The Honeymoon

Our wedding was the most amazing day of my entire life. The sun came out to play, the people were laughing, and everyone was dancing! It was a day full of fun!! It was all and all a magnificent day! After such a perfect wedding, and I really mean absolutely perfect, there was bound to be a hic-up somewhere…

A couple days after our wedding Andy surprised me with a trip to Marrakech, which I had no idea where it was until I googled it, for our honeymoon! I was ecstatic, of course even more ecstatic when I googled it and found out Marrakech is in Morocco and even more excited when I saw the ancient city is packed full of beautiful belly dancers, endless hookahs, snake charmers, fire eaters, and magic carpet rides!!! AHHHH this was going to be the best honeymoon ever!!! For 5 days I was going to be Princess Jasmine and Andy my Aladdin while we strolled around the ancient streets having magical Arabian nights under the stars!! I was so thrilled I could hardly contain myself! I immediately started packing all my Moroccan inspired tops, short shorts, and flirty summer dresses, because after all, it is my honeymoon! I didn’t know anyone who had ever been to Morocco, and especially not on their honeymoon! I was so sure this trip was going to blow those Sandals, lie by the beach and drink daiquiris honeymoons, out of the water! I was going to a place with thousands of years of history, that is bright and colorful, and even Disney felt inclined to make it into a romantic movie!

When we got to Gatwick I ran to the airport bookstore and bought a copy of Marrakech, Morocco’s Travel Guide. As soon as we got onto the plane that book was wide open with my nose stuck right in the middle of it. The entire 3 hours on the plane I kept oooooohhhhhhing and ahhhhhhhhing to Andy about all the different places we had to go see! I was so excited I could have peed my pants right there and then! I was so sure this vacation was going to be the best vacation I had ever taken! After all I was going to be in an Arabian desert soaking up the hot sun walking around within ancient city walls! The entire flight I was moving all around and giggling like a little kid with a sugar high! I couldn’t believe I was going to be in Africa in Morocco! Then I got to the street smarts at the back of my Morocco travel guide… where it began to inform me women should not show their shoulders (well there goes 80% of my tops), or wear shorts (didn’t pack anything but shorts and short shorts at that!). It then went on to warn us not to trust any locals and to eat with your hands when  at all possible because the silverware is unsanitary! Thank God I had my antibacterial gel!! I thought we were off to Marrakech not Afghanistan! But I was determined to not let this get me down! It was going to be FANTASTIC! And then we stepped out of the airport…

When we walked outside about 20 Moroccan men came running when they saw white western fresh meat come through the airport doors and tried desperately to get us to crawl into their hunk of wadded up tin they called a cab for some ungodly price! This is when I got my first inkling that maybe Morocco wasn’t going to be as romantic as I originally thought! Once we haggled, fought, and got the cost of the trip down to a point that wasn’t completely ripping us off, we got into the gas fume infested taxi. The cab driver then turned the car on, put the car into reverse, ran right into the car in back of it, then put the car into drive, ran into the car in front, and away we went! At this point I was frantically looking for my seatbelt in this 1983 piece of crap, when the driver, as he zipped frantically down the road, turned around and yelled, “NO NO! No seatbelts here!!”  Well I soon learned safety and cleanliness wasn’t really on Marrakech’s priority list!

As he manically drove into the old city walls down roads the size of sidewalks, with people literally dodging our cab, we finally came to a stop in this little square where barefoot kids ran around in the dusty, filthy streets and the women glared at my “provocative” sense of style with disgust. Where on earth were we??? Where was our beautiful hotel Andy showed me on the internet?? Where were the Princess Jasmine and Aladdin look a likes?? And beautiful magic carpets??? All I could see were old dirty sand red walls, dirty water and trash in the street, and a man who looked a thousand years old selling cigarettes on the corner!!! Yikes!! This was no Disney movie! I would be lying if I didn’t say I was a little nervous! Andy then turned around to the driver and said, “Where are we and where is out hotel??” in which he responded by simply pointing down one of the narrow paths that extended from the little square deep into this maze of red walls. Then a man came running toward us telling us to take the street and follow him! Now if I were alone, at this exact point, I would have burst into tears, jumped back into the cab, and demanded the driver to take me back to the airport. But since I was with Mr. Marine we followed the man to a huge beautiful brown wood engraved door that he claimed was our hotel. All I could think was, “What on earth was I in for and Where on earth has this boy taken me!?!?!?”