Jake's Travel Blog

It's hard to capture this whole experience in one sitting...I'll probably continue to add to it. One thing I remembered today - one of the funniest things I saw in Morocco was a guy running a red light with a donkey. Amazing demonstration of the old world meeting the new world and I had a really good laugh at that.

Morocco was by far the most intense cultural experience I’ve ever had. I literally felt like I was in Aladin. “Fresh Fish! We can’t ‘em you buy ‘em!” “Would the lady like a necklace? A beautiful necklace for a beautiful lady.”Yes, the market was something else. They were pretty pushy for people to “just look” and once you’re in there they try pretty darn hard to make the sale. The negotiation was a great experience for me, I feel more ready to buy a car now! The price I paid at shops was generally 1/3 to ½ the original price they told me.

Our hostel was gorgeous. Probably tied the hostel I stayed at in Nice for beauty, but I was much more surprised to find this in Morocco. The alley leading to the hostel was a little on the sketchy side, but in general I felt very safe in Morocco and never felt like there was any risk of physical violence. I met a Canadian girl, Hilary, in Barcelona who ended up buying the same plane ticket as me to Morocco because she really wanted go to and had heard that women were treated badly in Morocco. By the end of the trip, we both agreed she would have been fine on her own, but it was nice to share the adventure with someone!

We flew into Marrakesh. It was only a quick 3 day trip, but we were determined to experience as much as possible. We signed up for a 2 day/1 night dessert tour through our hostel. We actually got really lucky with the weather because the trip go cancelled the day before due to too much snow on the roads leading to the dessert. Yes, that’s right. Snow on the roads in Africa leading to the Sahara Dessert. I saw it with my own eyes!

As many of you know, my sister Shannon also did a Europe tour after she finished university, a mere 15 years ago. Shannon has made a couple suggestions for things to do on my trip, but her one demand was that I go to Nice and make a day trip to Monaco to check out the yachts. She insisted that I would not be disappointed. The trip has now been made and, let me tell you, Shannon was right! The size and quantity of sweet ass yachts was incredible! The average size of the yachts in the one harbour was more than double the biggest yachts we see on Simcoe…and those bad boys on Simcoe are pretty large themselves! Interestingly enough, the largest private yacht that I saw was in the Nice harbour. It was called the Sarafsa and it's over 175 feet long! According to some guys working on it, there’s a year-round crew of 25 people and the boat’s worth well over 100 million euro. Its hometown is Georgetown, Cayman Islands. Imagine the fuel bill from there to Monaco??

Nice was a nice city to visit. The weather was awesome…sunny and around 12 degrees – quite the change from 3 feet of snow in the Swiss Alps! The French transit workers decided to have a little 36-hour strike when I was planning on leaving, so I ended up staying in Nice 2 days longer than planned. But all was good, I used the time to walk around and soak up more of the local culture. There was actually a really large rally with what had to be tens of thousands of people. I was walking by it in the opposite direction when suddenly a van passed playing a song that captured the moment perfectly: “It’s my life, and it’s now or never…!” Most of you probably know the song. I enjoyed that moment so much that I joined in the rally and followed the van for a little while.

Back at the hostel that night, I had quite a few interesting conversations with other travelers – many Canadians and Australians were there doing a similar Europe tour as me – and most of them were also traveling alone. Talking to other travelers from around the world has definitely been my favourite part of the whole travel experience. Enjoy the yachts!

The main Monaco harbour viewed from the castle.