Dinner in a Palace!

1st day in Morocco....so far pretty amazing.

Went to the capital Rabat and was led around by a professor from UVA who is from Rabat. We saw a bunch of touristy sites and took pictures as usual. We went to this place that has a cool view of the ocean (women aren't allowed to go to the beach during Ramadan, so we could only look at it) then she took us to a rug factory. The ladies in there were so nice they stopped their very speedy production to show us how and just smiled and one even made a little yarn bracelet for me. I got some cool videos out of it, so I'll post some later.

It's Ramadan right now, which is the time that Muslims fast in order to experience true hunger and true thirst as a way of inspiring charity (at least that is what I was told during dinner by one of the professor's friends). The cool thing about it is that we were able to take part in an iftar (hopefully I spell that right) which is when they break from fasting. The COOLEST THING about it is that this professor's family apparently used to be a pretty prominent family in Morocco..because her "family home" is basically a palace...


yes that's right, I ATE DINNER IN A PALACE tonight.


It's closed to the public and their family has a rule of no parties outside of the people who own it. It's a kind of joint ownership so no one really lives there, it's just common property. I sat at the dinner in awe of everything. it was equally as beautiful and more well preserved than Topkapi Palace in Istanbul (obviously not as crazy, but seriously I still can't believe it).

Not to mention the dinner conversation was fascinating. We talked about religion and racism and language. I'm still trying to comprehend it all. Hopefully I have more thoughtful things to say about it in the morning...because it is about 2am right now.

We didn't get back until 1am because we left late then our bus got into an accident. not really sure how it happened because everyone was asleep..the story we've come up with is that something fell off the truck in front of us that was carrying a bunch of metal rods and cracked our window. It was complicated because a group of guys were running around on the back of the truck, but I'm thinking that was just unrelated nonsense.

Going to Marrakech tomorrow and staying in a Riad!! a really nice one too :)


did I mention that I ate dinner in a palace tonight? ..okay just checking

nighty night ya'll