Atlas mountains

Initially our exciting plan was to climb the Toubcal, the highest peak in the Atlas mountains and Northern Africa. Later the plans had to change because of lack of time, as we normally would need 2 days to climb the peak. We didn't have a spare day but still decided to dedicate a day for a mountain hike.




I wasn't particularly physically active for the last few months so hiking to the top was very challenging and exhausting for me. But it was worth it. Views were very beautiful and the weather was good and sunny. My two very fun colleagues from work who also traveled with us to Morocco also joined us for the hike. On the way back we decided to take a different route from the one we took on the way up, which was a big mistake. We ended up passing by a little village trying to get down the mountain. We had no choice but to climb through people's back yards which was quite embarrassing. Locals didn't mind and found it funny that 4 strangers were trying to climb their steep yard in order to get down. They, surely, would take a different route.

My experience in hammam

In one of the evenings after coming back from a long tiring day in the mountains I decided to go to a public bath, what Moroccans call hammam. It's a part of Moroccan tradition to go to their local hammams from time to time and I was tempted to try it as well. 

I was told that there were 2 types of hammams - for local people and for tourists, which I thought was not serious and decided to try the one for locals, just to know the real thing. I was completely unprepared for what would happen. At the entrance I was given 2 empty buckets and was told to take off my cloths. I took the buckets and went into a big steamy room. All women inside were half naked and most of them sat on the floor in front of buckets full of water. They all seemed to really enjoy themselves, they talked, laughed  basically behaved as if they would casually sit in some cafeteria or a pub, only difference- they were naked. They also did scrub each other with some sort of bathing gloves. I noticed that all of them had it. Apart from me who had no idea what to do. I think I never felt so awkward before. I had no clue what to do. Neither I can ask them because I don't speak their language, neither I have any glove to do that scrubbing. So I just awkwardly stood by the wall in front of 2 buckets of water while everyone else was curiously watching me and smiling.

Then suddenly one of local women came to me and said in French (most of the locals speak French) she is going to help me. That's all I understood with my really bad knowledge of French but felt really relieved. She was my saviour! She asked me to show her my bathing things and soon discovered I didn't have a scrubbing glove. She went away and brought one from somewhere. She put some black liquid, probably soap as it smelled like one, on the glove and started to massage me with that glove so strong that it even hurt. She told me later to lie on the floor to she could wash my back and legs. So I did! I found that really weird, but decided not to interrupt. After about 10 minutes of scrubbing she poured all the water that was in the buckets to wash out the soap. At that point my experience was over and the lady asked me to tip her. I happily agreed, dried myself and left the hammam. Even though this was probably the weirdest and awkward 30 minutes of my life I still would recommend this to everyone who wants to experience something different. Besides, scrubbing was so strong and intense that I think I never felt so clean before.

Marrakech

We just got back and our trip to Morocco was awesome. We started in Marrakech, one of the most busiest cities in Morocco. The main tourist attractions of Marrakech are situated in medina which is so called old town surrounded by medieval wall.

I believed that Marrakech was all about medina and the city seemed to be very old-fashioned and undeveloped. Later I discovered there is much more of Marrakech outside the wall where buildings look very different and modern. But most of the time we hanged out in medina.

Hostels in Morocco deserve a special attention cause they aren't just like any other hostels we are used to but rather are riads. The definition of riad is that it's a traditional Moroccan house or palace with an interior garden or courtyard. One amusing thing is that for a very affordable (sometimes really cheap) price you could stay in a what used to be palace. We did it 2 times.

Our first hostel-riad was not as good looking as the second one, but it had an amazing atmosphere because of its amazing hosts. I heard that Moroccans were famous for their hospitality and 2 guys who ran the hostel even exceeded my expectations. They were amazing. They taught us how to cook cous-cous, kept making for us fresh Moroccan sweet mint tea, sang songs and played drums in the evenings. We didn't need to look for any entertainment in Marrakech, it was all in our hostel.

Marrakech medina is very colorful place, full of souks (markets) selling leather goods, spices, food and all other imaginable things. The thing that pleasantly surprised me about Marrakech, and Morocco in general, is that most of the people were wearing traditional cloths. So all those souks with colorful goods and Moroccans in national cloths walking by or selling goods were just perfect for taking beautiful pictures, however it wasn't always that easy. Moroccans don't like to be on the picture. Whenever they would spot me with my camera they would either walk away or cover their face. Once I even received quite an aggressive remark to stop using my camera. But nevertheless I still used it quite a lot and have probably around 100 pictures of Marrakech souks.




There is a huge square in the middle of medina called Jemaa el-Fnaa. It's the biggest square in African continent and is very lively all day and night long. I loved passing through it because every 10 meters you could buy a big glass of an absolutely divine fresh orange juice. Price for the juice was fixed in every places of the square (just 0.40 Euro per glass) with no need to bargain. We basically drank it whenever we were passing by the square.

La Traviala

Oh my! What a performance I was at yesterday! Me and Andrejs went to see La Traviata opera in the Royal Opera House. I was extremely pleased with the performance. There are no words to describe my love to this opera.
The opera house was very spacious, with beautiful Christmas decorations, filled with fancy looking people drinking champagne. Definitely the place I would wanna visit again. There was a live music orchestra, absolutely non-boring acts and very good opera singers. The opera was in Italian and there were subtitles running above the scene for those who don't understand Italian singing. People were getting pretty emotional. All around me I kept hearing some sobbing. The story was very sad but for me personally after watching "Madam Butterfly" no other opera will make me as sad.

Absolutely by accident I discovered that Mei Sin with her husband were there at the same time, and we spotted them sitting on the other side of amphitheater.

New Year Resolutions

This year it seems like whomever I ask is giving me a long list of resolutions for the new year. Those typically include exercising, starting the gym gym, eating healthy, learning a new language and so on, and so on... They all actually are pretty much the same, as everyone wants to look good, healthy and smart.

After a few days of holidays I came back to work and went to my usual food place Pret for lunch. I typically grab a salad, as it's my favorite food out of all they've got. I normally go for lunch around or after 2 p.m. which is quite late but I never have any problems with buying salads, as it isn't anybodies first choice for a meal. And guess what! Today salad was gone. Not just that! All 6 types of salad were gone!  Everything else apart from salad was available. If people will keep up with their resolutions by eating healthy and buying salads instead of other meals what will I be left with?!  The only consolation I can think of is that statistically people who are making new year resolutions have 60% of failure. Nah...not really, I am not that evil and that' not how i feel. I just hope Pret will manage salad demands in a better way!

My last cigarette

I feel great today! Today is a memorable day! The day when I stopped smoking. Some would just say that it doesn't count as I have never really smoked heavily. That's true, however I could never call myself a non-smoker. I was smoking when I was at school, when I was a student and I practically never refused if someone would invite me for a cigarette. I love smoking, smoking is great! It feels relaxing, cool and people who never smoked have no idea what a great pleasure they are missing. The only problem with it that it's addictive, expensive, you smell afterwords not to mention harm for the health. But I thought that eliminating cigarettes from my life completely would be too cruel, and I'd better limit the amount of cigarettes I am smoking rather than getting rid of them which is not gonna work anyway. So I set myself some certain rules that would help me enjoy smoking and not to get too addicted.

The rule was that I should smoke only 10 cigarettes every 3 month. Sounded like a good plan, however didn't quite work out. At the beginning it all went just fine, and for a couple of months I just smoked those packs of ten. At some point I realized that I didn't even feel how the pack has finished and would need to face 3 months waiting time to get another one! Then I decided that probably buying a 20 cigarettes pack would be a better solution as they would last longer and it's only 10 cigarettes more! The pack of 20 however would always finish faster than I wanted and again I would face 3 months of waiting when it's finally time to buy a pack again... So I introduced another cheating rule that I should smoke every 2 months now instead of 3. But that also didn't quite work as my desire to smoke was stronger then the rules. So for the last few days I was smoking whenever I felt like, and I felt like smoking them one after another. I also realized that it was getting nowhere, and if I don't wanna be addicted I should stop once and for all. So here I am, all firm and decided! I am never smoking again! Just to make sure I am definitely giving up I bought a supporting book called "Easy Way to Stop Smoking" by Allen Carr, which has some excellent reviews in amazon.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Allen-Carrs-Easy-Stop-Smoking/dp/014103940X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1324420995&sr=8-1

On the way to work

The are many cool things about the area where we live. One of it is the location! It's close to my/Andrejs work as it takes me only 20 minutes to get to work from door to door (car to the tube's station + tube ride + on foot). I decided that one day I should try reaching my work on foot. I left home at 8 and were in the office at around 9 which was about right of what googlemaps predicted. On the way I took some photos of our area, later of the Tower Bridge, which is on the way to my work and which I need to cross in order to get to the opposite side of the river where my office is. The journey was very lovely and it's also a part of National Trail called the Thames path. That day I decided I am going to do walk to work at least ones every week. If only I were as motived now as I was that day....