Today was a nice day. It was pretty slow paced. We woke up a bit early and went to Rabat. It is an hour and a half drive to Rabat, the capital of Morocco, which I slept most of the time on the way there. We were only in Rabat for a short while, maybe two or three hours. For being a capital city, there was not much to see. We went to the palace where the King often stays, then headed off to a mausoleum of an old King, then to the older part of the city, the Old Medina, and then back home.
The palace was huge. It was well guarded by men with huge guns. It was not the most impressive palace I have been to, but it had a large front garden area, one of the biggest I have seen. The palace has its own mosque for the King to go to. The mausoleum was also guarded by men with huge guns, but it was also guarded by men on horses. We got to see the changing of the horses and guards, which was good timing. I forced Jack for a photo that she didnt seem to want to take because she didnt want to get that close to those horses. The Old Medina was neat. Walked through a garden area, over looked the city, snuck through picturesque little streets of white and blue. We went into a little bakery that bakes all of the bread for the people of the town for free so that the people of the town didnt have to have their own oven or have an oven heating their house during the summer months, very communal.
Once back to Casablanca from the tour, we were able to talk to our parents on Skype. It was nice talking to them. We probably talked an hour and half or so. It was tough seeing my dog, because I am miss her pretty bad, haha. I am pathetic.
We had plans to eat dinner with two professors from the ship. They are not our professors, but they seem to like us. It is funny they do because we are nothing like them. They are in their 60s at least. They both teach liberal arts, one Shakespeare the other another form of theatre. It is blows my mind that they like us business kids so much. I think it is because Jack and I are like 80 year olds compared to the typical college students that we are on this trip with.
The Gillespies (the two professors, married, teach at University of Michigan-Flint) took us to a very nice local restaurant. We had three different traditional Moroccan meals, two kinds of desert, and some mint tea. It was a great meal! We had lamb with olive and lemon in a tagine, a chicken and almond pastilla (which is like a cinnamon crusted pot pie with nuts, super different sounding, super good), mixed meat couscous, and some Moroccan pastries. We ate and chatted with them for probably three and a half hours. They showed us the teachers suite up on the top deck with a balcony where we talked again for a bit. It was a nice evening.
Now, we are back to the ship. Jack is doing homework and I am starting to work on making a video from our trip. I cant believe we in the second week of August and we are on the last port of our voyage.
Tomorrow, we plan to go to Marrakesh. It is a cultural center. We will be there all day, should be fun.
