Yesterday at about 2:45 we decided on the spur of the moment to go to Marrakesh, and we were out of the house shortly after 3:00 (how long does it take to change out of a bathing suit and feed the cat?) The car, a small Peugeot hatchback, is air conditioned, unlike many here, so it was possible to drive there during the afternoon. Marrakesh is about 2+ hours inland, 238 km from Casablanca, via a well-paved limited-access toll road.
There was farmland outside of the city but soon we saw dry grassland -- not quite as dry as southern New Mexico, though. There was an occasional low-roofed walled compound made of mud bricks, which was hard to distinguish from the land. No windows. If you were close enough you could see the gate leading in, with an open courtyard and low buildings around it. Occasionally we saw flocks of sheep and goats but often these dwellings seemed to have no way of making a living; perhaps they grazed their flocks at a distance.
On the road there were trucks that were loaded twice as high as they were wide, so picture a truck maybe 8 feet wide but 15 to 20 feet tall. The loads they carried were covered by tarps and tied down so we couldn't see what they transported. The highway speed limit was 120 and it didn't take long to realize that the trucks, and some cars, went MUCH more slowly than that, possibly half as fast or even less, so once you saw them you had to get over to pass very fast because you reached them in a flash. On the other hand, some cars passed at lightning speed.
Marrakesh, to our surprise, is obviously a town with serious money. There were lots of new apartment buildings going up, very spiffy, and very spread out: it was maybe 10 miles to get to the center of town from the outskirts. We of course headed for the market. I've been to Tunisia and went to the market there, but nothing prepared me for this.
The Marrakesh market consists of hundreds of streets, corridors and alleyways. Depending on the width there was daylight or electric-lit roofs. For everything you could see -- clothes, shoes, toys, spices, nuts, dried fruits, electronics, objets d'art, and dozens of others -- there were literally hundreds of merchants exhibiting exactly the same merchandise. Given all the competition, no wonder they tried to pull you into their shops! Which Rick hated, but I was amusedm perhaps because I could speak French and therefore felt I could defend myself. I enjoyed changing nationality as we walked along: sometimes I was Canadian, sometimes Swiss, sometimes others, because no merchants guessed American once they heard my French -- everyone knows Americans can't speak anything but English.
And the people, thousands upon thousands of them. Many beggars: mothers with children, blind people, even small children alone. A little girl about four was trying to sell small kleenex packs and was shooed away by the waiter of the cafe we stopped in for something cold to drink. Some women wore western clothes but most wore long-sleeved, ankle-length caftans or jelabas (= without or with a hood). Some wore scarves around their heads and necks, some wore veils as well so that you could see only their eyes. Men wore shirts and long pants but not blue jeans. Many were carrying packages of things they had bought at the market. Threaded through the throngs (sorry, alliteration not intended) were motorbikes and bicycles of all sorts: you can imagine the chaos trying to get from here to there.
Oddly enough, we didn't feel like buying anything. The profusion itself made choosing something difficult: it was all too much! The high-pressure salesmanship didn't help. It was also, needless to say, very hot. Even though we got there around 6 PM in hopes of cooler temperatures it was in the high 90s, so during the day it was surely well over 100. There was a beautiful light cotton, Berber cotton they called it, that we both would like to get shirts made out of, but the thought of trying something on (over our clothes of course) was horrendous. We'll look for shirts at markets closer to the coastm where it's cooler. We did buy a few things -- saffron powder, a couple of wooden stirring spoons for the kitchen, a small agate bird, but that's about it.
There was of course bargaining. The price of the agate bird started at 250 dirhams, about $30, and went from there to 200 dirhams, 100 dirhams, and ended at 80 dirhams, $10. That was fun, actually.
At dusk we found ourselves in a huge plaza, and about 8:15 there were simultaneous calls to prayer on loudspeakers from four minarets we could see in different directions. We didn't see anyone do anything different as a result. Maybe the calls to prayer are giving people 45-minute warnings? The plaza was astonishing. Hundreds of cooked-food merchants set up shop, one next to the other in numbered booths. Each had a small cooking area, a long table covered by a white plastic tablecloth, and two long backless benches. Here too men (always men) tried to lure you into his particular booth. The booths sold brochettes of different meats (beef, sheep, fish, sausage), salads, sandwiches, various dishes I couldn't identify. Hundreds of them, all lined up. Then there were a couple dozen booths selling snails, which I'm sorry I didn't get, 5 dirhams for a small plate and 10 for a large one -- about 65 cents and $1.25. Other dozens of booths sold fresh orange juice. Other dozens sold sweets. Picture each type lined up identically next to the others. We sat down at one and had brochettes of lamb with French fries ("frites") and mint team for 44 dirhams, about $5. The tea here is much sweeter than in Tunisia, but delicious. Then we had a glass of perfect orange juice (picture a booth with hundreds of oranges, above which is a man with a juicer). We looked down at a small little girl begging, and gave her the last of our juice to drink. During the time we were there we gave change to probably half a dozen beggars, and food to several children.
Also in the plaza at this hour were entertainers. An old man told a story (in Arabic, of course -- only educated people and those who sell things speak French here). A veiled woman with a pom-pom sewed to the back of her pants belly-danced -- wiggling her ass was super-effective! -- while a gray-haired shirtless old man worked the crowd for donations. Liter-bottles of Coca Cola were set up in a circle while people with fishing rods tied to a large ring at the end tried to get the rings on the tops of the bottles, but it was almost impossible because the ring was vertical, not horizontal.
When we left Marrakesh at 9:45 PM we noticed there was an outside-temperature indicator in the car: 33 degrees Centigrade, which translates to 92 degrees Fahrenheit. You cannot imagine how grateful we were for the air conditioning.
Getting out of Marrakesh was like driving in Casablanca. This place either makes you a better driver or makes you give up driving entirely. If there are rules, they don't matter. Painted lane divider lines don't matter. Speed limits don't matter. Cars, motorbikes, bicycles, and pedestrians, huge numbers of them, just aim in the direction they want to go. They come swooping in front of you from nowhere: anything goes. Rick, who has driven at least a motorcycle all around the world, says it's worse here than anywhere else he's been. People don't have a zillion accidents because they expect this, because usually they go slowly enough to swerve out of the way, and because they've probably developed eyes not only in the back of their heads but the sides as well. A challenge!
When we got home we stripped and jumped into the pool. A wonderful country ...
Love,
Jo
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The laziest vacation ever
You too would be hard-pressed to tear yourself away from a gorgeous pool in a gorgeous garden all to yourself, with a good library of books upstairs and with every day sunny and warm! Yesterday I was thinking that if this exact place were a hotel I would not love it as much. There's something different about having a luxurious place entirely to yourself. Consequently, there isn't all that much to write about lately.
Our friend, Leila, came to dinner the other night. It's quite an experience cooking dinner for friends in someone else's kitchen, but by now I know my way around it. You have to be inventive, since the familiar ingredients and implements aren't there. When I go to the market I see a lot of vegetables and fruits I don't know, and wish I knew how to cook the vegetables. Next Monday the housekeeper will be here and offered to make us dinner, which of course I accepted with joy. I also asked her to teach me how she made the two salads the first night we were here, one of eggplant and the other of green peppers. She said yes and that her daughter Sana, whose French is so much better than hers, could write it down for me, but I said that she could just make them and I'd watch and write it down myself. I'm looking forward to that.
When Leila was here we spoke as usual a mixture of French and English, and I realized that the way my French gets better is by islands. What I mean by that is that some things are really easy for me to think and say in French, surrounded by other things that are much harder. With time, the islands of easy things get larger and larger: a much more complicated process than a slow linear one. She insists my French is excellent, but of course I can't help comparing it now to how fluent I was 35 years ago, when I could dream in French. I think she means she's impressed that my grammar is usually right, but then if that's how you're taught -- and even more important, how you have taught it yourself -- then that's the easy part.
Yesterday we managed to tear ourselves away from the pool and went into town to the huge mosque. Rick couldn't go in: shoulders and knees had to be covered (= decent dress) and he didn't qualify. I did while he wandered, which he loves to do. It was extraordinary: I'd really like to come back so he can see it too. Only the mosques in Mecca and Medina are larger. It's so big that 20,000 men (not a generic!) can pray inside at one time, with room for 5,000 women in the two side balconies fronted by ornate grilles (is that French? Can't think of the English word). Many years ago I was in an orthodox synagogue and sat with the women in a balcony, watching the men pray below through the edges of curtains in front of me, so the women's balconies are just like that except here they're much more beautiful. Outside in the plaza is room for another 80,000 people. Ramadan starts on Saturday and it will be full then. Muslims pray 5 times a day, the first at FOUR AM (I could NEVER be a Muslim!) and the last at 9 PM. Imagine Moorish architecture and multiply it by a zillion: as big as a Boeing hangar space inside, just acres and acres of marble and mosaic and elaborate metal chandeliers. I tried to take some pictures but doubt if any will please me: the real point is the vastness of the space, and my camera, at least, couldn't capture that.
Afterward Rick tried to take the car into the old town and we quickly realized that was a mistake. Streets are narrow and people walk in them. You try to squeeze around the people, the cars, and the donkey-drawn carts with potatoes or guavas being sold and it's obvious that markets and cars don't mix. But it was hot and it was time to go back to the pool! We'll do the market another day, especially because it stays open well into the evening.
We have another week and a half here -- leaving next Friday -- and between now and then we'll get up the energy to explore. I hope you are not bored, wanting more action. This blog, after all, is being written by someone who is utterly content to spend two weeks in San Diego going to a beach every day and reading! But we're starting to at least think about tearing ourselves away from the pool: progress!
Our love to you all,
Jo
Our friend, Leila, came to dinner the other night. It's quite an experience cooking dinner for friends in someone else's kitchen, but by now I know my way around it. You have to be inventive, since the familiar ingredients and implements aren't there. When I go to the market I see a lot of vegetables and fruits I don't know, and wish I knew how to cook the vegetables. Next Monday the housekeeper will be here and offered to make us dinner, which of course I accepted with joy. I also asked her to teach me how she made the two salads the first night we were here, one of eggplant and the other of green peppers. She said yes and that her daughter Sana, whose French is so much better than hers, could write it down for me, but I said that she could just make them and I'd watch and write it down myself. I'm looking forward to that.
When Leila was here we spoke as usual a mixture of French and English, and I realized that the way my French gets better is by islands. What I mean by that is that some things are really easy for me to think and say in French, surrounded by other things that are much harder. With time, the islands of easy things get larger and larger: a much more complicated process than a slow linear one. She insists my French is excellent, but of course I can't help comparing it now to how fluent I was 35 years ago, when I could dream in French. I think she means she's impressed that my grammar is usually right, but then if that's how you're taught -- and even more important, how you have taught it yourself -- then that's the easy part.
Yesterday we managed to tear ourselves away from the pool and went into town to the huge mosque. Rick couldn't go in: shoulders and knees had to be covered (= decent dress) and he didn't qualify. I did while he wandered, which he loves to do. It was extraordinary: I'd really like to come back so he can see it too. Only the mosques in Mecca and Medina are larger. It's so big that 20,000 men (not a generic!) can pray inside at one time, with room for 5,000 women in the two side balconies fronted by ornate grilles (is that French? Can't think of the English word). Many years ago I was in an orthodox synagogue and sat with the women in a balcony, watching the men pray below through the edges of curtains in front of me, so the women's balconies are just like that except here they're much more beautiful. Outside in the plaza is room for another 80,000 people. Ramadan starts on Saturday and it will be full then. Muslims pray 5 times a day, the first at FOUR AM (I could NEVER be a Muslim!) and the last at 9 PM. Imagine Moorish architecture and multiply it by a zillion: as big as a Boeing hangar space inside, just acres and acres of marble and mosaic and elaborate metal chandeliers. I tried to take some pictures but doubt if any will please me: the real point is the vastness of the space, and my camera, at least, couldn't capture that.
Afterward Rick tried to take the car into the old town and we quickly realized that was a mistake. Streets are narrow and people walk in them. You try to squeeze around the people, the cars, and the donkey-drawn carts with potatoes or guavas being sold and it's obvious that markets and cars don't mix. But it was hot and it was time to go back to the pool! We'll do the market another day, especially because it stays open well into the evening.
We have another week and a half here -- leaving next Friday -- and between now and then we'll get up the energy to explore. I hope you are not bored, wanting more action. This blog, after all, is being written by someone who is utterly content to spend two weeks in San Diego going to a beach every day and reading! But we're starting to at least think about tearing ourselves away from the pool: progress!
Our love to you all,
Jo
Friday, August 14, 2009
Beginning to learn Casablanca
Hello, everyone
We can't get over what it's like living like really rich people. Having our own totally beautiful swimming pool in a lovely garden is something we could get used to. When we get up each morning the caretaker has already swept away from the veranda and the walkways all the spent flowers and leaves that have blown down from the bougainvillea, and skimmed the pool. Everything sparkles in the sunlight. The daytime is hot by our standards, probably mid 80s or so, but then we just get into the pool and all is well! We have been reading and reading and swimming and swimming. We feel like caliphs.
Two days ago we needed to go to the market. Although Sylvie, the owner of the house, left instructions about where to go we found it impossible: none of the streets here have names posted, so the map isn't any use. There are streets and roundabouts and more streets and roundabouts: you can imagine the perplexity. So we drove until I spied a sign for a supermarche (think accent on the last e) and we turned. I am sure it was not a supermarket that Sylvie would have recommended. It was in a very poor neighborhood, some shabby apartment buildings but much worse, a large shantytown in an open field where the roofs and walls were made of scavenged materials. Somehow that was more shocking than homeless people living under bridges, probably because it was more unfamiliar. The contrast between where we are living and the rock-bottom poverty in which those people lived is pretty painful. In the supermarket I am sure they don't get to see many foreigners, let alone Americans, but everyone was very helpful and nice, even if they didn't speak any French.
Leila is a Berber, the original inhabitants (followed by Arabs who brought Islam, followed by the French, who brought Frenchness). As I think I said before, she teaches and writes. She seems to have adopted us, for which I am so happy. Yesterday in the early evening -- she too finds it too hot to be outside during the day -- she came to pick us up and now we have a geographic sense of how to get around. She drove us around Casablanca, showing us the Corniche, an 8-kilometer promenade along the seafront, the medina (the old town), the souk, the huge mosque Hassan II (the 3rd largest in the world, I've read, and the only one we as non-Muslims are allowed to enter), and much else. We had dinner at a restaurant she chose for its old decor and its food. I must describe our dinner, which of course she ordered.
First there was Moroccan bread, round flat rolls about 5 inches in diameter, which one could dunk in a wonderful tomato sauce, plus olives. Second there were three appetizers. Two of them consisted of five small bowls of different things: sardines, calimari, carrots and rosewater, "eggplant caviar" made of creamed eggplant and spices, tomatoes and spices, and others I forget. The third appetizer was three fried things that sort of looked like egg rolls: a pigeon (!) and almond mixture, a beef mixture and another one. Then two main courses, both tagines which is the name for a round terracotta dish with a lid that rises up to a point and is used to make stews in the oven. One tagine was chicken and the other beef and prunes. Finally we had dessert: something that looked like mille-feuilles interspersed with a creamed sweet mixture. The restaurant didn't serve alcohol, which was fine with me because it was an outdoor restaurant and hot even though it was evening. Each and every taste, and you can see how many there were, was entirely new. I am thrilled to have tasted pigeon! There was not one thing that wasn't delicious and intriguing.
Then, for the movie fans among you, you will be happy to know that there is a Rick's Cafe in Casablanca. It looks nothing at all like the Rick's cafe in the Bogart/Bergman film -- much bigger and more impressive. It was located next door to the restaurant so we walked there after dinner, but they wouldn't let us in unless we wanted something to eat (most certainly not!) or drink (equally). Naima was astonished because this lack of openness and hospitality was so un-Moroccan, but the place is owned by an American woman. Plus, we guessed, it would be overrun by tourists wanting just to be in Rick's Cafe without buying anything.
Leila has been in the U.S. but her English is limited although she's trying to improve it. We speak in a mixture of French and English. She's altogether lovely and generous and interesting, and we are so lucky to have met her.
We got home at midnight, stripped, and jumped into the pool to cool off. Such a blessing.
We have heard from the Moroccan family that they have spent some time with some of our friends, and we are completely delighted by this. They have been to Mt. Rainier and the Olympic Peninsula and are going to Vancouver. They are being much more assiduous in their tourism that we are! But perhaps one of these days we'll manage to tear ourselves away from this pool and go someplace ...
Love,
Jo
We can't get over what it's like living like really rich people. Having our own totally beautiful swimming pool in a lovely garden is something we could get used to. When we get up each morning the caretaker has already swept away from the veranda and the walkways all the spent flowers and leaves that have blown down from the bougainvillea, and skimmed the pool. Everything sparkles in the sunlight. The daytime is hot by our standards, probably mid 80s or so, but then we just get into the pool and all is well! We have been reading and reading and swimming and swimming. We feel like caliphs.
Two days ago we needed to go to the market. Although Sylvie, the owner of the house, left instructions about where to go we found it impossible: none of the streets here have names posted, so the map isn't any use. There are streets and roundabouts and more streets and roundabouts: you can imagine the perplexity. So we drove until I spied a sign for a supermarche (think accent on the last e) and we turned. I am sure it was not a supermarket that Sylvie would have recommended. It was in a very poor neighborhood, some shabby apartment buildings but much worse, a large shantytown in an open field where the roofs and walls were made of scavenged materials. Somehow that was more shocking than homeless people living under bridges, probably because it was more unfamiliar. The contrast between where we are living and the rock-bottom poverty in which those people lived is pretty painful. In the supermarket I am sure they don't get to see many foreigners, let alone Americans, but everyone was very helpful and nice, even if they didn't speak any French.
Leila is a Berber, the original inhabitants (followed by Arabs who brought Islam, followed by the French, who brought Frenchness). As I think I said before, she teaches and writes. She seems to have adopted us, for which I am so happy. Yesterday in the early evening -- she too finds it too hot to be outside during the day -- she came to pick us up and now we have a geographic sense of how to get around. She drove us around Casablanca, showing us the Corniche, an 8-kilometer promenade along the seafront, the medina (the old town), the souk, the huge mosque Hassan II (the 3rd largest in the world, I've read, and the only one we as non-Muslims are allowed to enter), and much else. We had dinner at a restaurant she chose for its old decor and its food. I must describe our dinner, which of course she ordered.
First there was Moroccan bread, round flat rolls about 5 inches in diameter, which one could dunk in a wonderful tomato sauce, plus olives. Second there were three appetizers. Two of them consisted of five small bowls of different things: sardines, calimari, carrots and rosewater, "eggplant caviar" made of creamed eggplant and spices, tomatoes and spices, and others I forget. The third appetizer was three fried things that sort of looked like egg rolls: a pigeon (!) and almond mixture, a beef mixture and another one. Then two main courses, both tagines which is the name for a round terracotta dish with a lid that rises up to a point and is used to make stews in the oven. One tagine was chicken and the other beef and prunes. Finally we had dessert: something that looked like mille-feuilles interspersed with a creamed sweet mixture. The restaurant didn't serve alcohol, which was fine with me because it was an outdoor restaurant and hot even though it was evening. Each and every taste, and you can see how many there were, was entirely new. I am thrilled to have tasted pigeon! There was not one thing that wasn't delicious and intriguing.
Then, for the movie fans among you, you will be happy to know that there is a Rick's Cafe in Casablanca. It looks nothing at all like the Rick's cafe in the Bogart/Bergman film -- much bigger and more impressive. It was located next door to the restaurant so we walked there after dinner, but they wouldn't let us in unless we wanted something to eat (most certainly not!) or drink (equally). Naima was astonished because this lack of openness and hospitality was so un-Moroccan, but the place is owned by an American woman. Plus, we guessed, it would be overrun by tourists wanting just to be in Rick's Cafe without buying anything.
Leila has been in the U.S. but her English is limited although she's trying to improve it. We speak in a mixture of French and English. She's altogether lovely and generous and interesting, and we are so lucky to have met her.
We got home at midnight, stripped, and jumped into the pool to cool off. Such a blessing.
We have heard from the Moroccan family that they have spent some time with some of our friends, and we are completely delighted by this. They have been to Mt. Rainier and the Olympic Peninsula and are going to Vancouver. They are being much more assiduous in their tourism that we are! But perhaps one of these days we'll manage to tear ourselves away from this pool and go someplace ...
Love,
Jo
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
No photos
And I forgot to tell you that photos will have to wait. I've lost the little gadget that connects the camera to the computer to download the photos. Words will have to do.
We're in Morocco!
But damn, I went to a cybercafe in Paris two days ago and spent half an hour writing you all a blog about our last few days in Paris, and because the keyboard was different I somehow did something that lost the entire thing. I'll summarize it here before describing our arrival in Casablanca yesterday.
On Sunday (today is I think Wednesday) we were invited to dinner, or the main meal of the day, by Adame Diop, a woman we met at a cafe a couple of days earlier. She came to Paris from Mali 20 years ago to study, and stayed. She's always worked in restaurants, which is how we met her. We got to talking and when she asked whom we knew in Paris and I said no one, she declared, "Alors, je vous invite chez moi!" Superb! One of the greatest advantages of home exchanges is precisely the opportunity to meet people who live where you're visiting, and I had been missing that. Adame lives in a new apartment with her three daughters, ages 14 to 9 months, and is obviously a generous soul: she had a cousin from Mali staying there for three weeks, and while we were there two friends from Martinique arrived for a visit as well.
Adame told us that next month her oldest daughter is going to Montreal, where she has an uncle, to go to school. Why? Because the schools, she said, are full of "bandits" -- her word. A terrible thing if you have to send your own child so far away to keep her safe. For the moment, she said, her middle daughter is okay. I've read about the lousy conditions in Paris for black immigrants, and Adame was confirming them.
It was a wonderful meal, for which she had taken a lot of trouble. We were there for more than four hours, and I spoke French all the time, which I loved, except when I was translating for Rick.
On Monday we took the train -- the real train, not the metro -- to see Monet's gardens at Giverny, about an hour north of Paris, at the suggestion of my friend Carol -- Carol, thank you so much! They were spectacular, just unbelievable. My sister, Sara, would have loved it, being much more a gardener than I am. Acres and acres of garden, a really interesting cross between the controlled French style and the uncontrolled British style of gardens, achieved by planting severely rectangular beds with wild but obviously deliberately chosen growth. I saw many flowers I knew and many I didn't. Then you crossed the road to get to the water part of the garden, the part everyone knows from Monet's paintings of the water lilies in the pond and the Japanese arched bridge over it. The water lilies grew in a large, irregularly shaped pond with weeping willows, bamboos, shrubs and trees surrounding it, and there was also a quiet, swift stream in deep shade. I learned that Monet employed 600 gardeners, and I certainly believe it.
We loved Paris but found it frustrating because the rate of exchange made most things too expensive for us. We couldn't eat even an ordinary meal at a restaurant, which would have cost more than $100, or go to a concert, or take a boat trip on the Seine. We spent an unbelievable amount of money just on transportation -- the metro, the bus to/from the airport, and the train to Giverny cost hundreds of dollars. But we loved looking at the architecture, or at least the domestic architecture of the apartment buildings as opposed to the grandiose monuments the French love so much. We'll spend a couple more days there just before we come home.
Yesterday on the flight to Casablanca we were lucky enough to meet Leila, a Moroccan/French woman who teaches at a university here. Thank goodness, because we didn't have any local introductions. A wonderful woman, who's been in the US twice and tried to practice her English which was hard because there wasn't so terribly much of it. She offered to drive us around Casablanca today to introduce us to the place, and I will call her to arrange it. We also met Omar, someone who works for Ahmed, the owner of this house, and he offered to spend some time with us this weekend. I've come prepared with the name and address of the main synagogue here, and we're planning to go on Friday evening to see what we can find.
But now this house. We are in a mansion, the kind of place that if you paid to rent this house would cost many hundreds of dollars a night. Rooms are many and enormous. The housekeeper had prepared us a traditional Moroccan meal, and then she and her 24-year-old daughter gave us the keys to the house and the car, and left. The meal was superb, and after dinner we stripped off our clothes and went into the swimming pool. The night was fragrant with jasmine, and the stars glistened. Occasionally a confused rooster crowed, but otherwise there was silence. The entire place is walled and gated, as are all the houses around here. In front there is a huge veranda, with an outside kitchen on the left and comfortable chairs and a coffee table on the right. Think 75 or 100 feet wide, covered with bougainvillea. Plus naturally a fountain and a beautiful, perfectly maintained garden. The garden is kept up by Habib, the caretaker ("le gardien"), who speaks no French. Fatima, the housekeeper, will come once a week to do the housework for us. We went to bed drunk with the scent of jasmine that flowed in through the windows. We have never been in such elegance.
Well, this has been a long one but assuming this now works you won't have to read so much at any one time any more. It certainly is wonderful having a computer again!
With our love,
Jo
On Sunday (today is I think Wednesday) we were invited to dinner, or the main meal of the day, by Adame Diop, a woman we met at a cafe a couple of days earlier. She came to Paris from Mali 20 years ago to study, and stayed. She's always worked in restaurants, which is how we met her. We got to talking and when she asked whom we knew in Paris and I said no one, she declared, "Alors, je vous invite chez moi!" Superb! One of the greatest advantages of home exchanges is precisely the opportunity to meet people who live where you're visiting, and I had been missing that. Adame lives in a new apartment with her three daughters, ages 14 to 9 months, and is obviously a generous soul: she had a cousin from Mali staying there for three weeks, and while we were there two friends from Martinique arrived for a visit as well.
Adame told us that next month her oldest daughter is going to Montreal, where she has an uncle, to go to school. Why? Because the schools, she said, are full of "bandits" -- her word. A terrible thing if you have to send your own child so far away to keep her safe. For the moment, she said, her middle daughter is okay. I've read about the lousy conditions in Paris for black immigrants, and Adame was confirming them.
It was a wonderful meal, for which she had taken a lot of trouble. We were there for more than four hours, and I spoke French all the time, which I loved, except when I was translating for Rick.
On Monday we took the train -- the real train, not the metro -- to see Monet's gardens at Giverny, about an hour north of Paris, at the suggestion of my friend Carol -- Carol, thank you so much! They were spectacular, just unbelievable. My sister, Sara, would have loved it, being much more a gardener than I am. Acres and acres of garden, a really interesting cross between the controlled French style and the uncontrolled British style of gardens, achieved by planting severely rectangular beds with wild but obviously deliberately chosen growth. I saw many flowers I knew and many I didn't. Then you crossed the road to get to the water part of the garden, the part everyone knows from Monet's paintings of the water lilies in the pond and the Japanese arched bridge over it. The water lilies grew in a large, irregularly shaped pond with weeping willows, bamboos, shrubs and trees surrounding it, and there was also a quiet, swift stream in deep shade. I learned that Monet employed 600 gardeners, and I certainly believe it.
We loved Paris but found it frustrating because the rate of exchange made most things too expensive for us. We couldn't eat even an ordinary meal at a restaurant, which would have cost more than $100, or go to a concert, or take a boat trip on the Seine. We spent an unbelievable amount of money just on transportation -- the metro, the bus to/from the airport, and the train to Giverny cost hundreds of dollars. But we loved looking at the architecture, or at least the domestic architecture of the apartment buildings as opposed to the grandiose monuments the French love so much. We'll spend a couple more days there just before we come home.
Yesterday on the flight to Casablanca we were lucky enough to meet Leila, a Moroccan/French woman who teaches at a university here. Thank goodness, because we didn't have any local introductions. A wonderful woman, who's been in the US twice and tried to practice her English which was hard because there wasn't so terribly much of it. She offered to drive us around Casablanca today to introduce us to the place, and I will call her to arrange it. We also met Omar, someone who works for Ahmed, the owner of this house, and he offered to spend some time with us this weekend. I've come prepared with the name and address of the main synagogue here, and we're planning to go on Friday evening to see what we can find.
But now this house. We are in a mansion, the kind of place that if you paid to rent this house would cost many hundreds of dollars a night. Rooms are many and enormous. The housekeeper had prepared us a traditional Moroccan meal, and then she and her 24-year-old daughter gave us the keys to the house and the car, and left. The meal was superb, and after dinner we stripped off our clothes and went into the swimming pool. The night was fragrant with jasmine, and the stars glistened. Occasionally a confused rooster crowed, but otherwise there was silence. The entire place is walled and gated, as are all the houses around here. In front there is a huge veranda, with an outside kitchen on the left and comfortable chairs and a coffee table on the right. Think 75 or 100 feet wide, covered with bougainvillea. Plus naturally a fountain and a beautiful, perfectly maintained garden. The garden is kept up by Habib, the caretaker ("le gardien"), who speaks no French. Fatima, the housekeeper, will come once a week to do the housework for us. We went to bed drunk with the scent of jasmine that flowed in through the windows. We have never been in such elegance.
Well, this has been a long one but assuming this now works you won't have to read so much at any one time any more. It certainly is wonderful having a computer again!
With our love,
Jo
Friday, August 7, 2009
Hello from Paris
Hello, everyone
Our apartment is a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower and we've bought an unlimited metro/bus pass, so we're wandering all over Paris. The prices here are insane, to the point where we feel like starving students: can you imagine $7 for a cup of coffee or even more for a coke? The first day we arrived we asked for a cafe creme and a croissant for each of us and it cost $18. We are now being very, very careful.
I am realizing that it's been close to 45 years since I was here for more than a day, and am amazed when places and stores I remember are still here. My French is coming back, too: quelle joie! Rick and I are spending our time wandering the streets, our favorite thing. He loves torturing himself by reading the prices of things. I guess it makes sense in that Paris is the equivalent of New York, but even in New York one can find lots of cheap places. Here, no.
We are admiring the beautiful apartment buildings with the wrought-iron grilles on the balconies that the first New Orleans settlers obviously brought with them, and the tiny streets with cafes and elegant stores. We sat in Notre Dame for an hour studying the design of the cathedral, and stood under the Eiffel Tower marveling at the complexity of its construction. It is so graceful, so smooth in the enormity of its height and breadth: it's amazing to think that when it was first built there was a huge outpouring of opposition to its ugliness! What would Paris be without it today? Rick wanted to see Pigalle (naturally) and I was suprised to see that there are still, all these years later, dozens of "sex shops" -- I thought it would be like Boston where the red-light district was replaced by the huge Government Center.
We just came from a cafe on the Boulevard St. Germain where we struck up a conversation with a woman who worked there, originally from Mali. It was such a lovely conversation (with me translating because she doesn't speak English) that she invited us to lunch on Sunday, her day off, where we will meet her three daughters (don't know about a husband yet). What a lovely thing to do! She refused to allow us to bring anything, so we'll have to be resourceful: whenever you move to a new neighborhood it's a matter of finding where everything is. I do wonder if a native-born Parisian would have extended such a lovely invitation to a pair of strangers, but no matter. It will be terrific.
The apartment where we're staying is little more than a pied a terre (don't know how to do accents on this keyboard -- I'm in a "cyber-cafe"): a tiny kitchen, one bedroom, a small living room and a dining room. There's a separate WC and a bathroom with a sink, a stall shower, and room to stand that measures something like 3' by 1.5'. No wonder there are no fat French people. But it's just fine -- those of you who will see the Moroccans please tell them that we are most comfortable in their apartment and it's just right for us. Yesterday was like the replay of the heat wave the week before we left, with temperatures well into the 90s: we found a fountain, took off our sandals, dangled our feet in the fountain, and poured water on our shirts. Later we passed larger fountains at the Palais de Chaillot and saw dozens of children and grownups in them.
All in all, it's marvelous to be here and we're enjoying it to the hilt. There are, of course, huge crowds of visitors, but we expected that and can't really object since that means us too. Rick has no fear of speaking English to Parisians instead of waiting for me to translate, which I am vastly impressed at, and he has been kindly and politely responded to nearly every time. So much for the unfriendly French.
Au revoir, a bientot!
Jo
Our apartment is a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower and we've bought an unlimited metro/bus pass, so we're wandering all over Paris. The prices here are insane, to the point where we feel like starving students: can you imagine $7 for a cup of coffee or even more for a coke? The first day we arrived we asked for a cafe creme and a croissant for each of us and it cost $18. We are now being very, very careful.
I am realizing that it's been close to 45 years since I was here for more than a day, and am amazed when places and stores I remember are still here. My French is coming back, too: quelle joie! Rick and I are spending our time wandering the streets, our favorite thing. He loves torturing himself by reading the prices of things. I guess it makes sense in that Paris is the equivalent of New York, but even in New York one can find lots of cheap places. Here, no.
We are admiring the beautiful apartment buildings with the wrought-iron grilles on the balconies that the first New Orleans settlers obviously brought with them, and the tiny streets with cafes and elegant stores. We sat in Notre Dame for an hour studying the design of the cathedral, and stood under the Eiffel Tower marveling at the complexity of its construction. It is so graceful, so smooth in the enormity of its height and breadth: it's amazing to think that when it was first built there was a huge outpouring of opposition to its ugliness! What would Paris be without it today? Rick wanted to see Pigalle (naturally) and I was suprised to see that there are still, all these years later, dozens of "sex shops" -- I thought it would be like Boston where the red-light district was replaced by the huge Government Center.
We just came from a cafe on the Boulevard St. Germain where we struck up a conversation with a woman who worked there, originally from Mali. It was such a lovely conversation (with me translating because she doesn't speak English) that she invited us to lunch on Sunday, her day off, where we will meet her three daughters (don't know about a husband yet). What a lovely thing to do! She refused to allow us to bring anything, so we'll have to be resourceful: whenever you move to a new neighborhood it's a matter of finding where everything is. I do wonder if a native-born Parisian would have extended such a lovely invitation to a pair of strangers, but no matter. It will be terrific.
The apartment where we're staying is little more than a pied a terre (don't know how to do accents on this keyboard -- I'm in a "cyber-cafe"): a tiny kitchen, one bedroom, a small living room and a dining room. There's a separate WC and a bathroom with a sink, a stall shower, and room to stand that measures something like 3' by 1.5'. No wonder there are no fat French people. But it's just fine -- those of you who will see the Moroccans please tell them that we are most comfortable in their apartment and it's just right for us. Yesterday was like the replay of the heat wave the week before we left, with temperatures well into the 90s: we found a fountain, took off our sandals, dangled our feet in the fountain, and poured water on our shirts. Later we passed larger fountains at the Palais de Chaillot and saw dozens of children and grownups in them.
All in all, it's marvelous to be here and we're enjoying it to the hilt. There are, of course, huge crowds of visitors, but we expected that and can't really object since that means us too. Rick has no fear of speaking English to Parisians instead of waiting for me to translate, which I am vastly impressed at, and he has been kindly and politely responded to nearly every time. So much for the unfriendly French.
Au revoir, a bientot!
Jo
Sunday, August 2, 2009
It's tomorrow!
The To-Do list obviously does filthy things in the middle of the night, because each day it's gotten longer and not shorter! But we're down to the last dozen or so things, so we're off soon to spend the night at an airport motel and then tomorrow on to our 10.5-hour flight to Paris. I checked the ten-day temperatures in Paris and Casablanca: the low 80s in the former and not much more in Casablanca -- perfect! Marrakech, unfortunately, is between 101 and 107: that will be a tough decision. But wherever we go will be new and fascinating.
We love you all and we'll be in email contact every now and then.
Jo and Rick
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