Wednesday, March 27, 2002 07:35<\/p>\n
Weather: Sunny and cool<\/p>\n
Location: Salon de Th\u00e9 Metropole, Tangier<\/p>\n
Although there were apparently no places to be had in the couchette car (see previous post) my compartment (with 4 couchettes) only had two occupants: me and a Moroccan woman from Marrakesh who was going on holiday for a few days. It was stiflingly hot, with no air conditioning, but once we were underway with the window open it cooled to a comfortable temperature quite quickly.<\/p>\n
The bedding for the night was a single sheet and a limp pillow. I took out the sheet sleeping bag that I had brought — quite pleased that it had come in handy since I hadn\u00b4t needed it to this point — and made myself comfortable.<\/p>\n
I chetted with the Moroccan woman for about an hour. She had recently married a Canadian man (of Moroccan descent), but prior to their marriage had not been granted a visa to visit him in Montreal. The Canadian authorities took the application fee (Dr. 560, about $75) both times she applied, but in each case her passport came back with a new stamp: \u00a8Visa Denied\u00a8. This sounded very harsh to me. She said she was able to travel for short periods to Europe, and had studied in Spain, which helped.<\/p>\n
About an hour after departure, I decided it was time to get some sleep. I\u00b4d kept the blindfold and earplugs from my Lufthansa flight over, and I bid goodnight to the woman, pulled them on, and was soon asleep. I woke up a couple of times during the night, but generally slept very well.<\/p>\n
We pulled into Tangier at 6 this morning. There were many petits taxi outside the station, their drivers pushing aggressively to take us, dazed, on roundabout routes to the port. I refused to be rushed, pulled out my guidebook, and planned my next steps. I then caught a taxi and negotiated a reasonable rate to go downtown, where I found a caf\u00e9 near the offices of the Transmediterranea ferries and near an Internet caf\u00e9. I would like to be able to show up at the port ready to pass through the gauntlet of touts with ticket in hand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wednesday, March 27, 2002 07:35 Weather: Sunny and cool Location: Salon de Th\u00e9 Metropole, Tangier Although there were apparently no places to be had in the couchette car (see previous post) my compartment (with 4 couchettes) only had two occupants: me and a Moroccan woman from Marrakesh who was going on holiday for a few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2002-mediterranean-tour","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":466,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145\/revisions\/466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.tomleslie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}