Wake Up In Tangier 2

This morning at about 3am, the muezzin went off. 3am? Do they really pray at 3am? Oh well, at least I woke up a bit cooler. Later on I woke up again to Elena laughing because of the ridiculousness of our situation. Apparently, she doesn't quite agree with my assessment of our pension room. To me it looks fine, but my eye is not quite as discriminating as Elena's. Sure enough, when she points out the problems I see them, but they otherwise sit below my threshold of consciousness.

So we got ready slowly--no need to hurry in Africa--and went out to have a coffee in the Petit Socco. Only 18 dh for Elena's cafe au lait and my expresso. We gave the waiter 20 and he invited us back that night for a bigger meal. He quoted us "only 60 dh for cous-cous" which I knew to be high. We then went to find the SoccoNet internet cafe just at the entrance to the medina. But it was closed. So we got a couple of pastries (sweet coated croissant with nuts on top and a cheese chausson) for 6 dh and 2 bananas for 7.5 dh. The SoccoNet didn't open, so we decided to just head over to the train station and find the WiFi place on the way. It is called 555 or Triple 5 or something like that. But somehow I missed it. So we just went through all this construction (Tanger is preparing for the 2012 Expo and to be a more appealing city) to get to what looks like a new station. It was very nice inside. It's not a big station, but nice. We asked for the price of tickets to Fes. 145 First class and 90 something for second class. SO we figured it would be worth the extra to go first class. So we left with 2 tickets for the 11am train to Fes tomorrow. Whew!!! Got that out of the way. We walked back, this time in a bit more shade. We made it an ice cream store/cafe by the Ramada. Elena needed another coffee, I needed a coffee, and we got a chocolate bread. The waiter also brought a small orange juice. That was 27 dh before tip. Then we moved on to find the Cyber Pasteur. We found it and got internet for 10 dh per hour. We spent almost an hour there, each on our own terminal. It was like the French keyboard, just with Arabic thrown in. I got caught up on all sorts of stuff. We didn't post our blogs because we didn't move them to a thumb drive.

By now we were getting hungry so we decided to enter a place called la Liberté Café or something like that. Our waiter spoke many languages and was very pleasant. We got the opposite dishes from last night. Elena got the lamb tajine and I got chicken cous-cous. Elena got water and I got a Sprite. It all came to only 78 dh before tip or 88 dh after tip--about US$12. Not bad for a yummy meal for 2 people.

I don't ever know what time it is. Supposedly, if it is noon in Paris, it is 10am in the summer, and 11am in teh winter. However, though it is summer, we are only 1 hour off. So I am finding it confusing. The bank clock shows the 2 hour time difference, but other clocks show a 1 hourtime difference. Maybe the laws changed?