We got up early and tried to beat the heat. Whether we beat the heat or the heat beat us is to be debated, but both the sun and your intrepid travellers put up a good fight. We decided to take a taxi since the walk to the medina isn't scenic and the sun would get a good head start on us. The interesting part of the trip was seeing a woman riding behind a guy on a small motorcycle fall off. She was shaken up, but ulitmately OK. She'll be sore a while. She landed flat on her tummy after an interminable 1 second of trying to stay on. We also saw a bus collide with a car taking out the rear driver side lights. We also saw a cabbie push a motorcycle into a horse drawn buggy. There were three or four other close calls this morning as well. I don't why people fear terrorism when the traffic is like this.
We also went to an orange juicer where Elena asked for "deux" but didn't specify what she wanted. The guy acted as if he gave us grapefruit juice instead of orange juice. Then he backed off to a mix of grapefruit and orange juice. Elena gave him 10 for both. I would have just walked away. After all, there are a zillion identical juicers willing to sell us orange juice. So I will never patronize juicer #45.
It's fun to watch the other tourists. You can spot the French ones pretty easily because they have backpacks or items of clothing with "Quechua" on them. Quechua is the Decathlon brand. Everybody in France has something with Quechua. A family came and sat near, all 4 of them with brand new Quechua stuff. A few minutes later, two cute girls came, both with Quechua backpacks. You can also spot the Routard guides. Routard is only French, I think. Lonely Planet translates into several languages so the tell-tale Lonely Planet isn't as good an indicator of nationality--except, no French person would use one when they have Routard which is specifically written with French nationals in mind.
We did some shopping. All our bargaining failed and we walked away empty handed from most attempted transactions. Elena has this red bag she likes. She asked everyone to sell it for 100 dh--about US$15, but nobody would. One guy came down to 200 dh. They like to name a really high price, then drop about 10dh off, then ask you how much you are willing to pay. Then they go a bit over that. Sometimes they look mad after the transaction, sometimes they are happy. I'm a little relieved when they aren't happy because I have the impression that I didn't get ripped off. Maybe it's just an act. It's worse when they are happy, though--then I feel like they ripped me off good. Not pleasant at all. It's tough working with imperfect information. But with experience, we are learning the proper prices for stuff.
We checked out the Cyber Parc on the way back. It's nice and quiet and shady and cool. There are stands where one can connect to the internet. In general, the ones that have people by them are working and the ones that don't are broken. They are spread out, so you walk over to an empty one hoping it will be working, but it isn't. You just have to camp one to use MMORPG terminology.
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