Castle Doorwerth & Arnhem

Yesterday at about 5 p.m. I went to the Emmerich train station to get the train to Arnhem. The good news: it was only 6 euros and was supposed to leave from platform 3 in three minutes.  The bad news: when I got to the platform, there was no train waiting; however, a minute or two later a train with “Arnhem Centraal” on its front display pulled up at platform 4 and people began streaming out. Hmm... I asked a conductor (who had also disembarked) whether the train was going to Arnhem, but she said no and pointed to platform 3. It turned out there was something wrong with that train and all the passengers had to get off and change to the train that I was waiting for.  There were a lot of people, so I expected the train to be quite crowded, but it was not bad at all.  And the trip is short, maybe 20 minutes.

Last time I visited Arnhem, I stayed in a hotel right across from the train station, using Air Miles. Unfortunately that Air Miles offer wasn’t available this time, and the hotel didn’t have any rooms, so I had booked a room in the Holiday Inn express, which a little farther from the station. It is a very nice hotel, though, and they had bikes for rent, so it worked out well. 

I got there after 6 on Monday, and after changing and freshening up, I thought I’d go for a walk and look at some shops. But when I checked locations on Google Maps, I saw that stores close at 6:00.  I don't really like just wandering around alone in the evenings, and at this point I didn’t know about the rental bikes, so I just stayed in my room and read.

Today, Tuesday, I started the day with breakfast at the hotel. It was pretty decent, with cheese, meat, fruit and vegetables, yogurt, cereals, boiled eggs. There were no fuzzy fruits, though, and no little plums to take along on my bike ride to Doorwerth Castle.

a thatched-roof home along the way

The route to the castle passes through a gorgeous old growth forest. When riding here, it's hard to believe you are in the most densely populated country in Europe, and hard even to believe that the city of Arnhem is only minutes away. In some spots, the path dips down to the Rhine, and I passed a couple of landings for small ferries, something I'd like to try out next time...

Castle Doorwerth:

By Vincent van Zeijst - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16838898

This castle is in the area where my dad lived as a young man, and the displays contained information about conservation efforts after the war. In my parents' papers I found an ID card for my dad from when he worked as a conservation officer in the Veluwe, the forest near where this castle is located.

The castle cafe, where I enjoyed a mineral water as I waited for the castle to open.

the Holiday Inn rental bike with panniers purchased in Emmerich

Riding this bike was a dream compared to the monster I rented in Emmerich. 

I was happy to find that the problem was not with the rider, but with the bike!

And then it was time to say farewell to Mr. Aardvark and hop on the train to Amersfoort.

Flying to Vienna

Yesterday we spent pretty much the whole day getting from Marrakesh to Vienna. This was our taxi driver, who got us to the airport in no doubt record time, thanks to driving 110 kph through the city. I was distracted enough by admiring his djelabba, made of some soft brown fabric and featuring lovely decorative stitching, that I didn’t notice the speedometer, but Dave said the speedometer hit 110 a few times!

Once at the airport, however, the high rate of speed was over. Our check-in experience was like something out of a bad movie. We were flying Ryan Air, and because the baggage allowance explanation on the website was somewhat confusing, we decided to book their "Priority and 2 Cabin Bags" tickets. It was a bit of overkill, but there didn't seem to be anything in between. It was either that or the regular ticket, which apparently did not allow any carry on luggage whatsoever. As I said, it was not clear, but we didn't want to take any chances. 

The previous night I had tried to check in. I had the Ryan Air app on my phone, but when I used it for check in, I got a message saying the app could not generate boarding passes; I would have to go to the website to get those. Surprise, surprise, the wifi at the riad was not adequate for this task, so we thought we'd do it when we arrived at the airport.

The airport wifi was also really bad; we could not connect to the website at all, so we decided to get in line (it was a long line) and ask the desk clerk about it. A couple of things were kind of strange -- first, we were not really going on Ryan Air but on LaudaMotion. That took a bit of figuring out, as there was nothing about that anywhere. Then, every other airline except LaudaMotion had a special line for Priority, so we had to wait in the long slow line along with everyone who hadn't paid the extra money for the deluxe tickets. 

Anyway, so we waited and waited until it was finally our turn. I showed the clerk my app results and explained that I couldn't get to the website. His reply: "Yeah, there's something wrong with the airport wifi." He gave us a form and told us to take it to a desk "over there" to confirm our booking. 

After a little wandering "over there" we finally found the right desk, where the nasty little clerk told us we would have to pay 480 Moroccan dirhams to get printed boarding passes. That is about $65 Canadian. Needless to say, we didn't jump at the chance to do that. Finally, Dave set up a mobile hotspot on his phone and I connected to the internet using that. Our boarding passes were there, but at the top it said, "This boarding pass must be printed. For mobile boarding passes, please use the Ryan Air app." The clerk who wanted our first board child in exchange for a printed boarding pass was not busy, so I showed her the website boarding passes, and she said, "Yes, that's what you need." 

Uncertain whether to believe her or not, we nevertheless returned to the line, which was even longer now, and waited our turn. This time there were some Austrian guys in front of us who also had the website boarding passes, so we were able to see that they worked. Whew! When we finally got to check in, we saw that the clerks were not using their computers -- apparently, the whole system was down -- but they were writing everything by hand. This explained why it took so long. 

The four-hour flight also had some unexpected twists. About an hour into the flight, there was an announcement, "If there is a doctor or other medical professional on board, could you please let us know." A guy a couple of seats ahead of us was sick, so sick that he needed to have bottled oxygen and constant medical attention. On the other hand, he was not so sick that we had to make an emergency landing, so that was a relief. When we landed in Vienna, an ambulance crew was there, and we had to wait for them to give him the all clear before we could deplane. 

But all's well that ends well; we were just a bit later than scheduled.  

Our next concern was how to get to our hotel. I booked it using Air Miles, and according to the hotel website, it was a €55 taxi ride away from the airport. Ouch! But according to Google maps, taking the train involved a change of trains at central station. Also ouch. Of course, sometimes changing trains is painless, but other times it is a big nuisance. In this case, we didn't know which it would be.  But the thought of spending only €12 for the train prevailed. It turned out to be quite easy, and we were glad we made that choice. From the train station, it was a short walk to our hotel, The Schoenbrunn Marriott.

Once we were settled in there, we used Google maps to find a nearby restaurant, settling on Restaurant Sokace, a mere two-minute walk. It was a Serbian restaurant, but they served wiener schnitzel, so Dave ordered that, while I had trout. Both were delicious. We were off to a good start in Vienna!

Marrakech

Marrakech... the name is like magic.

Many years ago, when I was a young mom, I read a book called A Street in Marrakech, by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. This book is such a vivid description of life in the Marrakech medina that I almost felt like I had experienced it myself.

It certainly succeeded in giving me a desire to go there and see firsthand the places she talked about.

Staying in a riad was a good start, I suppose. It was just too bad our experience couldn't have been more typical of the famous warm Moroccan hospitality. Warm our room was not, and the hospitality was tepid at best, but as I said to Dave, at least now I know what lies behind the walls lining the streets of the medina.

And no doubt about it, the riad was beautifully constructed and maintained.

Our room was on the second floor, and we stepped out onto the railed balcony encircling and looking down on the courtyard. In the summer, it would be lovely, as it is open to the outdoors, but in December, there was a canopy of some sort rigged up to keep the heat in and the rain out. There was a beautifully tiled pool or fountain, but at this time of year it was empty.

When I booked our room in this riad, I made sure to request the breakfast option, but this too was a disappointment. The previous evening our host had made some jokes about breakfast  -- it was served from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m., and so on. The result was that we really were not sure what time we could expect to eat. We figured that 7:30 was a safe bet, and went out to check. But everything was dark and our host was nowhere to be found. He finally showed up, from who knows where, and said he'd have breakfast ready by 8:00. Clearly 8:00 Moroccan time (or perhaps his own personal time) because we weren't served until well after 8:30. The food was disappointing as well -- a true sugar and carb fest: freshly squeezed but sweetened orange juice, white flour pancakes, white bread, white flour sickly sweet cakes and... well, that's it. No fruit, no eggs, just a lot of white dough. The coffee was okay, but barely. Oh well, we figured we would appreciate our tagine lunch that much more.

After a short map session with our host, we set out on foot for Jemaa-el-Fnaa, the main square of the city.  The mosque on the left was recommended to us as a landmark, as it was very close to the street of our riad.

We saw a lot of these combo motorcycle/ carts.

I remembered reading about this square in Fernea's book -- particularly about the aggressive snake charmers -- so of course I was on the alert.

At 9:30, the action in the square was just beginning. 

My first sighting was not of a snake, but a monkey. This guy was not looking at me when I first saw him, but as I took the photo, he must have felt the vibes or something, because not only did he look up, but he began to follow us. We made a quick getaway, and I realized I would have to be even sneakier than I thought I was being.

It wasn't long before we came across the snake charmer. Somehow I managed to escape his notice. 

The next photos are all inside the medina. You could literally spend a whole day wandering around in there, and that is almost what we did. We wanted to buy a few small gifts for people back home, but mostly, we just explored and marveled over the variety of sights, smells and sounds.

One sound that we could not escape was that of motorcycles. Every few minutes -- sometimes every few seconds -- the stream of pedestrians would have to make way for a guy on a motorcycle. There was the odd donkey, but nothing like in Fes. Here, obviously the motorcycle is the way to travel.

I loved these beautiful handpainted wooden items   -- cupboards, mirrors, chests. The souks (as the markets are called) are not the place to find cheap stuff, though -- everything seemed priced with tourists in mind, and the vendors were not super eager to bargain.

As anticipated, we enjoyed a delicious tagine late lunch/early dinner and mint tea at a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the square.

I had bought some postcards, so after eating, I wrote and addressed them. The next task was to find a place to buy stamps. The man who sold the postcards told me I'd have to go to the post office, so I looked on Google maps and found one almost right next to the restaurant. We found it with no trouble, but the door was locked. There was a guy standing outside, and he asked me (in French) what I wanted. "Je veux acheter des timbres," I told him. He went to the door and gestured to a guy inside, who then came and opened the door to let me in. I told him what I wanted, and he went to a little table, unlocked a drawer and pulled out some stamps. He took my cash and put the money in his pocket. Then he walked me to the door, unlocked it, pointed to the mailbox, and bade me adieu. Very strange! 

Ready for a break from the souks, we decided to explore farther afield and look for Bab Aganou -- one of the historical gates in Marrakech's old city walls. There was also supposed to be a palace, so we thought we'd try to find that as well. Although we had a paper map or two and Google maps, it was not easy to find these places, and when we got to the palace we discovered it was not open to the public. But we saw a lot of interesting things along the way.

And here it is -- Bab Aganou. It's hard to tell from this photo just how huge the gate is. And I didn't notice until I saw the photo that there are stork nests on top!

 Another snake charmer, this one with a nice variety of specimens! 



View of the square from our restaurant -- this was later in the day, when it was booming.

  

Fes

As I mentioned in my previous post, our hotel here is a wee bit luxurious and a tad expensive. In fact, breakfast, although no doubt quite tasty, is  €30 per person. If you said, "Wow," rest assured that we had the same response. A quick search of Google Maps led us to Masterbucks, an unashamed knock-off of a popular North American chain -- right down to the logo on the door. Not being copyright lawyers (or any kind of lawyers, for that matter) we didn't stop to consider whether there was money in it for us, aside from the savings over the hotel breakfast. For about €6 total we had a delicious and satisfying breakfast.

I had this omelet-type thing with some sort of green vegetable that looked--but didn't taste-- like spinach.


And Dave had the plate pictured below, with Moroccan crepes and some sort of bread.

Of course, coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice were also included.

 

Our hunger satisfied, we set out on foot towards the medina. It was surprisingly cold. We had left our down jackets in our hotel room and considered going back for them, but by this time we were a good distance away, and we weren't sure if it would be worth it. It probably would have been a good idea, but we survived.

Our walk took us along a beautiful boulevard lined with palm trees and a few statues of lions.

 The police were hard at work, making sure we behaved ourselves.

We spotted this woman going to work at this interesting-looking place. For some reason, I thought it was some sort of social services place. Isn't that what the sign says?

  There were storks on the walls.

This is the entrance to the royal palace, used by the royal family and not open to the public.

Once past the palace, as we approached the medina, we entered an older section of the city, where the streets became busier and narrower and took on more character.

And finally, we entered the medina. We had debated over whether to hire a guide, as many sources recommended this, but when I did some reading about it, I became less and less enthusiastic about the idea. It sounds like most of the guides are connected with at least one or two shops, so the medina tours involve "observing an artisan at work" -- code for "going to a shop and being pressured to buy stuff."  We had participated in similar tours in a few places in Turkey, and we were not interested in revisiting that experience.

So, we decided we would start off by ourselves, and if we felt like we needed a guide, we would come back out and try to find one. We had a paper map, and along with Google maps, we were able to keep track of where we were and to explore first the main "streets" and then many of the branch-offs. Unfortunately, for some reason, I did not take many photos of the shops, which were fascinating.

We entered through this gate.

There are several historic mosques tucked in among the shops. Non-Muslims are not allowed to enter, but we could peek through the arched entryways,

This photo (below) shows another disadvantage of having a guide -- they tend to go on and on about things you don't really care about, and then they seem to miss the stuff that you are really interested in! This kid was clearly wishing his parents had saved their money and skipped the guided tour!

I loved these beautiful blue-tiled stairs. (above)  Now if a guide could have taken me up those, it might have been worth it.

Below is another mosque entrance. Even with a guide, non-Muslims were not allowed to go past the little door.

After we'd had enough of exploring, we went out through a different gate and walked up a fairly big hill to the Merenid Tombs. This is a cemetery that dates back to the 14th century. From here, we had a superb view of the city, including the medina, and also of the countryside on the other side of the hill. By the way, it was no longer cold -- it went up to about 22 C and was a gorgeous day.