Di finally broke

It’s been almost a month, and like a crouching tiger patiently waiting before striking, Di’s former princess personality erupted this morning in fury.  Ok it wasn’t that bad, but she definitely wasn’t happy.  We’re currently in Rabat because the Canadian embassy is here, not because it was originally on our list of places to go.  To be honest, Rabat is a nice change from the hectic atmosphere of Tangier and Fes.  It’s the capital city, and you can tell it’s a more educated, civilized, and modern.  The older Moroccans are all in suits and many speak perfect French as well as Arabic to each other.  A lot of them seem to be diplomats.  The hijab (headscarf worn by women) is definitely not the norm.  The streets are generally pleasant, nice and relatively clean compared to the rest of Morocco.  Since Rabat is not on the tourist map as there really are no sights here, there are no hustlers or touts.  You are blissfully ignored in the medina by shopkeepers and kids alike.  Anyways, we are staying in the medina again in another riad that’s pretty nice.  The unfortunate (or fortunate, depending on the kind of experience you want) thing about the riads is that a lot of them are in the heart of the medina, which means you have to remember your way through the maze of narrow alleyways to find your way home.  Not an easy undertaking, and I’d leave breadcrumbs if I could.  It’s enjoyable when you’re not in a rush because sometimes you can wander into a different but cool section of the medina as you get lost.  However when you are in a hurry, it is maddening.

Anyways, we talked to the consulate this morning, and our passports are not here.  ARGH.  They only get a diplomatic bag from Canada once a week on Tuesdays, so they emailed us to come expecting it to arrive today, but it didn’t.  That means we have to return next Tuesday which is super annoying because we fly out of Casablanca, not here.  There are no flights from Rabat to Tunisia.  After hearing that bit of disappointing news we went to the train station (about a 15 minute walk) to buy tickets to Marrakesh.  We only had an hour before the first train was to leave and 3 hours before the next.  We had no reason to stay here so we bought tickets for the first one leaving.  Instead of walking back to the riad we decided to hail a cab to save some time.  One thing about cabs here is that they pick up multiple passengers on the way, that is the norm.  So we had to drive way out of the way to drop this other lady off before we were dropped off.  Walking there would have been at least 10 minutes faster!  After the cab driver dropped us off at the medina entrance we basically sprinted through the labyrinth to get back to our place.  You should have seen the looks of bewilderment from shop owners and the like.  We packed as quickly as possible and ran back out of the medina to get a cab to the station and made it with literally 2 minutes to spare before the ticket departure time.  In hindsight I actually have no idea why we ran, because not one train or bus or ferry we’ve taken here has been on time.  So about 45 minutes later when it arrived we got on the train, which is where I’m writing this entry.  In that 45 minutes, Di let loose about the embassy and the medinas and alleys and riads and the taxi ride and the inefficiencies of this country etc etc etc.  She also went off on how we rode 2^nd class on the train and how it was hot and some old dude was staring at her V-neck T-shirt the whole time.  Needless to say, we’re now in a first class air conditioned cabin where this picture was taken (she would have murdered me if I bought 2^nd class again), and we’re going to be checking into a 5 star hotel in Marrakesh outside the walls of the medina tonight, even though Marrakesh is supposed to have the nicest riads in Morocco.  I don’t want to imagine what would happen if we got lost looking for a riad in the medina there.  One session of the wrath of Princess Di is enough for today.