we arrived in Taroudant late in the afternoon after a very very long drive - so pooped that we didn't leave the riad at all which was very sad, as we discovered when we finally went up to the rooftop terrace in the evening (after a refreshing dip in the delightful pool, and another huge dinner served outside our lovely room) - we saw then that the city is completely surrounded by walls with huge towers and it would have been very cool to take a carriage ride - this is one of the places i truly regret our slightly frenetic pace
we were now facing another 'issue' (grrrrr) re: baggage - we had booked very very cheap tickets (the base fare from Casablanca to Toulouse was actually EIGHT dollars, tho with taxes and fees it came to $84.26) thru expedia (who were fairly useless when we had to change the flight after Air France cancelled the original one, and who also did not even offer the fare that included any luggage) that required an extra payment for ANY bags - but we figured that was OK because we would each go online to pay the $15 (or 15 euros - it seemed to depend on whose website you used) for 1 bag each - BUT somehow, perhaps when our flights were changed because of the cancellation of the original itinerary, or maybe just because Air France needed to drive us crazy (you all know how i am about the french and their conspiracies) - we were unable to add a bag to Kelly's booking - and to make it worse, because we had bought all the stuff to tide us over while our bags were missing, we now needed to check in 4 bags altogether
we tried from Kentucky without success, and then figured once we were in morocco with french speakers available to help us, we could get it done there - not!
vanessa (totally charming guest director at the riad) allowed us to use the office computer, but we were still not able to see any way to do it online and were now asking our extremely patient friends and family back home (who had just recovered from the whole turkish airlines drama) to contact air france to help us - and this was not going well...mitchell was actually told by air france in nyc that we would not be allowed to bring ANY luggage on the flight no matter how much we paid!
so back to enjoying stuff - we had a gorgeous huge breakfast outside under the fruit trees and a long chat with vanessa about the status of women in morocco - she feels that women are actually very strong and independent here and much of the time feel more pressure to wear a head scarf from their female friends rather than their male relatives - interesting
we had an easy drive to essaouira on the atlantic coast - supposedly the windiest city in the world and it is definitely a contender - lots of wind surfers and the beaches are not so great because your half-naked body will be sand-blasted - our riad here is again inside the walls, so lahsen parked and as happened also in marrakech when we arrived, a porter with a cart will come over and hope for a small job of shlepping your bags (in marrakech of course we had had no bags to shlep, so the porter had to go away disappointed, but here although lahsen said it was a very short walk, i wanted to give the guy a little work and it only cost us 10 dirhams/1 euro) - our riad again was just beautiful and the people were extremely sweet and welcoming (we're getting very very spoiled) and this was 1 place where we get to spend TWO nights which seems so relaxing after all of our 1-night stays all over the country)
