Imagine someone arriving at O’Hare Airport on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, speaking no English, and having no place to stay. That was pretty much us in Marrakech. By the way, have I thanked Lonely Planet for omitting the school holiday from their book?…Oh, I believe I did earlier! Anyway, we arrived in the train station in Marrakech in early afternoon with the entire day in front of us. The problem was there were about a thousand other people who decided to share this day with us in the station. As soon as we got off the train, it was complete chaos. Calmly, I told Kelly I would go over to the phones and call some hotels. Nope. All the phones were broken. After waiting it out for 30 minutes we decided to walk and try to find the youth hostel. It closed at 2pm for the afternoon and it was about 1:45pm. Because we were tired of dragging our 100 pound backpacks with us (they actually aren’t that heavy but it seemed like it that day), Kelly waited with both packs at a café while I went out to search for the hostel. I finally found it but there was no one there to be found.

So after returning to Kelly dejected, I grabbed a bunch of phone numbers to every hotel in Morocco and found a phone. After 30 minutes, I found two places, both a bit out of our price range. The first one was a suite at the Hotel Kenza for around $90/night. The other option was the Hotel La Mamounia, the nicest hotel in probably all of Africa. The room was about $350/night. Now, since it wasn’t my birthday the next day, I thought I shouldn’t be the one to make this decision. Plus, I kind of wanted to blow our budget and stay at the La Mamounia. But the sensible Kelly made the right decision to go to the Hotel Kenza. It turned out we had a wonderful room that reminded us of Jeannie’s bottle in "I dream of Jeannie". I probably lost half of you with that reference but it had a living room that was surrounded by couches and lots of pillows. Plus it had a television with SkyNews (Britain’s version of CNN) where we were able to learn the latest of the situation in Kosovo.

As far as Marrakech, it was as exotic as we had heard. The heart  of Marrakech is certainly the Place Jemma El Fna. I read a quote somewhere that said without the Place Jemma El Fna, Marrakech would be just another city in Morocco and I think that’s very true. The Place Jemma El Fna is the open area at the entrance to the medina. Its very difficult to explain the chaos of this place, but the huge center contains circles of people (mostly Moroccan) viewing various forms of entertainment.

As we peered into the first group, we saw a turban-topped man sitting cross-legged as he blew into his horn—hopefully controlling the Cobra in front of him. As we approached, a man with another snake tried to wrap it around our necks and solicit a few dirhams. Luckily we escaped with no bite marks.

In another circle we found a older man animatedly telling a story as hundreds stood around. Since it was all in Arabic, our participation was limited, but by the looks of the captivated listeners he seemed to be quite intriguing. Other clusters included men playing instruments, bottle-top fishing games, dancing monkeys, and chants. "Side shows" included women offering to paint traditional Henna designs on outstretched bare hands and the occasional yell of the Water man.

We took in all this during our first 30 minutes. Rows of food stalls serving cous cous, fried meat (not sure what type of meat) and Tajine (a scrumptious marinated-meat dish). And finally, the best orange juice anywhere in the world (sorry Florida). A full glass ran us about 25 cents. Oh, I forgot to mention the constant sounds of beating drums and other musical instruments as we strolled along the plaza. It seemed the only thing needed to form your own circle was a lantern and a lot of enthusiasm. Dave was tempted to get a circle going and perform some type of dance for amusement but he couldn’t find a lantern.

As we mentioned before, its a bit hard to describe this place. We were transported back to a time before radio, television, Sony playstations, and telephones (not to mention the Internet). People of all ages still came to socialize, shop, enjoy stories and music, and eat all types of food. Granted, some of the "show" was for the flocks of tourists today (mostly the snake charmers) but a lot of it has remained constant for hundreds of years.

Eventually, we decided to venture into the medina. Because it was getting late and we did not have a guide, we didn’t go in too far for fear of getting lost, but we did get a good taste of what it was all about. As we strolled along shop after shop, there was a constant rotation of: "Bonjour", "Hola", "As Salaam", "Guten Tag", and finally "Hello". If we showed a response, it quickly became "Hello my good friend!" and "Please do me the honor of visiting my store". We were  stopped many times, and even offered tea though we tried to explain we weren't going to buy anything. Quite an experience.