Lawstruck: May 2012

Monday, May 21, 2012

Summer Travels: Switzerland

Dear Readers,

This is my final entry under the "Summer Travels" subheading! After this, I will continue posting photos of our lovely little island here at home.

We reached the last location on our summer travel itinerary by flying from Marrakesh to Geneva. The Marrakesh airport is a modern, AIR-CONDITIONED building with restaurants, shops, and all the usual airport accoutrements. However, with the bad taste of Marrakesh city still lingering, we weren't at all surprised when our flight was delayed indefinitely. An hour later, when we happened to wander by our gate as we waited for news, we found our flight boarding... completely unannounced. One last frustration for the road! Oh well, at least we didn't miss the flight.

As we landed in Geneva, I realized I was thrilled to be back in the cooler climate and polite reserve of Western Europe after the thrilling, but exhausting, Morocco! We spent a night at the Geneva hostel, then caught a couple of trains to the little mountain village of Gryon to meet my parents. We spent the last few days of our summer vacation enjoying beautiful pastries and taking in the amazing mountains of Switzerland.

Rainy Geneva Train Station

Too-Beautiful-To-Eat Pastries

Our Gryon Hostel Room View

Hiking

Swiss Wildflowers

The Moon and the Mountains

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Summer Travels: Marrakesh

Our last stop in Morocco was the famous Marrakesh. After arriving by bus just outside of Marrakesh, we had our first taste of the city in the form of a group of hard, unscrupulous taxi drivers who tried their hardest to cheat us; hot and frustrated, we finally wore them down and negotiated a somewhat fair price to the city. Unfortunately, this was just the first of our unpleasant experiences here: Marrakesh was by far our least favorite stop in Morocco....

The (limited) pros: some parts of the city had interested architecture, we managed to find a lovely riad to stay in with delicious food, the spices available here are indeed wonderful, and we made friends with a jeweler around the corner from our riad.

The (many) cons: the weather was incredibly hot, the people shockingly pushy and rude, the food mediocre, and the shopping of poor quality and ridiculously overpriced. My absolute worst encounter was with a woman in the market who tried to sell me a henna body art design. After saying I wasn't interested and had absolutely no money to spend with me, the woman smiled sweetly, said that was no problem, and she would just give me a gift instead totally free of charge; she grabbed my hand roughly, and drew some simple henna lines on my hands. After a minute or two, she proceeded to yell at me for payment, accused me of stealing, and threatened to physically scrape the henna off my hands! Thankfully, we were able to escape the bombardment after a futile attempt at chastise her for her behavior. To add insult to injury, I took a shower several hours later and the henna was completely washed away, despite her promise that it would last for at least 1 week. To sum up: if you visit Morocco, don't bother with Marrakesh!