Morocco trip 2023: Part 1

Day 1 in Marrakesh

A brief meta-discussion about photography

Our relationship with travel photography is interesting these days. You go on a trip, you take hundreds or even thousands of photos. Photos are cheap now, why not snap a photo of everything? And multiples?

With this glut of content, is it any wonder we don’t look at our travel photos much anymore? (At least, this is common enough a sentiment to be a meme I’ve heard several times.) It’s too much to wade through.

I’ve been thinking about this lately as I’ve sat down to edit my travel photos. Who are these pictures for? Does anyone want to see them again? Do I? Why am I spending my precious time on this? (The last question is about trying to get to the bottom of why I’ve procrastinated this task, for a year now, and yet not given up outright. It’s obvious I want to do it, so why?)

I want to share. If I were cursed by a Substack ghost, if I were told, “You can only share 10 Morocco photos. Would you still like to share them?” I’d still say yes.

And that sounds fun too. I’m much more interested in this idea than sharing everything.

I think I’m just overwhelmed at the number of photos. So, in an attempt to push past whatever discomfort I’m feeling… well, I don’t know what I’m saying at this point. Am I apologizing for posting less photos than someone might want? That seems silly. I don’t think you’ll know or miss those doubles.

Thanks for letting me clear my throat.

My trip to Morocco

It was nice traveling to Morocco from Instanbul, only a 5-hour flight instead of the horrible 12-hour one to Istanbul. I landed in Marrakesh around 3pm, cleared customs, changed my money, and tried to find the driver who was supposed to take me to my Riad, or hotel.

Not my photo.

A picture of the outside of the airport. (Imagine more cars, and more sand/dirt.)

It took about an hour to track my driver down. I bought a SIM card (I got “ripped off,” overpaid probably $20) and tried calling the Riad, and finally the guy showed up. He was annoyed at me for having called the Riad.

“I was here at 2:30. Where were you? You weren’t here!”

“I guess my flight was late,” I said, although I didn’t think it was.

He continued to blame me in a roundabout way, and saying he wished I hadn’t called the Riad. Wonderful. I’m in strange country by myself, for the first time, and this is my welcome. And, I’m telling you this story for a reason. I didn’t know it at the time, but this sort of thing is very Morocco — at least from my 10-day experience.

He drove me into the city. After I used the French word for “Thank you,” “Merci,” he shook his head no and taught me the Arabic word for “Thank you,” which is “Shokran.” I immediately gave up on using French there, despite having read a traveller’s guide for it on the airplane over.

I’m going to do a little time-traveling here. In a future post, I’ll go into my Marrakesh photos. For the time being, let me just talk through my Pixel photos and quickly say what happened on my first evening.

My first night in Marrakesh

I arrived at the Riad. When the hotel manager greeted us, my driver gave me a meaningful look and I quickly said service had been excellent and played the game of praising him and covering for him. He had done a good job once he had showed up, so it seemed like a small thing at the time. He was pleased and went on his merry way.

The hotel manager — let’s call him Yusuf. He’s going to be a recurring character.

He showed me to my room. It was small, but well-decorated.

Isn’t the bathroom adorable? This is a very Moroccan shade of blue that pops up throughout the country.

The view out my window. (More pictures of the Riad courtyard in the future.)

I went out on my own for dinner, which is daring for a single woman in Marakesh. But I was assured that I was going on a safe road, and night was a ways off, so it would be fine.

The hotel bellhop was the one who reassured me that I’d be okay walking. “Enjoy your life,” he said. Ie, “It’s safe, don’t worry about it, just have fun here.” But “Enjoy your life,” is an ominous phrase; it made me chuckle to hear him put it in those words.

A quick Pixel snap I made in the streets. A gorgeous city!

I swung into a shop to try and buy a scarf for the desert, which I’d forgotten to pack. I think it was a scam shop. When I priced the scarves out into dollars, they were something like four hundred dollars for just a piece of colorful cotton cloth. That, or it was a store for the ultra rich tourists. I left and bought a scarf at a shop nearby, probably one made in China, and I probably overpaid. It was about $12.

Then, I had dinner at this place, with a view of the main minaret. I want to type, “The main minaret, in the center, the one you think of when you think of Marrakesh.” It’s because this picture doesn’t make it look like much. But, Marrakesh isn’t much. It’s a flat city! And not large.

When I asked for a table here, maître d' asked me if I had a reservation. I said no. She went and got a man (the manager?) who asked me if I planned to buy a drink or a meal. I said a meal. Then he let me sit down — even though the restaurant was completely empty. Hahaha. At first glance, you think this dude is not wanting to seat someone who will take space from someone who wants a full meal, but no, I think this is just a way to pressure you into spending more. Oh, Marrakesh.

By the time I left, a few more people had arrived, but the restaurant remained 80% empty.

Then I went back to the Riad and prepped for my Saraha trip in the morning.

A word on safety

I found Marrakesh to be safe, but I was smart about where I went and when I went. YMMV. The place is certainly scammy, and it’s not hard to believe there are sinister characters about.

The conflict over my room

When I took a shower that night, my bathroom smelled like skunk. It reeked until I went to sleep, and seemed to have cleared after I woke up, thank goodness. But I was disappointed by this; I knew if I showered in the future, it would reek again. I was also worried about the possibility that, after I returned from the Sahara, I’d be stuck in this smelly room for the entire writing retreat. (Ah, I forgot to mention, I booked an extra night at the same Riad where the 7-day writing retreat would be held. It was set to start the day I returned.)

I won’t go into every detail of this. That next day, I called the leader of the writing retreat to ask to be assigned a different room. I don’t know what happened here, but it was like we were speaking different languages. (I say that metaphorically — she was American and I’d talked with her twice before the trip started with none of these problems.) It’s like she had some defensive reaction to me. Like she thought I was going to be a diva.

Look, I admit it’s slightly high-maintenance to ask for a different room. And even slightly, slightly rude to ask for a different room knowing I’d be pinning the smelly room on another of the writing retreat attendees, all of whom I’d “met” over a Zoom call the week earlier. But I didn’t care. I asked.

Sometimes I think maybe I shouldn’t have. It was… an awkward retreat.

But, that’s a story for future post.

Next up: Part 2, the trip to the Sahara desert