The End

So that’s the end of the blog. Thanks to anyone who looked at it, especially for your emails and comments. As I said at the beginning, I mostly chronicled this so that the grandmothers would be reassured that their precious granddaughter hadn’t been kidnapped. But I hope that the hotel recommendations go far and wide, and that people reading this understand how beautiful, safe, fabulous, exotic and enlightening travel in Morocco is, and how very lovely Italy is. And if you can possibly do it, travel independently, eschewing those god-awful tours, and take your children early and often.

Back to Italy

Morning: off to the airport, the flight to Milan, and the drive north. We abandoned the plan to trace the mountain stages of the Tour de France. We’d had enough challenging travel in Morocco, and wanted just to relax. We headed north to one of the lakes in Italy’s northern lakes district, Lago Maggiore, and looked for a hotel. We followed a sign into a tiny little port town, Caldé, and then couldn’t find the hotel. I asked at a bar, and a flirty Italian man told me I wanted to go to the wine bar and speak to Luca. Luca took me to his guest house and showed me a perfect suite with a view out front of the lake, and out back of the garden. Across the street is a children’s playground, and a 10-second walk away is the waterfront. The wine bar is so beautiful, so elegant, that we could just move in here.

We spent two days here in Caldé in heaven. I spent a fair bit of time explaining to Ria what heaven is. Atheists have a slightly different view than the traditional Christian one, but it’s a nice view, and it’s good for appreciating what you’ve got. So we reveled in our good luck, got to know Luca and his beautiful village, and generally thought seriously about never leaving.

We all agreed that although our hotel in Cinque Terre was dramatic, the riad in Marrakech stunning, the Kasbah in Skoura historic, and the tent in the Sahara unique beyond words, our time in Luca’s guesthouse was the best part of the vacation. We were exhausted from the challenges of traveling in Morocco, and not only was the guesthouse just perfect, Luca grew into a friend. We hope to see him often. If you're in the area, please go stay with him, and tell him Susan and Thom sent you.

We also all agreed that we need to spend more time in Europe, and came up with a plan for next year. We plan to pull Ria out of school at the beginning of spring break (she’ll be in kindergarten again, as per the Waldorf plan, so she won’t be academically stilted by this) and spend eight weeks in southern France. Thom will join us at the beginning and the end, and otherwise stay home and work as intensively as he can. In preparation for the trip, Ria and I have been working on our French now that we’re home.

We gave up our plan to drive the mountain stages of the Tour de France to come here, and when we got home, we discovered that the individual time trial of the Giro d’Italia will go through the villages of Cinque Terre – if we can find TV coverage of it, we can watch that stage, instead of the TDF, to get our fill of “I remember that corner, we ate at that café!”

Casablanca

The drive to Casablanca is long, and we’ve already driven it once this trip, so while Ria slept, we just bolted north. We got to the airport hotel at eight, and although I’d confirmed our reservation with a credit card and the web site had warned me that if I didn’t cancel before 7 p.m. my card would be charged, instead it was cancelled. The nice woman at the desk informed me that there were no rooms at this hotel, but she could get me a room in the chain’s location in downtown Casablanca. Well, Thom and I have done the in-city driving thing in Morocco, and I knew that it would take us more than an hour to find the place if we were lucky. I went out to the car and got Ria (who was well rested from her long nap in the car), and told her to pretend she was absolutely exhausted. Ria put her head on my shoulder and whimpered, and I explained to the woman that we’d driven in from Skoura and “la petite” was exhausted, and within 45 seconds she procured a key to a room for us. Ah, the advantages of traveling with a child.

Our hotel room generously included a sticker on the desk pointing the way to Mecca. I thought it was a nice touch, and noticed that underneath the sticker was another identical sticker, pointing in a very slightly different direction, no more than a couple of degrees off. I’m not sure if this was revisionism, or if the lower sticker had been marred in some way and its replacement not perfectly aligned.

Aït Benhaddou

In the morning of our last day in North Africa we stopped at Aït Benhaddou, a massive Kasbah used as the set for many movies, and a major tourist stop. It’s also still inhabited. Talk about weirdness. We walked around gawking, with the other tourists, trying to not end up walking into someone’s living room, and not knowing the signs to recognize when we were likely to do that. It was hot, like, Sahara Desert hot, and Ria was cranky, the worst behavior of the trip. Our guide spoke pathetic English, so we learned almost nothing of the history of the place. We gave up, headed out, and cranked up the AC in the car, vowing to never go to the must-see place again.

The kasbah in Skoura

Then we headed off to find the Valley of Roses, reputed to be fields and fields of roses almost ready to be harvested. Apparently we took the wrong route, because we saw miles and miles of rocks, admittedly beautiful, but not what we were looking for after several days of driving through a rock-filled landscape.

On we went, to Skoura, to find a hotel. Lonely Planet recommended three that sounded good, saying only that they could be found by following signs in the Palmerie. So we headed into the Palmerie. Mistake. We first crossed a wide, flat area that appears to be a river bed in wetter seasons, and is a minefield of large rocks and sand at the moment. Then into the palmerie itself, a maze of narrow, winding, twisting roads between mud-brick houses (“roads” is perhaps an overstatement – we really could have used a 4WD in there). There was nary a sign pointing to any hotels, and eventually a deadend. We turned around, retraced our steps, and, an hour of bouncing around, we headed west, defeated.

And there, right on the highway, was a hotel Lonely Planet recommended as well, so we pulled into the parking lot. The hotel was in a converted Kasbah, formerly the home to four families consisting of 52 people. It had been lovingly restored and was absolutely incredible – romantic, mysterious, and luxurious. We are privileged indeed.

Dadés Gorge

We packed up and headed west to a parallel gorge, the Dadés Gorge, reputed to be more beautiful, but it was less stunning to us, perhaps due to having been seen second. We ate lunch at an outdoor café across the gorge from rocks that appear to be melting from the walls. The gorge is deep and dramatic, which makes it difficult to capture in photos and a challenge to drive as well. Here are a few glimpses.

The Todra Gorge

We drove north, then west, starting the return part of our loop, to the Todra Gorge – a gash in the mountains – and found a hotel. It’s perched on the Todra River, deep within vertical red walls. Our room faces the river, and for the first time in months, we can hear a chorus of frogs. Thom now has a head cold, and wants nothing more than to sleep it off. Ria is exhausted and sleeping as well.

Early the next morning we headed up the Todra Gorge, seeing the deep orange walls during the few hours a day when they’re sunlit, and not in their own shadows. Here in Morocco, protected lands are rare, and the Todra Gorge is not among the protected. Thus it is packed full of hotels clinging anxiously to the steep walls, stands selling identical chachkas and streams of brilliantly colored scarves, and generators running to power the hotels and the stands, their rumbling reverberating off the walls. Even with this ode to capitalism, the gorge is fantastic, and photos cannot do it justice.

At the end of the gorge is a Berber village of considerable size, made up of one-story mud-brick homes and the friendliest people we’ve come across. We got out and walked, and everyone spoke to us. Almost immediately Ria was accosted by a young woman who insisted on kissing her all over. A man invited us to his house, and although Thom resisted, I accepted, and he led us across fields of farina to his home. One room was the kitchen: a propane stove, a short table, and several well used pots. One room was the bedroom, with mats for several people to sleep on the floor. And one room was the showroom, with a loom at one end, and gorgeous Berber rugs all along the walls. He clearly invited us to tea so that he could sell us a rug, but we knew that going in, and it was wonderful to have tea with him and negotiate for a rug after we had become friends. We bought a gorgeous yellow and black rug that Ria insists is going in her room, but we know will be hung on one of our walls.