Chefprefers BLOG

The Crosby Stills Nash song that debuted in 1969, where I always thought the lyrics were “You know we’re riding on the American Express” only to find out 45 years later that I was mistaken. I’m such an idiot. Now I am going on a train to Marrakech from Fez via Casablanca I’m doing it and first class. Wow! Although I thought we were up for the shake and bake tour, it was pretty smooth, the aircon worked and we arrived after 5 hours instead of 8, as advertised, cool. In our booth, there was Pieter and Ruth, a local fellow who lived in Montreal for eight years and has a son who lives in Ottawa and speaks pretty good English and our tour leader Hassan.

Our tour was ending the next day and Hassan was busy organising his next tour via phone calls and text messages and which was starting the next night. There appeared to be no rest for him. He was quite different to Diana. Diana was more involved with us always dining or came with us on our outings. Hassan was off somewhere else. Either sitting alone at meals or being with the other Moroccan tour leaders or bus drivers. His English wasn’t as good as Diana’s so I suspect that was the reason. He seemed to be friendly and always pleasant and helpful but kept his distance. He struggled at times communicating with us by speaking broken English for example when asked about what we were doing he would reply ”Aaaah we ah going ah to get ah taxi to ah the hotel.” And as you can imagine quite difficult to follow. But he has a good heart!

When we arrived at the hotel, it was nice to know it had a pool since it was 32 degrees and sunny, so it didn’t take us too long to put on our swimmers and go for a dip.

That night was our last tour dinner together and we ended up in a roof top restaurant at the Marrakech square. It was quite a large area with hoards amounts of vendors selling food and tourists items and Yes, Marrakech has their fare share spruikers, beggars and buskers. I had to have my last true Moroccan Tagine before we left. I also had Moroccan beer which I thought was taboo here in this Muslim city, but it looks like they would sell anything for the tourist dollar. The beer tasted like Heineken. Go figure.

The next morning we said our good byes to the group and we were off to Geneva for a day. Next up time for some Tim Hortons.