After L. and I got married, we took a trip to Morocco for our honeymonn. Actually, I had made a committment a long time before to attend the 2008 LREC Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, so we went together as a kind of honeymoon. It was the best honeymoon conference ever.

Read more for notes from the trip, and a few pictures.
   

May 26th, Monday

Monday morning, L. and I were planning to meet at Shinagawa Station at 8:30am to take a Narita Express train. We had a 1pm flight out of Tokyo, and would get to the airport at about 10:00am, three hours in advance. I’m usually a stickler for getting to airports early, especially for international flights. We had no trouble getting there, and before heading into the security and passport control we signed up for some travel insurance. I’m sure we won’t need it, but if something gets stolen or there are any problems we are covered. I had never thought about stuff like that before, but L. thinks of these kinds of things. After a long coffee break, we head into the airport, hit up a bookshop (L. didn’t bring any books! I brought lots of research papers, and have work to do, but I also ended up buying two books – “The Audacity of Hope” by Barak Obama, and “The Curious Incident with the Dog in the Night”, which I have heard good things about.)

We got on the plane, and 12 hours later we arrived in Rome. The flight was AlItalia, which is generally pretty good I think. The food was nice, but the entertainment systems sucked. I had this experience on another flight recently: I could not see the LCD in the back of the chair. Everything was inverted, like watching a film in negative. I could get the color right if I scrunched down in the seat in a really uncomfortable way, but it wasn’t really worth it. I watched “Jumper” – a pretty crappy movie – and the first half of “Michael Clayton” I think? The entertainment system then went down for the rest of the flight. The lights were also blinking on and off. I read a bit of the Audacity of Hope, and the first chapter of one of L.’s books – “What am I supposed do to for the next four years, judge?” about watching criminal trials in Tokyo. It is pretty interesting, and I’ll try to read more.

After we arrived in Rome, we had a 4 hour layover, but we don’t get into Casablanca until 11:00pm! We don’t have any reservations anywhere though, since I didn’t realise that we had a 14 hour layover, so I have to figure out how to do that. I checked and got some phone numbers for hotels in Casablanca. I called two places – spent 20 Euros on two phone cards! – and made a reservation at the Sheraton for ~ 2300 Dirham (the other place I called, the Hyatt was ~ 4300 a night, and another one was booked.) It was also incredibly hard to hear what people were saying on the other end of the phone. I hate payphones: the infrastructure is totally going to crap now that nobody uses them.

The flight from Rome to Casablanca wasn’t bad: about four hours. Feels like nothing after that 12 hour flight, and countless flights to America. The plane was relatively empty, but we were in a row with three people. The steward said we could move if we liked, but the lady on the aisle seat didn’t want to move, we didn’t really want to make her get up and move all our junk, so we just stayed. She was a bit strange – she was talking to herself for most of the flight over. We probably should have moved.

Once in Casablanca we took a Taxi from the airport, which took about 35 minutes and cost 250 Dirham. The hotel was amazing. The buffet breakfast was great. We had a nice room up on the 12th floor with a nice view of the city. The satellite dishes bloom like flowers in Morocco.

The next morning we went to the Hassan II Mosque, and took a tour for about 120 Dhr, but only had time for half the tour. The Hassan II Mosque is amazing – it is the third largest Mosque in the world. It was built recently – back in 1986 I think? – and is really impressive. The thing is just huge. I wish we had been able to finish the tour, but we didn’t have time. We cut out after seeing the main temple interior (missing the basement and place where you wash your feet) and continued with our taxi driver Abdul to the airport (400 total for taking us to the mosque, waiting there, and then going to the hotel.) We were one of a group of the last three people to board the plane, it was really close! That was easily the latest I’ve ever been to a flight – the women at the check-in counter told us that we had better run! The flight to the plane was probably only a third full and it was a large plane, which really surprised me. The flight to Marrakech was only about 40 minutes, so I figured they would use a prop plane or something, but I guess it is a pretty major route in Morocco since the place was like a 767 or something.

When we arrived in Marrakech, we took a taxi to the hotel – 150? too expensive! it is probably walkable (40 minutes?) Then we went to the conference center, registered and went back to the hotel. We later registered for a day trip to the Ouirgane valley. The hotel is very nice, the Atlas Asni on Mohammed VII boulevard. This entire street is full of nice hotels, and we can walk to the Convention Center in about two minutes so it is really very convenient. The hotel is a four star hotel, but in all honesty the Sheraton in Casablanca was much nicer. Still, the place is nice. We had asked for a double bed, but the place is packed due to the conference and we were only able to get a room with two single beds. Our shower either leaks, or more likely, I haven’t managed to figure out the curtain well enough yet to keep water from spilling onto the floor. (L. hasn’t had any trouble, so go figure!) There is a nice buffet breakfast, and we also can have either a lunch or dinner buffet, which are nice. That also keeps us from worrying about finding a place to eat in Marrakech, which is nice because everything around here is expensive, and things in the Medina are confusing.

L. and I walked to the Medina, and got completely lost. It took a bit longer than 30 minutes to walk there. We found a set of gates into the Medina, and once inside there, we totally got lost. We just wandered around for a while. It was lots of fun actually – although I think L. was getting a bit annoyed because I didn’t know where I was going. Generally, I do not know where I am going, so this was no different. I just didn’t know where I was going in a foreign country that speaks a language that I do not know. (Although, you could say that my daily life in Japan is hardly any different…)

One place that I really wanted to go was the main Square in Marrakech, the Jma El Fna. I remember from my previous trip to Marrakech with Alana that the square was a lot of fun, and I loved the Orange Juice that they sell there. We eventually found our way to the main square after I asked a uniformed guy outside of the expensive-looking Art museum or shop. We wandered around for a bit, then had some orange juice, and then one of the snake guys got a snake on me, and we paid too much for that – 200 dirhims! They were asking for about 500 but I didn’t want to pay that much. L. was a bit mad at me that I got taken by these guys, but what are you going to do? In general, I think that when someone is putting snakes on you, they really have the power in that relationship. The snakes actually really freaked me out, even though I know that they are trained snakes and there isn’t any problem with them, but I didn’t like them. I think that is why I was willing to pay the expensive price – I just wanted to get out of there. 200 dirhims is something like $30, so it isn’t really a big deal, but was expensive compared to everything else we were paying for by then.

While walking around the square someone asked me if I wanted to pet his monkey. I never want to be asked that again. 🙂

Since we walked from the Hotel, we were tired and took a taxi back. L. was a little mad at me because I paid 25 DHR for a Taxi back and that was too much (down from 30!) I just think she isn’t used to Morocco and I told her that I am not good at bargaining at all. I just don’t like doing it. But we did have a fun time – it was really fun walking around the Medina, and half the experience of Morocco is getting swindled. We didn’t make it to the Souks (market center) so we will head back for that I think for buying Omiyage.

May 28th, Wednesday

In the morning I bumped into Min-Yen Kan, which was great. I hope that we will have some time to catch up later! He had two presentations today, one an oral presentation and one a poster presentation. His oral presentation on the ACL anthology looks very interesting.

Ouirgane Valley Trip

Today we took a trip to Ouirgane Valley – it was an all day affair, leave at 9am, get in a 4×4 and drive up into the mountain, then stop at a lake, have lunch, and drive back to Marrakech.

The trip out there was lots of fun. We went with two other people: so L. and I, Simon, and Alexandre. Simon is from Malta, but living in Ireland. Alexandre is a researcher at IBM in Ireland, originally from Russia. We all were in one Toyota (?) 4×4 with our driver, who spoke French. Our group covered English, Japanese, Russian, and German, but we didn’t have much French experience. We drove for about an hour out of Marrakech on pretty good roads, and stopped up in the foothills where there was a nice view of a Berber village. We went into a little women’s collective that makes Argan oil. It is a tourist place where they have women breaking open the seeds, grinding them up, then squeezing them into a paste and pressing the oil out from that. I wanted to get some Soap and L. wanted some of the moisturizing oil but they wanted 300 Dhr total, and I tried to get them down to 150 Dhr. They weren’t having any of it and would only give me a 5% break, so we left. We can probably find that kind of stuff in the Souk I think. I later asked my sister – who lived in Morocco for two and a half years while with the Peace Corps – about the Argan oil, and it turns out that since you can’t buy that stuff outside of Morocco (for the most part, that has changed a bit recently according to Wikipedia) the places that sell it generally will not bargain. That’s news to me. I thought that everyone here would bargain. I should have taken the 5% discount I got then! Well, you live and learn. Alana also mentioned that she wished she had not walked out on one deal a few years back for some jewelry. She walked out over a 15 Dirham difference, which is about $2, and in retrospect thinks that she should have just gone for it. She was able to speak Arabic and some Berber Tashalhait at the time though, so she actually knew what she was doing.

Anyway, back in the car we drove on for another hour and a half into some rugged terrain. The roads were unpaved – in some places they were working on the roads, and cars would drive behind the large trucks that were smoothing out the roads. Near the end the roads were totally crazy: just trails really, pretty bumpy and rocking. Lots of windy and twisty turns. We passed crazy amounts of goats and people on donkeys. There were some really breathtaking views, which probably won’t come out in the pictures which were mostly taken while driving.

We stopped by a lake up in the mountains that was really impressive. The place we ate was essentially just a bunch of tents set up with a nice view of the lake. There were some other tourists around, but not really that many. Lunch was quite nice: pita bread with cooked vegetables was quite tasty. Then we had some beef shish-ka-bobs, also quite nice, and finally a chicken on the bone dish (Chicken Tajine) with some other vegetables. A bottle of wine went well with the lunch, and then a big old bowl of fruits and some tea and cookies. Lunch was a relaxed affair, about two hours, but our driver had recommended three hours. We realized that the proper way to eat was lounging on our side, and with a nice nap afterwards. That would be have been great. The tea was the standard Moroccan tall pour too-sweet mint tea, but it wasn’t as strong as some others I have had and was pretty good.

We hopped back into the SUV for a trip back, and took a slightly different, faster route which also went through some villages with amazing views.

We returned at about 4pm, and overall I think it was really worth it. The total cost was about 1500 Dirhim for both of us, and totally worth it I think. We were both pretty tired – it took a surprisingly large amount of effort while driving around on all the hairpin turns to prevent yourself from being thrown around in the car – so we didn’t do anything in the evening. Because of the large lunch, we didn’t even eat dinner! I spent some time working on email and slides, and then we fell asleep.

I also made sure to let the front desk know that we didn’t get a wake up call in the morning. They made sure we were signed up for the next time – and we did get a wake up call, even though I wasn’t sure it would happen. In’sha allah.

May 29th, Thursday

We got up at 7:30am this morning – there was a wake-up call! – and got breakfast. Then I headed to the convention center for the conference, and L. I think will get a massage at the beauty salon.

I spent the morning at the conference, and went a bit early to the Keynote speech to see Julia Hirshberg, who was talking about affect in speech. We had a nice chat and caught up a little, also it seems like Nizar Habash, Mona Diab, and perhaps Rebecca Passonneau are at the conference. (I later did bump into Nizar, but I didn’t see anyone else from Columbia.) After the keynote I stayed in the main hall for the session on emotion, which was generally pretty interesting (I’ve got separate notes on the conference so I’ll keep the boring details out of this more personal travel journal.) The session ended at about 13:45, and I was back at the hotel before 14:00.

L. said that the Spa was nice, but didn’t really elaborate much. She was the only one there, so nobody told her about how to use the Hamman bath. From what I’ve gathered from Alana, you basically work up a good sweat, then use a rock to scrape off the dust. It doesn’t sound all that great to me, but I’ve never been all that big on Spas. I think Japan’s Onsen idea is better – but still too hot!

L. and I met Min in the lobby, and had lunch together. Min’s presentations ended on the first day, so he had the afternoon free. We all decided to go down to the Menara Olive Garden. There is a really large reflecting pool there, built in the middle of an olive orchard, and a nice little residence that used to be used by the royalty in some fashion. Now the place is just a large local pool (more or less.) I went there once before with my sister, but I remember the water being very clear and beautiful. This time the water was pretty grimy and dark, I was really surprised because it was very different from what I remembered. We walked around the place and Min was kind enough to take some pictures of L. and I (we still have a shocking lack of pictures of us together on trips!) and then we paid the 10 Dirhim fee to go inside the little palace building. It had a very nice second floor and a great view of the area.

On the way out I decided that I was going to ride a camel. The first time I went to Morocco I never did a camel ride, and I kind of regret not having done that. I haven’t run across any ride-able camels in the 11 years since then, so I figured if I wanted to ever ride a camel, this was the time to do it. Of course it is a big tourist trap, and completely not worth the money for any practical reasons, but just getting up on a camel was pretty cool. I could not convince L. to do, maybe because she thinks it is just a waste of perfectly good money, so I went on my own. I had a nice bargaining session, and I think the ride cost 50 Dirhim (~ $7?) which sounds reasonable to me. I’ve ridden horses before, but this was different. The camel was pretty tall, a lot higher up than a horse, and the gait was a bit different. Interesting. Next I have to ride an elephant. L. clarifies: riding a camel in a city is just stupid. If we were in the desert, she would ride one. Of course, if we were in a desert and forced to ride a camel as our only transportation, I would be a bit worried about exactly what kind of situation we had gotten ourselves into…

After the Menara Olive Garden, Min decided to go back to the hotel because the jet-lag was catching up with him. L. and I had a day’s head start on the jet-lag, so were still ok (but we both were getting exhausted pretty early, like by 10pm) and decided to try to see the Royal Palace. We found a taxi, and after some bargaining he took us to the Palace. Min had gone on a tour the day before where they went into the palace and also saw some crypts somewhere nearby. We didn’t really know where those were, so just tried to go to the Palace. Our driver was really talkative and was excited about giving us a tour of the city I think, but I had a lot of trouble understanding his accent – I’m generally pretty good at accents, but maybe I’ve become attuned to deciphering Japanese English. He said that it was not possible for us to enter the Palace, only Moroccan people could. I don’t know if that is strictly true, but we had wandered around the place earlier without finding a way in, or any ticket offices, so that might be true. Going as part of a tour group would make sense if the place is generally closed off to the public.

Anyway, our driver suggested a trip to the Majorelle Gardens, which are supposed to be quite nice. We negotiated 90 Dirhim to take us there and back to Jma El Fna (the big crazy square in front of the Souks) for some shopping. It was a bit touch and go, but he eventually gave in. We had about 45 minutes at the garden, which was pretty nice. Lots of cacti and bamboo. It was nice just relaxing for a bit.

After the Gardens we found our driver and headed back to the Souks. We hadn’t done any major shopping yet, so this was going to be our big shopping day. I wasn’t really looking forward to it, because I find the process of bargaining for everything really tiring. It is especially difficult because when the shop owners see a white guy with a Japanese woman, they assume we are tourists (correctly!) and I’m sure the prices start out super high. Since I don’t know the actual value of the things I’m buying, I have no idea what to aim for, or what is a good or bad deal. I generally just try to get them to come down by 50% and figure that is good enough. It isn’t like any of this stuff is super expensive, so even if I get taken for a ride, it isn’t that bad.

There is really only one thing I wanted to buy: another pair of leather slippers. I bought a pair when I visited Alana in Morocco years ago, and used those slippers for about 7 years before they fell apart. They were super comfortable after they were broken in. So I wanted a pair of slippers for myself, and otherwise some Argan Oil Infused Soap would make some good presents for friends back home. L. had a few things in mind also.

The Souks are really interesting. Very colorful, noisy, narrow, and busy. Mopeds and scooters weave their way through the crowds in a way that should be totally unlawful, but must not be due to how often it happens. People are shouting at you all the time to try to get you to come into their shops. Usually they start out in French, but will cycle through a few languages with English usually second or third. L. was getting a few “Konnichiwa”s and “Ohio”s, even a few “Gioppanese?” (maybe the French for Japanese?) She said she was pretending to be Korean. There was even one guy who had a pretty good accent who asked “Are you Japanese?” We stopped at the first shop we saw with shoes and tried on a few, argued a bit about price, but then moved on. The owner did not seem happy about that. I got completely and thoroughly lost. The first place that we stopped for some real shopping was a clothing stall. The guy there was very friendly. L. picked up a two small shirts for babies, and one larger one for herself, all at a pretty good deal I think: 250 Dirhim.

We continued on, and a bit later stopped at a shoe shop. Two kids were in there helping out. They pulled over a chair for L.. The place was quite small, so there was basically only room for one person at a time. The shop owner helped us out, gave suggestions and so on. I picked up a pair of the standard slippers which I intend for indoor use, and L. got a cute pair of outside wear sandal type things with a bit of a heel. While I went with the shop owner to get change – the total cost for both pair was about 250 I think (which is probably about 2x what we should have paid based on later evidence) – L. stayed behind with the kids. She gave them some candy, which they really liked, and then she took a picture of the shop.

We wandered around even more, and stopped at a nut place. I got 100g of salty nuts – I wanted the sugar ones, but L. wanted salty ones, and since I enjoy salty stuff too that seemed a better compromise than insisting on nuts that she wouldn’t eat. Those nuts took three days to eat – I finally ate the majority of them on our flight on Atlas-blue.com airlines, which seems to be a budget Moroccan airline since they didn’t give anything for free. They did have stuff for sale though.

We also stopped at one of the Argan oil shops, and L. picked up a three pack of Argan Oils. I don’t really remember what the deal on that was, but I think it was ok overall. At a later place we found it would have cost a bit more, so probably we did alright.

After our shopping was more or less complete, we headed back to the Jma El Fna to try to find dinner. We thought it would be fun to eat at one of the stalls out in the square, so we headed that way. The people there are very aggressive, grabbing your arm, trying to get you to come to their stall. We wandered around for a while, and settled on one of the stalls near the end of the row that had a lot of people there. Everyone (mostly locals it looked like) was eating the same thing: Sausages with bread and a hot sauce. We ordered that – although there was some trouble since they only spoke French – and things looked pretty good. I believe that according to the menu we would have to pay 10 dirhim. We got some tea with the meal, but I didn’t really like this tea. It was very sweet, and had a very strong mint flavor. It tasted almost exactly like bubble gum of some kind. We had another tea earlier, on the mountain trip that was not as sweet or minty, and I liked that tea. This tea was too much though.

The sausages and bread came out with the red sauce. A bit later one of the guys gave us another sauce, which was actually spicy, and much better than the bland one that we had initially. You pick up a sausage with the bread, dip it, and eat. It was a nice meal – I like the simplicity, and it had a really nice taste. All of those stands also sell Tarjine and Cous Cous as well as other things, but everyone that came to this place was only eating the sausages, and I agree that they are the way to go.

As we were getting ready to go, a problem: they wanted us to pay 45 dirhims! Oh no! The problem is that we had Sausages et Pain, which was 35 dirhims and then another 10 dirhims for the bread I think.) Anyway, I don’t know why but for whatever reason I completely thought that 35 dirhims was 350 dirhims, which would put the meal at close to $50. I thought that was ridiculous and was trying to argue with them. Since they didn’t understand English, things weren’t going well. The people next to us did some interpretation, but that didn’t help because I understood the problem: I just thought it was too expensive. Anyway, we ended up paying the 35 dirhim, and I left in a foul mood. A few hours later, I realized that in fact the meal cost closer to $5 and I was just suffering from brain-meltdown.

On the way back we took a Taxi, and the driver wanted 50 dirhim for what should be a 20 dirhim trip. He argued that at night there is a different price structure, a fee (levied by whom? Like there would be any real organization in Marrakech that would be organized enough to actually collect nighttime fees!) for night travel. We got him down to 30 dirhims after a lot of complaining on his part, but I think 20 dirhim should be possible really.

May 30th, Friday

I presented on Friday, so I attended the morning sessions. This worked out very well because there was another sentiment session that I wanted to see, and then the multilingual session where I presented. The presentation went well, and after the talk I spoke with Jack Halpern for a bit, and then ran in Francis Bond and Kiyotaka Uchimoto from NICT. Francis was interested in getting lunch together, so we had lunch at the hotel and L. was nice enough to join us. We talked some shop, but also had some nice social conversation as well.

After lunch L. and I spent a bit of time back in the room trying to figure out what to do next. L. checked our itinerary and brought up a huge point that I had totally missed: we have a long layover in Milan. Not just a few hours, but 24 hours. Or maybe 26. We need a hotel. This is actually kind of funny because this entire trip has had two of these unexpected last might surprise vacations. I didn’t realize it until we arrived in Rome for our first transfer, but we had 24 hours in Casablanca. That’s enough time for a good night’s sleep and a bit of sightseeing, which we did. Getting a hotel was a bit of stress on short notice then – because it was seriously short notice, and I didn’t have good access to the internet – but this time we had a full day and good free internet access. I booked us a hotel through hotline.com I think for $130 near Central Station. There wasn’t much other information on exactly where, but it was supposed to be a two or three minute walk. Since we didn’t have a printer, I figured we could just ask the police or something once we got there.

So, what to do for the rest of the afternoon? I wanted to eat a traditional Moroccan dinner so I called up a place in L.’s guide book and made a reservation. L. had gone in the morning to an artist collective where there are a bunch of shops that sell stuff (no bargaining!) where she got some nice scarves, a few tea cups, and maybe some other stuff. She wanted to go back to pick up a few other presents, and I wanted to get one or two things myself. We walked down to the collective – a nice 40 minute walk – and marvelled at the lawless and unruly Moroccan traffic. Once there we spent some time looking around, took a break and had some Coca-Cola. I did anyway – she had Fanta Orange, which is kind of a let-down compared to the excellent Orange Juice in Jma El Fna. Every day we have had one glass of juice there. It is by far the best bargain in Marrakech. The fresh-squeezed juice is 3 dirhims (about 80 cents??) and is a mix of orange juice and maybe another fruit. You drink from their glasses, which is nice and environmental, but perhaps not the most sanitary thing in the world. Some people put in sugar — sugar! — to sweeten the sweet juice even more, which is difficult for me to comprehend. The stuff is great though. The truly amazing thing, from our point of view, is that we were paying 20 dirhims for bottled water (admittedly, at our hotel) so fresh squeezed juice was almost an order of magnitude cheaper. I wish we had found an actual supermarket because we probably could have gotten some good omiyage there cheaply, but we just didn’t have the time to search one out.

After our little break, we finished up shopping – some more Argan oil, two tea cups for me, and some more scarves – then headed over to Jma El Fna. Earlier I had made 8pm reservations at the restaurant El Marrakechi, which is a well-known place overlooking the square. We had some time to kill, so wandered around the square, taking in the sights one last time. At the restaurant, we were seated up on the third floor, and L. had a pretty nice view of the square below. I ordered us a half bottle of wine, lamb shish-ka-bobs, and chicken tarjinne with onions and almonds. The wine was pretty good – the Moroccan CP (something Presidenté? Don’t they have a King there? You can’t forget that they have a King because his picture is everywhere!) red wine, which was pretty young, and a bit sour. It wasn’t bad though, just a strong taste to it. The food came out together, and I asked for plates so we could share it. I thought the lamb was just delicious, and it came on a nice bed of steamed vegetables that were good. I also liked the chicken a lot, but it was in a very, very sweet sauce that L. wasn’t over fond of. She had more of the lamb because of that, but I can’t complain: the food was great, the view was nice, and the company was excellent. When we got the check our waiter said something, but I didn’t quite hear. I asked him again, didn’t catch it, and figured it couldn’t be all that important. The total cost of the meal was 230 – and this is at one of the most expensive Moroccan restaurants in town, although I’m sure the French / Western ones are more expensive.

While waiting for the change, it looked like a birthday party or something had started. Loud music came up over the speaker system, and a lady with a platter on candles balanced on her head walked in. Interesting! Then behind her two young, scantily clad belly dancers danced their way into the room, and put on a show. Even more interesting! They were very funny, walking around the room and dancing with men and women, got up on chairs, and looked to happily accept cash donations. They also (surprisingly) had no problems with pictures, and would pose for good shots (although they never stopped moving.) I had a few, but L. decided I didn’t need those pictures because her head was in them. Too bad because I liked the two or three shots that I took a lot. L. took my camera and got a few shots of her own that she liked because her head didn’t appear in them. My head appeared nowhere near the belly dancers in any way, which is probably how L. likes things. 🙂

We waited around a bit after the show for our change, but by then I was pretty sure that the waiter said something like “There will be a show next that will cost 20 dirhims” or something like that, so we just left. Nobody tried to stop us to give us change, so that is probably what happened. For about $35 I have no complaints about the meal at all, and the belly dancer show (that happened at 9pm sharp) was pretty cool too. L. also seemed to get a kick out of it, so that worked out really well.

We headed back by Taxi again, and when someone tried to argue us out of 50 dirhim I just said that we payed 20 the night before and he quickly said ok and took us. It was amazing. I can’t believe I figured out the magic taxi trick on our final night.

May 31st, Saturday

We were a bit concerned about the flight the next morning: it was a 7:10 flight out of Marrakech airport direct to Milan. At the conference in the morning they announced that Morocco would be going onto “Summer Time” and at 2am it would change to 3am, so people should be careful not to miss their workshops. It wasn’t clear to me when this was happening (Friday night? Saturday night?) or if it was happening – it sounds like maybe the airlines wouldn’t be honoring the changes? – or what, so to be safe we got up at 3:30am. I had made a reservation earlier for a taxi to the airport, but we weren’t too sure that would actually come through – I don’t have much fair in organization in Morocco in general – so we made sure that we had 150 dirhim for the trip to the airport if we had to take our own taxi. We did an amazing job with money, and had only 150 dirhim left. We ran into Min in the lobby at about 4am, who was also headed to the airport. He was trying to pay his room bill – which couldn’t have been more than $20 – by credit card, but they wanted cash, which he didn’t have. They sent him to an ATM that didn’t work, and eventually they grudgingly accepted his credit card. He hopped in a taxi with his remaining cash and went to the airport.

We went outside and waited for the taxi we had ordered to come. There were a bunch of other people from the conference waiting also, so at least other people were in the same boat with us. We probably waited about half an hour. I had read on the internet when I was searching for information about our hotel that there is a late night bar there where ladies of the night work. While we waiting, there were not a small number of attractive, young women pulling up in taxis and heading to the bar. I remember two of them going in together, and then maybe twenty minutes later walking out on either side of a pretty happy-looking guy. I continue to be impressed with how secular Morocco is for a Muslim country. This also cleared something up that had been bugging me since we arrived: every morning, at about 4 or 5 in the morning, without fail there would be some very loud and very intense arguments directly below our first-floor (second floor American counting style) window. Looking at the entrance to the bar (Cabaret it said) our room was almost directly above. I’m pretty sure these were arguments between drunk customers or other bar-related type things. I was seriously confused about what might have been going on those other mornings, but I figured that we would be woken up by morning call to prayers anyway, so no big deal. Also, sometimes listening to the arguments (in a language I could not understand) was pretty interesting in my muddled sleep-filled state.

Anyway, a guy finally showed up from the travel agency and confirmed our appointment. He wrangled over two Petit Taxis for six people. They loaded up luggage, and then told L. and I to get into different taxis. That really bothered me because I do not want to be separated from L.. It was probably irrational, but if something bad it going to happen, I want to be together, not in separate taxis. I complained and eventually one of the conference guys switched taxis so L. and I could be in the same taxi – but her luggage was in the other taxi, and because these are petit taxis, she had to carry my luggage in her lap. That was kind of ridiculous because the transfer we paid for was almost the same price as a taxi (a bit more expensive actually) so by stuffing everyone into two taxis they are making good money. They could have at least sprung for the Grand Taxis.

Back at the airport we went through an unbelievably cursory security check – put bags on a Xray machine, don’t worry about taking out your laptop, etc. – and no metal detector for us, then lined up at the window for our flight. There was one person ahead of us. There was one line. L. went off to change her money. She came back (with like 10 Euros) and we waited. For about an hour. In that time a line had formed behind each desk marked for Milan, and the lines had grown pretty long. A single guy came and opened up the right-most line, which was also the last one to form. He worked that line for 15 minutes or so before the business man that was ahead of us had enough and jumped in front. Then all hell broke loose as all three lines turned into a mob, a second guy came and opened the middle desk, L. and I were right there and got through, but not before some other guy tried to get in front of us, and then complained bitterly. I heard him say “juije” which Alana taught me is Arabic for “second”. He had been second in the leftmost line, but that had formed maybe twenty minutes after L. and I had already been waiting…

Anyway, we got checked in, then went outside to take some pictures, and headed for the terminal gates. I wonder what happened back there, because as we were leaving it was starting to get noisy. Security was very lax compared to Japan, the US, or Italy. When we got to the gates, it was clear that the flight would be delayed. We hadn’t even started boarding by the time we were supposed to have taken off. I don’t know if the flight was delayed because of the check-in problems, or for some other reason, but we didn’t leave until at least an hour after scheduled departure time.

The flight to Milan was on Atlas-Blue.com, a no-frills budget airline. We didn’t get anything: no water, no peanuts, nothing. I ate the peanuts I had bought in the Marrakech markets a few days earlier. The flight was uneventful, and short at about 4 hours (I think.) When we arrived at Milan they herded us down to a place to board a bus, but there were no buses for a while. Some of the ground crew seemed to be very surprised, and a bit unhappy, to see our large group show up. Eventually buses showed up and we went through immigration. After that we got tickets for the Malpensa Express to Cardona station, and from there asked about our hotel at the information center. We had to take the green line to Central Station, which was only about 5 stops down the line. At Central Station we asked the police where the street with our hotel was, and they pointed us in a direction, but after about an hour of walking it was clear that it was not the correct direction. I called the hotel, got better directions, and we were there about five minutes later.

After checking in we took the yellow line down to Duomo, where there is a beautiful Cathedral. It looks like they were setting up for a music festival – a classical one that was starting on June 2nd I think – and there were all sorts of things going on. There was some kind of band playing on the steps of the Cathedral, so we checked that out, and then wandered around a bit. We had some great Gelatto (mine was strawberry and some sort of chocolate with nuts.) We then wandered around some more, through the nice roofed Galleria shopping area, and over to the Opera Theatre. Then we just started walking with no real destination in mind, but ended up a great castle.

There was some sort of sports festival going on at the castle, so we spent a few hours wandering around there. L. really enjoyed the F1 Kart racing. It was pretty interesting – I had never seen F1 Kart racing before. While we watched there were a few accidents where people spun out, or bumped into the tire-walls. There was also an exhibition of some sculptor inside the castle grounds. It was really fun wandering around the whole place, but by the time we had made a complete circle we were both pretty tired. The remainder of the plan was get a nice dinner – particularly the Milanese breaded veal speciality – and then head back to the hotel for a full night’s rest instead of the amazingly abbreviated 3 hours or so we got the night before.

We looked around the area for a nice place, but couldn’t find much so we headed back to the Duomo (we had 24 hour subway passes) and went to a nice restaurant in the shopping galleria. I wanted to try some gnocchi, so we had gnocchi, the breaded veal cutlet, and a nice bottle of red. The whole meal came out to a bit under 100 euro: pretty expensive! I don’t know when the next time we’ll be in Italy is though, so I don’t mind. The breaded veal cutlet was amazing. The gnocchi were good, but L. much preferred the cutlet (as did I.) Next time I’ll get some more standard pasta thing. Those gnocchi really fill you up.

After that we just headed back to the hotel for some much-needed sleep.

June 1st, Sunday

We got up at 7am and had breakfast. By the time we were done it was near 8:30am, so we didn’t think we had time for any sightseeing, since we should catch a 10:00 or 10:50 train for the airport from Cardona station. Instead we went out for a walk, looking for a supermarket to do some final gift shopping. We found one near the station, and got about 20 Euros worth of stuff. It was a good haul, and probably would cost closer to 60 Euro for similar stuff in the airport duty free shops. After packing up and checking out we got back on the subway. We weren’t going to make the 10:07 train, but the 10:57 was no problem. There were pretty long lines for tickets, but we had at least 15 minutes to spare and hung out in the train. Things went smoothly at the airport also. I don’t know if it as luck, or if we were early enough (about two and a half hours early) but we were able to get the emergency exit rows in the 777 and have excellent legroom. The plane is full of at least two Japanese tour groups though, so we do have to walk a lot of older people run through calisthenics drills though. Before heading to the waiting area L. did a little more shopping (MORE!!?? we don’t have any more room!) and picked up two final food items. That left us with 2.86 Euros. We went to the food area, I had a latte machiato and L. had a water, which left us with 0.21 Euros. Those ended up in the donation bag on the airplane, so we managed to do Italy pretty cheaply – neither of us withdrew any money from ATMs in either Morocco or Italy. That’s pretty good fiscal management in my book (with the caveat that I charged hotels and the one dinner in Milan.)

I don’t have much else to write about since I’m currently sitting on the plane with another seven hours until touchdown in Tokyo, and only forty one minutes of battery power left. Overall it was a really fun trip, with two surprise mini-vacations thrown in for good measure. I’ve been to Italy twice now, and both times with L.. They’ve both been great trips. Morocco was great too, but this trip only reinforced my previous belief that Morocco is a nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there. It is just so exhausting on a day-to-day basis with all the haggling and lack of real structure and stability when compared to Tokyo. Anyway, it was a nice trip when you consider that it was a joint honeymoon / conference trip.