Slept in super late, didn’t get up until nearly noon, but then we packed up our things without bothering with breakfast and checked out of the hotel cause we wanted to try to find a cheaper place to stay for the next night. Along the way on our hunt for another hotel to stay at, we stopped at a little snack shop type restaurant, and had these chicken sandwiches and French fries. They were pretty good, although dripping with grease from all the meat that was inside them, and the sandwiches were more like döner kebabs. We found a hotel to stay at, the same one we tried the night before that had been full, with a bathroom door that didn’t close or lock, a window that didn’t close until we forced it to and toilet paper that wasn’t perforated, but I figured that was the least of our problems, so we took it anyways. I hoped that the proprietor wouldn’t recognize us as the ones who had woken him up the night before at 2 in the morning, but he either didn’t recognize us or just didn’t say anything hoping for our money. Thankfully they had room for us this time, so we a room for the night and dropped some of our stuff off, before heading out again to go explore the medina.
Ended up walking all the way through and came out at the other end where the Hassan II Mosque was, so we spent an hour or two looking around there, taking pictures, especially trying to replicate the one that’s on the cover of the lonely planet book. Didn’t turn out exactly, but we attributed that to there being no sun. We then just walked along the edge of the ocean down to where a light house stood out on this kind of point and took at few more pictures around there. We then took a taxi back to the Port train station where we hope to catch a train up to Rabat tomorrow morning. After checking out the train station and when they trains ran, we decided to try some snails at a little stand that was by the road. Got a little bowl full of them for 10dh and we both had our fill after eating only like half the bowl. We gave the rest to the seller, who promptly began sucking them out one by one with little satisfied sucking noises. Definitely enjoyed them a lot more than we did. They didn’t taste bad really, mostly just like the sauce they had been stewed in, but seeing their little boiled off antenna stubs, and pulling them out with a tooth pick, making them look like extra large boogies didn’t really go over to well with my stomach. I managed to get two in, more because they guy kept telling me to eat them, and Stephen ate like 5 or 6 before he’d had enough. We can now honestly say we’ve eaten snails.
Walking around the medina area again after that, I noticed they seem to be quite popular with a number of stands at street corners selling boiled/stewed snails. Stephen found a Jelabi (traditional Moroccan clock thing with a big pointed hood) for which he had to barter down to 220 from 250. The shopkeeper commented on his haggling skills and called him a cheap Berber, saying they always barter for way to low of prices when buying things.
After dropping some things off at the hotel again, we went out to find some place to eat for supper. We went off in search of a place called Ifrane restaurant that we read about in the lonely planet guide, found it, but ended up eating at somewhere else instead because nobody seemed to be eating at Ifrane, and that didn’t do too much to inspire confidence in their cooking, or at least the quality of their cooking, so we went else where to find food. The place we finally ate at was pretty nice, though not too many people were here either. It looked clean enough though, so we decided to stay anyways. It was actually really nice, and when we ordered tea they even got it or us, though they had to send someone to some other little restaurant nearby to get it for us, as they didn’t serve tea themselves. It came in little individual silver teapots with a small shot glass type cup to drink it with. It was some kind of green tea with some mint leaves in it, giving it a minty taste, and at least 40% sugar. It was really sweet, but really good too. And hot, burned myself pouring it. I don’t know why, but the entire little pot was super hot. I ordered chicken kebab things, and Stephen did beef, and they both came with rice, fried potatoes and mixed vegetables, composed of green beans, carrots, what we were pretty sure was zucchini, and some kind of white vegetable that we were sure about, but guessed might be turnip. It had been cooked quite a bit, so was kind of soft and didn’t have much texture to it anymore, but we ate it anyways.
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