Ubiquitous and endlessly useful.
Reason 1,233 Why I Love Morocco: Everything is possible with WhatsApp—doctor’s appointments, car repair, hotel reservations, fish mongers, taxi pick-ups, you name it. Of course, one must obtain the numbers first, but there’s always a friend of a friend of a friend whose brother knows just the man you need.
On our way back from Spain, we stopped off to see some of northern Morocco. In part, this was to enable me to finally finish my self-appointed task of seeing every UNESCO heritage site in Morocco. We stopped in Tangier for a few days (that’ll be a post later), then headed to Chefchaouen, a small…
No visit to Transylvania is complete without a quick stop at Bran Castle, the reputed home of Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia, a member of the House of Drăculești, also known, using his patronymic, as (Vlad) Drăculea or (Vlad) Dracula and posthumously dubbed Vlad the Impaler. Regarding his nickname, Wikipedia has this to offer: As the…
Yesterday, I went with my friend, Slimane, on an extended bike ride to explore some local Ksars, or Ksor to use the Arabic plural. Ksars are older, enclosed communities whose expansive structures used traditional construction methods, such as mud, hay, and palm trunks. Think of them as expanding apartment complexes that emerged organically around oases. Some…
Reason 248 Why I Love Morocco: Sometimes, when you show up early for the bus, the bus drivers take you to breakfast.
After all the hustle and bustle of Barcelona, arriving in Seville was somewhat a relief. The city has a wonderful ‘old town,’ where our hotel was located and we spent lots of time wandering around this part of the city. But, the highlight of our time in Seville was getting to see friends from Washington…
Rabat, the capital of Morocco, is a beautiful, modern city on the coast. It has been a nice change from the more rural environment, but I am also eager to return to a smaller, less hectic pace, though the cats around Rabat seem pleasantly unaffected by the pace of life in the big city.
Reason 1,843 Why I Love Morocco: No matter what you need, there’s always a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.
Being in a new environment, one that often challenges my previous ways of living and understanding of my life, I was trying to find a way to frame my thinking in an effort to understand where and why I struggle. To that end, I’ve decided to harken back to traditional symbolic systems to see what…
Nicolae Ceaușescu was a brutal dictator that ravaged Romania during his reign before being overthrown and executed during the Romanian Revolution. During his time in power, however, he began the building of an incredible structure though he never saw its completion. Originally called “The People’s Palace,” the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, Romania, is an…
