Second Day in Morocco

I don’t really recall why we decided to go to El Jadida today other than that we wanted to see a place without lots of tourists and more particularly SAS people. It was a good adventure. So a group of 5 of us took a train at 10:30am and got to El Jadida around 12:00pm. With only a tour guide book with a small map in it we at first had the idea that we would get in a taxi and point to where we wanted to go. Well there weren’t very many taxis and there were a lot of people waiting so we went to plan B which was to walk until we could catch a cab. There is only one road leading away from the train station and the town center couldn’t be that far away right? We spent about three hours walking around and never made it to the town center. But we did have a good time walking around and at one point we stopped to ask for directions from what turned out to be an off duty cab driver who was very nice and couldn’t believe that we had walked all the way from the train station. We asked him if there was any place to eat but because it was the hot of the day and Ramadan had just ended he said that no places were open. He offered to drive us somewhere but we decided to continue walking mostly because we didn’t think that all of us would fit in a taxi. So we ended up back at the train station where we ate some snacks in the café and waited for the next train which was suppose to come at 4:15pm. The ticket booth was empty until 4:05pm at which time we asked him about tickets to Casablanca. He informed us that because of the end of Ramadan the trains were on a different schedule and that the one we had been waiting for was canceled the next train to Casablanca wasn’t till 7:15, one of the girls with us wanted to be back before that because she had an early field trip to be at the next day. So we went outside to wait for a taxi to take us back to Casablanca. While we were waiting two police men came over asking who was waiting for a taxi because there were so many people waiting. They then said that they had called for more taxies for all of us. I overheard one of the guys talking to the police saying that he needed a taxi to Casablanca. So we went over and asked if we could get a taxi to Casablanca. The man luckily spoke English very well and said that yes we could and we ended up sharing a cab to Casablanca with him, during which he explained to us about Ramadan. We also learned that he had a job in marketing and planning events, and that he use to work for a big video game company that made the Prince of Persia and Raving Rabids(not sure about the spelling on that one). It was very interesting to hear his perspective on Morocco. We even made it back to the ship before dinner was over. Another good day. Tomorrow it’s on to Fez.