Day 3: Exploring Rabat

Exploring the local grocery store.




One of the typical fruit and vegetable markets in the Medina.

 



Meat market and butcher shop in the Medina.  After my bad experience the first night with getting sick on chicken, and then seeing the meat market in person, I decided that I may limit eating chicken while here.  :-)

 



Buying and eating strawberries in the market.  They were very large and very delicious.

 


Our team eating lunch at an Italian restaurant called Eberia.  It was quite good and I expect that we will visit here often during our stay.





Another market in the Medina where you could buy grains.  There was a little boy who was working there with his mother.

 


The girls had quite fun shopping for scarves.  We weren't able to bargain much here but we enjoyed looking.




Rahul, Anup, and Andrew had a great time shopping as well.




I loved this particular area of the market.  There were several small shops located off of this common area.  Notice the many beautiful handmade tangines in the lower left.





The view of the water as seen by the road next to the eight hundred year old Kasba (fort).

 



What an incredible view of the water as seen from the top of the Kasba (fort).

 


Walking up to the Kasba that overlooked the water on the backside.




My son John loves to collect turtles (not the real ones) when he travels to different locations near the water.  I thought about buying him a live turtle from the market and then thought better of it.  :-)  This picture is for you John.



Walking in the small alleyways where traditional homes are located off of.  This was the street where we entered the small door into the Riad (house) Kalaa.  The small doors are deceiving because there are amazing homes, hotels, and restaurants located inside many of these doors.



Boutana and myself outside the entryway to the Riad Kalaa.




This is the lobby/central living area that you see when you enter the Riad Kalaa.   Our group had our first rest of the day here (after 8 hours of walking) and enjoyed mint tea and pastries.





Having mint team in the lobby of Riad Kalaa.  They typically pour the tea quite high from the cup.... Anup is getting to be an expert.




Ending our long day of walking and exploring by having dinner in a nearby Syrian restaurant.  The food was quite good and we ran into a group of Americans from the Peace Corp and visited with them for a while.   They said that Hillary Clinton had been in Rabat that day for an Embassy event and they had been able to personally meet her.

There aren't many days that I can say that I explored a new city on foot for 12 hours but today was one of those days. We left our hotel about 10am this morning with our fantastic 'tour guides' Jailan and Boutana. Jailan is our CDC Advisor who helped lead us through our over the phone training for the last three months. She will be staying with us at the hotel for the first week. Boutana also works for the CDC and will be with us during our entire month stay. We are so lucky to have Boutana.... she is a wonderful person and knows Rabat very well since she lives here. Concidentally, she also worked for IBM for four years in both the Morocco and France offices.

We started our trek by exploring the local grocery store, restaurants, etc. We found several good nearby restaurants that we can walk to in the coming weeks and ended up selecting an Italian restaurant called Eberia for lunch. We sat in the outside cafe area and enjoyed the beautiful day. It was the first real meal that I had had since my food episode yesterday and it was delicious. I officially felt back to normal. We then walked to the local market in the Medina where we spent several hours exploring fruit and vegetable markets, meat markets, local artisan booths, etc. Eight of us went into the market and I have to give credit to the four males for their patience while their female counterparts looked at scarves, paintings, earrings, spices, silver, etc. They were real troopers.

We then walked to a beautiful eight hundred year old fort that overlooked the ocean. I got some beautiful pictures that I hope to be able to post soon. Boutana then lead us down through some narrow streets that reminded me of the streets and neighborhoods in Europe. She knocked on a small door in the alleyway that lead into a private home that had been converted into a hotel. It was called Riad Kalaa and it was absolutely beautiful inside. We rested a bit and were served hot mint tea and pastries. We realized that it was the first time that we had sat down in nearly 8 hours of walking.

We ended the day by eating in a nearby Syrian restaurant. While we were there, we met another group of Americans who are in Morocco with the Peace Corps and spent some time visiting with them. In turns out that Hillary Clinton was in Rabat today for the opening of a new embassy and they had been able to meet her. Very small world. We finally got back to our hotel at nearly 10pm. Our assignment officially starts tomorrow morning where all four teams will be meeting at the Ministry of Economic Affairs for our kickoff meeting. I'm pleasantly exhausted from our many miles of walking today and I'm heading off to sleep now.