Trustworthy The street where we are staying in Den Haag only allows pedestrian traffic and is lined with small shops. Right next door to our apartment is a coffee shop across from the store pictured below. While I was sipping my morning cappuccino, I watched the sales woman in charge leave without closing, much less…
Catching up with Esther in Delft
After coffee, We made our way to Delft to meet old friend Esther. She invited us to spend the afternoon and evening (which included a home cooked meal). Esther had suggested we take the tram to Delft instead of the train. It is only 17 km between Den Haag and Delft. We did take the…
Den Haag Holiday
Post by Grubb Vermeer Auditions These young women waiting for their flight to Amsterdam discuss which Vermeer portrait they’d like to pose for. Monumental Hunger I walked by a park that had a pungent dispensary aroma and noticed that even statuary get the munchies. Hanging with the old dudes We stopped at a cafe for…
Touch Down on King’s Day
Post by Ella First of all, we feel a bit thrown off by how smooth the travels were. Both flights (ABQ to ORD then ORD to AMS) departed early and landed early. Passport control in Amsterdam was efficiently fast. We were able to immediately catch a train to Den Haag (The Hague, our final destination)…
Sampling Scandinavia and then some
We are off again. We feel like this trip will be quite a contrast to our last adventure – Morocco. This time, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Stay tuned. We will start posting shortly after arrival.
Addendum: Home is ever so sweet.
Yesterday, our Riad owner delivers us to the Casablanca airport (named Mohammed V) airport after a lovely breakfast. The Riad owner, by the way, has told us about Mr. Peacock. You can’t cage him up or he will wither and die. And a female needs to be out with him so he will spread his feathers…
Airport Oasis
We are close to wrapping up our Moroccan journey. We left Marrakech this morning by train. Shared a compartment with a young couple plus baby from Montreal. Turns out they will be on the same flight as we tomorrow morning. And then transferred to a local commuter train in Casablanca which took us directly into…
Ali Baba! Ali Baba!
Everywhere I’ve gone in Morocco, men have taken great pleasure in addressing me as “Ali Baba”. It seems advanced age combined with a less than kempt beard has earned me the sobriquet. It’s enough to make me consider dressing in a djellaba and start looking for some gullible followers, or at least beg a few alms. However, I…
A gourmet goodbye
I signed us up for a cooking class so that we could leave Marrakech with a good taste in our mouths. We were supposed to meet our host/instructor at the Bab Doukkala mosque along with ten others who spoke English. After yesterday’s rat-in-a-maze misadventure trying to scout where the mosque was ahead of time, I convinced Ella…
The blue dot only goes so far
…and the rest is up to Allah Today was about charting the journey. After striking another palace off the list of Medina destinations (a nineteenth century ruin that was crumbling to dust), along with some tiled tombs (of sultans turned to dust), we picked out three different museums that we hoped would give us a closer…
Oh whoopee, a three museum day
Dar Si Said: Museum of Regional Handicrafts, emphasis on carpets, lives in an 18th century palace. A small one. As you might guess, lots of tile,a few fountains and arches. There were explanations in Arabic, French and English, of the different regions and how the carpets differed from region to region. Musee Tiskiwin Marrakech: Moroccan…
From rooftop to rooftop
Day 2 in Marrakech and we’ve successfully navigated the Medina again. High five for these two old folk. Breakfast, where else? The rooftop terrace. A study session in our room. Between google maps and our paper map, the route looks clear. Sort of. We wind around for 20 minutes and come to our first goal….
Sunday at the palace with Ella
…and a million other people! That would be the Bahia Palace inside the Marrakech Medina. Built by Ba Ahmid, a fat 19th century sultan who made sure there weren’t many stairs, and who named it after his favorite wife, Al Bahia, “the brilliant.” It has courtyards with fountains and geometric inland tile as well as exquisite…
The Minaret and the Militia
Above the crowded bustle of a Medina’s streets will invariably be the towering minarets blaring prayers, like Allah’s air raid siren, five times a day. No matter how much chaos goes on below, spiritual order is maintained, and with it an eerie sense of clerical control. Traveling from the Atlas Mountains to the Atlantic we passed…
Marrakech madness
Oy, into the chaos we plunge. We arrived in Marrakech this afternoon. Our last day with Ali and now we are on our own for the remainder of our time in Morocco. About a 4 hour drive, including one stop for tea and a police checkpoint where Ali got pulled in for speeding. Believe me,…