This past Saturday morning the sun was shining brighter than I’ve ever seen it in Ireland, so I decided to seize the opportunity to take photos before the clouds came back. Add these to some photos I took on other days and it turns out I now have 46 photos of Dublin. Check out the growing collection.
Last weekend I took a bus day trip with a bunch of tourists to various sites in County Wicklow, including the location of St. Kevin’s mission. I was hoping for lots of tacky Kevin paraphernalia, but I’m afraid I didn’t find any. However, you can find my photos online. As with many of my photos in Ireland, I’ve had to adjust the photos after the fact to take into account the low natural light. So if you’re wondering why some photos appear brighter than others, know that it’s likely because I tweaked some of them, not because the sun went in and out so fast.
I just discovered some photos on my camera from my brief trip to Cork last month and finally put them online.
(I’ve embedded this photo by Marc here.)
Now that I’ve finally finished droning on about my trip and sharing all my photos (and everyone else’s!) with you, you probably want to know what my general impressions of Morocco are.
I liked it as a whole, though I will admit that Marrakech left me a bit disillusioned realizing that there were so many people with so many ways to make money off of tourists. I was impressed with the infrastructure of the country—on par with Queretaro and similarly European in feel—yet disappointed that Marrakech, crawling with tourists, couldn’t have put up a few more street signs. We were all disappointed that we had practically no opportunities to interact with Berber women during our time outside of the major cities. As one woman in my group put it, “You feel like you’re only getting half of the story.”
We met in the morning for a walking tour of Marrakech led not by Abdou but by a local. (More on this below.) Our tourguide took us to Koutoubia Mosque (but not inside) and then the Bahia Palace, whose architecture is well-preserved but appreciation of which was somewhat distracted by installations of contemporary art (like this dumpster covered with mirrors). Next we went to a place full of second-hand everything called something like “Ali Baba’s Bazaar”.
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Be sure to click words that aren’t in black to see more photos!
Those who slept outside said they slept well.
Throughout the past few days, we kept asking Abdou if we would ever reach a part of the desert where there was only sand and no greenery. He said we would. This was the day. The past two days had been in a valley, but now we entered a more open area, where the wind was stronger. My hat kept blowing off (luckily I had a neck string!), so I switched to using a towel to cover my head.
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Readers asked for more beards and camels. I can only provide one new beard shot, but here’s one camel and another. Plus me looking uncomfortable from camel-riding. (I didn’t just look the part!)
In the morning, Peter said he slept well but got wet due to condensation. (Imagine … moisture in the desert!) He said next time he would change the order of his layers (put the plasticky material underneath) to attract less condensation.
We started off the day with a traditional Moroccan breakfast of muesli, cheese wedges, condensed milk, bread, jam, instant coffee, and Lipton tea. (Well, breakfast was likely our least traditional meal of the day. Oh, and spaghetti with marinara sauce might not be very traditional either.) Usually there was a special addition to breakfast such as pancakes or pancake-shaped omelets.
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A little bit of extra rain and ice doesn’t stop the Irish from going forward as if nothing happened. (Warning: Some photos and videos possibly staged.)
Now let’s see, where did we leave off? Ah, yes, I arrived at Heathrow to fly to Morocco.
We were tall told to check in three hours early (just to be safe). I eyed the other people in line at Royal Air Maroc suspiciously, wondering who all was on my trip. I noticed there were not as many Moroccans as I expected. Mostly tourists. Hmm.
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