these guys…

After all that history, it was time for a nap at our hotel. We stayed at the luxurious, five star Mena House, the closest hotel to the pyramids in all of Cairo. Our room looked out directly onto the towering Pyramids of Giza as though they might just be billboards advertising the sight. There were so close I could see the guards walking along their base. It was a beautiful hotel, but after only two hours of relaxing, it was time to head to the nighttime light show on the pyramids. I loved this. I mean, it’s a light show on the Great Pyramids!!! I’m a sucker for a light show I suppose. Most people thought it was totally cheesy, and it was, but I really secretly thought it was super cool. 

Day 3: Holy Camel! It’s the Great Pyramids!!!

We had dinner and approximately 3 and half hours of sleep before our 4:15 wake up call to watch the sun rise over the Pyramids. Only a handful of groups get special permission to go into the Pyramid viewing area before sunrise, so this was truly a once in a lifetime experience. I am soooo glad I did this because it was quite possibly the most magnificent sunrise I have ever seen in my entire life. Scratch that; it is, definitively, the most amazing sunrise I have ever, ever, seen. Ever. Don’t worry, I think I took 300 pictures that morning, so I should be able to remember and share it. We also rode camels here, which was quite an experience. They are HUGE! And not nearly as comfortable as horses if I can say so myself. But they do give quite a ride, and I laughed the whole way around as I was barely holding myself on.

After this, and about 1,000 more pictures, we went shopping in the Grand Bazaar in Cairo. I didn’t spend much money here, but we all got a lot of attention from vendors. I was able to score a wooden Camel and a bright pink scarf. I think I’m getting better at bargaining, because everything here was much cheaper than in Istanbul. Could be the economy, but it might be my haggling prowess. I guess we’ll never know… It wasn’t as good as the bazaar in Istanbul, but I still loved looking through this open-air market. As soon as we were finished here, we piled into the bus to go to our Nile cruise.

Now that I’ve experienced lunch on the Nile, I want to come back and do a longer cruise. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would get the chance to float down this majestic river, but now that I have I want to see more. I really want to come back to Africa and do a safari, or maybe some volunteer work. I’ve only scratched the surface…

One two-hour bus ride later and I was back in Alexandria. I was pretty tired at this point and went to bed.

Stupid Question of the Day

We had to apply for special visas in Turkey, and this question was overheard on the gangway:

 

"Why do I have to get a Turkish visa if I already have a credit card???"

Istanbul, Not Constantinople

With a population greater than all of Greece, Istanbul is a huge metropolitan city with all the best to offer from both the East and the West. This city literally lies on the boarder of the East (Asia) and West (Europe), and it is also the largest city in all of Europe. There is so much for me to say about how wonderful this place is, but I will try to highlight my favorite parts. Here goes…

Shopping:

There are a few phrases I like to learn in every country I visit. Words like “thank you,” “please,” and “hello” can take you a long way with the locals when you are playing the role of a confused foreigner. Some words, however, I invariably learn through osmosis. During my weeklong immersion in a different culture, I often pick up a different set of vocabulary like “Taxi!” “One beer please,” and of course, a special set of words related to shopping like “sale,” “how much?” and “I love it!!!” I learned these shopping words quite well in Turkey, where the dollar is strong, the shopping is plentiful, and the prices are cheap.

Grand Bazaar

The Grand Bazaar is by far the most unbelievable shopping experience I’ve ever had, including mad buying weekends at market with my mother. Over 4000 shops comprise this ancient maze of rugs, tapestries, clothes, shoes, souvenirs, spices, scarves, porcelain, knock-off Gucci, gold and silver jewelry, and just about any other ware you are willing to bargain for. Any woman eagerly seeking a husband should come straight here, where I collected marriage proposals and other assorted flatteries all day from vendors eager to show off their goods. It was a lot to take, and I luckily didn’t get too carried away with spending.
If shopping were not enough motivation to visit this infamous location, then consider the educational value of bargaining skills. I thought that I was a bit of a pushover, but as it turns out I am pretty good at this bargaining thing, and in my time at the Bazaar I gained better insight into the art of negotiation. This for that, give and take, feigned insults and insincere compliments all ring through the halls of the bazaar where vendors and customers size each other up before beginning the arduous bargaining process. And it’s all bargaining here—absolutely nothing has a price tag.

Spice Bazaar

A typical transaction might go a little like this: Vendor: “Lady! Lady! You soooooo pretty! Where you from?” (insert Turkish accent)
Me: “America. Texas.”
Vendor: “Oooooh! I LOVE America! I have a cousin in Texas. Tell you what, I give you special deal on rug, because you from Texas. 380 Lira. Good price!”
Me: “Sorry, but I can’t afford that. I’m a student.”
Vendor: “Oh! Student discount! 200 Lira!”
Me: “But I don’t have any cash.”
Vendor: “Credit card??”
Me: “Nope.”
Vendor: “Parent’s credit card??”
Me: “Don’t tempt me.”

The Grand Bazaar can prove to be a little overwhelming, but it was totally worth it in the end for me. Even more sensory than the Grand Bazaar is Istanbul’s Spice Bazaar. Here I found rows upon rows of towering piles of exotic spices, herbs and teas. Many of these goods were completely foreign to me, and the blend of fragrances was euphoric making for a delightful, albeit overwhelming experience. Turkish Delight was everywhere, and Andrea and I hunted down the tastiest looking samples from every corner of the market. If all this weren’t enough, just around the corner there was an animal market packed with baby bunnies, kittens, puppies, birds of all ages and sizes, tiny turtles, hamsters, leeches, geese, fish, and just about any other pet or small livestock imaginable. I had a bit of an E.T. moment upon seeing all of these adorable animals cooped up in tiny cages piled 10 feet high. It was kind of depressing and I felt compelled to set them free, however I thought twice when my mind flashed on the possibility of Turkish prison. We screened Midnight Express on the ship, and hash or animal release, I am NOT going to prison in Turkey.

Turkish Delight

Taksim by Day

Baths:

Ahh, Turkish baths. The living, thriving remnants of an ancient tradition sprinkled generously among a bustling metropolis. I do not know where to begin in describing these day spas on steroids, but I will say that I didn’t know I was ever dirty until I entered a Turkish bath house. For Muslims of the Ottoman Empire, cleanliness really was next to Godliness, and that is how these amazing public bathhouses began. They were integral social meeting places where boys could be boys and girls could be girls and they could all get clean at the same time. Today, I was able to pay a small fee, about $60 USD, to be scrubbed down, sudsed up, and massaged in the biggest, most beautiful sauna I’ve ever seen. I felt like a princess and would go back again if I had more time in the city.

The bathhouse I went to has been in operation since the 1580’s, and is in a building that is arguably as beautiful as some of the city’s Mosques. There is a huge room with a large solid marble heated platform where everyone lays down before her bath. The room feels like a cross between a steam room and a dry sauna, but better. Here I sweat more than I knew was possible until one of the washers came over and bathed me with luxurious, bubbly soap while scrubbing layers upon layers of grime and dead skin off. I literally watched layers of dead skin peel away. Oh, and I forgot to mention that everyone is naked. But seriously, it’s not a big deal over here, so I just went with it. Afterwards there is a hot tub, thirty-minute hot oil massage, another rinse off shower and hot Turkish apple tea. Best bath ever.

Another Night Out in Taksim

Nightlife:

If I had to compare Turkey to any other city I’ve visited, it would be NYC. Both are crammed with crazy yellow taxis, both are cultural melting pots, both are major international business and shopping centers, both have a layer of delightful city grime, and both have a healthy nighttime scene for all sorts of tastes. I spent a lot of time learning about the nightlife in Istanbul and enjoyed all types of settings ranging from dance clubs to rooftop bars to acoustic Turkish renditions of “I Will Survive.”

New Friends

All in all, Istanbul was just plain fun. I shopped, I ate, I bathed, I partied and then I did it all over again each day for about a week. Not a great cultural triumph port for me, but a whole lot of fun! After staying out late every night this port, and possibly picking up a stomach bug from Turkish street food, I had better go to sleep.

Club IQ.   Spencer, Me, Andrea, Andrew, Alicia, Krystin.

Cheers,

Bonnie
p.s. I DID pick up a bug from Turkish street food. I will spare you the details, but it was awful and lasted over a month.

Late Nights and Ancient Ruins: Athens Take Two

Athens is a bustling metropolis all grown up around a series of ancient ruins that date back to the glory days of the Greek Empire.  There is a lot to do here, both ancient ruins and bustling nightlife, and I had very little time to do it in.  Leah and I got started on our quest to see it all as soon as we were off the ferry from Santorini.  We went straight to our cooking class with SAS, which turned out to be less than amazing but at least gave us a lift into the city and a taste of Greek cuisine.  From there we toured the amazing Acropolis Museum and climbed to the top of the Pantheon.  Here were the best views of the city, and we took more pictures than I care to admit. 

As fun as ancient Athens is, the nightlife that evening was equally impressive.  After asking around, a group of my ship friends ended up in a very hip area of Athens called Gazi that is a bit like Austin’s 6th street times 10 (not that I would actually know what 6th street is like at night, since I’ve only driven by, but I’m guessing here).  It made for great people watching, great fun, and we stayed out past 5 a.m.  We were, I believe, among the first to leave this area.  I could tell that everywhere we went was authentic because my friend Kara and I were always the only blondes in the entire bar.  That’s our new litmus test:  count the blondes for authenticity.

The last day in Athens I got a bit of a late start, but ended up in a very chic side of town with a very dear friend from the ship named Maegan.  We shopped street vendors and talked over coffee at a day bar on a stylish row of restaurants.  This was a Sunday afternoon in Athens:  everyone out with friends drinking coffee or cocktails and playing the board games that these day bars provided.   The U.S. might be the leader of the world in economic terms, but we could learn a lesson from the Greeks about relaxation.  Sure, our diet sucks and prevents us from living longer, but I’m convinced this Mediterranean secret to long life lies in cheap wine and no stress.  Maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

Now I am headed for Turkey and I’m getting a very strong feeling that I’m not in Kansas anymore.  I’m thrilled to be going to such an exotic, different place, but I’m also a little nervous.  Really, I just can’t wait to dock and see this Asian/European city whose population is greater than the entire country of Greece and which shares a boarder with Iraq.  Don’t worry mom, I’m not gonna try to cross over. 

Santorini, or Mamma Mia!

If my sort-of Canadian friend Cody Brandon set the standard for Canada and Roman Holiday gave me all the expectations I carried to Rome, then the brilliant, magical musical Mamma Mia set the bar incredibly high for the Greek Islands. This movie along with the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants were all I had to go on before I landed in beautiful Greece. I knew the history, I had a firm grasp on the many gods, and I’ve been hearing about mythology since I was a baby, but much of my impression of Greece was founded upon my many viewings of Meryl Streep in my favorite movie musical. I set off for my island adventure with ABBA playing in my head and was not disappointed by the beautiful sights and people in my island adventure.

We set off for the island of Santorini at about 11:00 p.m. Earlier that day we had a pretty stressful time purchasing tickets, and Leah and I ended up with the last two tickets on the ferry (or so the ticket clerk told us) and had to pay a little bit more than Krystin and Kara, our travel companions for this island adventure, who ended up with cheaper coach tickets.

By some miracle our cab successfully dropped us at the correct port, and I was faced with one of the craziest scenes I’ve encountered in my entire life. I should have guessed that the only midnight ferry to Santorini leaving on a Thursday evening in the tourist season might be a little packed, but nothing could have prepared me for these crowds. With a similar degree of anticipation and fear to what I had last fall at an outdoor Kings of Leon performance, I struggled with thousands of backpackers, families, Athenians, mopeds, eighteen wheelers, smart cars, college students, and ferry workers to cram onto the boat before it left the port. I was not looking forward to sleeping on the floor for the entire night that it takes to get to the island, but I approached the situation with a positive outlook. When we found our check-in desk on the ship we were ushered to the spotless personal cabin Leah and I had to ourselves and it was bigger than our cabin on the MV Explorer. To my utter delight, it came fully equipped with a personal bathroom, shower, two beds and reading lamps. In short, it was heaven on earth. Our travel companions were unfortunately relegated to sleeping on the floor of the ship and sharing a bathroom with hundreds of other ferry travelers. It was the best extra 20 Euros I’ve ever spent.

After a heavenly night’s sleep, I awoke to the ferry pulling in at the paradise island of Santorini. The sun was shining, the water was blue, and I hadn’t a care in the world. Except, of course, that we didn’t yet have a place to stay. For this adventure we subscribed to the wing-it college travel theory. We didn’t book ahead and we didn’t have a clue where we would be spending the night. Within minutes we were approached by a Greek man with a ponytail twice as long as my own who showed us pictures of an apartment 5 minutes from the black sand beach on the south side of the island near the fishing village of Perissa. Under normal conditions, I would not condone getting in a van with a man who wore his hair past his waist, but the room was only 17 Euros a night, and the pictures sure looked pretty.

Things couldn’t have turned out better for us, and after a short bus ride to the other side of the island we arrived at the cutest white washed, blue roofed hotel I could have ever imagined. Best of all, it was a short stroll to the black sand beach where we spent the entire first day soaking up the Mediterranean sun. This was seriously the best beach I’ve ever been to, and I’m not a beach person. The water was crystal clear and the perfect temperature and we swam in it all day. The black sand created a startling contrast to the blue of the ocean and the sky and the beach was lined with the most charming bungalow bars I have ever seen. What was most unexpected was the complete lack of people. We literally had an entire stretch of beach to ourselves for the entire day with no one around to bother us besides the occasional traveling street vendor peddling very convincing Ray Bans. The only negative was that I had forgot my sunglasses on the ship, but more on that later.

That evening we proceeded to Fira, the main town on the island, for dinner and a view and slept quite soundly in our apartment by the sea. Not too much debauchery on Santorini today, but a surplus of pure bliss.

The next day was packed with shopping, eating, donkey rides and some beachside bar hopping before it was unfortunately time to leave. Santorini is an amazing place to be. It has great beaches, great shopping, breathtaking sunsets and a blend of ancient charm, rustic wilderness, a color palette unsurpassed by any other place I have visited and a heavy pinch of fun. It is covered in valleys of grape vines popping out of rough volcanic soil and woven into a living basket around themselves, sprinkled with small fishing villages built on and around breathtaking sea cliffs, and brimming with its own unique brand of charm. It is paradise and I can honestly say that it is my favorite of all the places we have visited so far. I was not ready to leave on the midnight ferry.

By this time, however I had noticed that something was definitely wrong with my eyes. They were incredibly itchy and would not stop running and after a long day I had no makeup left for all the rubbing and itching and tears. I was terrified that I might be getting pink eye, that perhaps I was allergic to donkeys or that I was somehow adverse to seaside island life. When I went into an Internet café while waiting for the ferry, the guy behind the register asked “why you crying?” and I knew I had to do something. I woke up the next morning in the luxurious ferry cabin to eyes glued shut, and once we were back to the MV Explorer I went straight to the clinic. Want to know what the problem was? My eyes were sunburned. Sunburned!!! Yeah, it is actually possible. I had slathered sunscreen over every inch of my body, but since I left my sunglasses at the ship the Mediterranean sun burned my fair colored eyes. Nothing a bottle of eye drops can’t fix, but definitely something I didn’t see coming.

Eye sunburn aside, Santorini was amazing. It was the most relaxing experience of my life, and fully lived up to all of my Greek island dreams. I wasn’t ready to leave, and I’m already set to go back. Next stop: The Acropolis at Athens.