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Well we are still in Rabat (actually the marina is technically in Sale). The two cities of Sale and Rabat are separated by a river, down which we surfed the atlantic rollers when we arrived here!
The culture shock was nowhere near as big as we had thought in some ways, Rabat is the capital city of Morocco and is fairly cosmopolitan, with the occasional woman even wearing skirts and tights! The medina in Sale is more of a locals place, with the more eye opening sights being live chickens put into the plucking machines, fish gutted onto the street / paths, and selling brains and intestines and various other parts of the animals not to be wasted!
Our friends from Ibiza (on the green heart boat) arrived here too, on Elisas birthday - so the next day we threw a bday party for her on our boat (and learnt happy birthday in French).
We have decided to get some cushions made for our cockpit here (taking advantage of the cheap labour) and are expecting them to be ready tomorrow. Although French is widely spoken here, I have to say that my French was much better than the cushion makers! (and I have no Arabic other than insh'allah).
There are a lot of other liveaboards here with families, and as it is a small marina there is a friendly atmosphere here. The mutual language is mostly French which is quite hard work for me, and very hard work for John!
We have just been on our first inshore holiday - on a trip to Fes on the train. It was 3 hours to get there, Ellen as usual made friends on the train - with a Moroccan girl going home with her mum to Fes. We pushed the boat out and stayed in a Rhiad, a traditional Moroccan building (which would at one time have housed 8 or 9 families) with a communal courtyard - covered over. It was very beautiful, unfortunately with tons of fragile breakable objects (which we managed to leave intact!). The other guests were a New York couple who were very child friendly, and were very chatty with the girls.
The medina is incredibly hard to navigate, although there was a system of coloured routes through the tiny winding streets, and more than once we went in circles for a while before getting back on track. We found the people to be friendly and helpful, and good humoured when we refused to buy things, and very accommodating when the girls needed to sit or rest or use the toilet (I use the term toilet loosely!!!). We stopped often for sweet mint tea, which always ended up with a chat and occasionally with free croissants for the girls. The girls were kissed huge numbers of people, which they and we got used to after a while (infact the girls took everything well in their stride) and we enjoyed the game of haggling as we bought, cushions, poofs, slippers and other bits and pieces. The atmosphere was rich and vibrant, and only a little bit hectic, with a wary eye kept open at all times for the taxis of the medinas - donkeys and trolleys.
We had lovely food at the Rhiad, and our room was big, with enough beds for all of us (with a silk canopy over our bed - you can imagine the reaction of our two princesses!), however we were all ready after 2 nights to return home to Double Helix, and on arriving home, the girls played non-stop together without any interruption for 4 hours before crashing into bed!
Everyone here is waiting for a good weather forecast to go to the canary islands, as are we. It looks like it will be next week at the earliest with storms forecast for the weekend, so we have plenty of time to potter round Rabat and Sale.
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