It is called "holiday of sheep" here, one of the most important celebrations.

If a family can, it buys one or more sheep. Traditionally, the meet is divided to 3 parts: for the family (big family, i.e. with relatives), for indigents, for the man itself.

The holiday is really huge, cities get empty for 1-2 days. Butcher's are closed for a week.

The most photos can be found cruel. In fact, if a person is not vegetarian, I have nothing to say to console him.

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Just to remember: do not make photos of local people, they do not like it very much. I asked about the reason, but they told me different things.

If you travel by car, you can find it interesting: the road goes by shore, you can stand everywhere. Mostly, the shore is rocky (very rocky), with rare (beautiful, empty, huge, clean) beaches. Notes:

1. You can easily leave the road and drive to the shore. The ground is very plain. For example, I slept in car: the ocean, beautiful sunsets, dark sky full of stars.
2. The shore is full of strange fishermen with their huts. It is recommended to avoid them (I had some strange problem, too).

A am speaking about the souk, the market behind Jemaa El Fna square. The things below are very obvious:

1. It is the biggest market I have seen in Marrakesh. And many souvenirs are really worth and remind about Morocco.

2. The first prices are as 1.5-2 times more as real prices to buy.
3. Do not argue, do not shout, do not rush. Nobody likes it. :)
4. There is a common rule that 'if you have spoke about the price, you should buy it'. Maybe, it is a common rule for Arabic markets, but it is just a trick for tourists here.
5. The same with the rule 'not to cheat with food'. They can cheat you here sometimes. Too many reach tourists.
6. If you ask local people about real prices, they can support the seller.
7. Do not be too clever bastards, yeah? I saw some group of tourists trying to bargain for fresh orange juice whereas the price was printed above and it was tiny (4 dirhams for a big glass of ambrosia).

Oh, the last advise. I thought about that many times: please, do not look like you have returned from a deadly fight, with cold and haughty eyes. It is your vacancies and the people around is friendly. :)

Common words

Whereas public transport is almost absent in Morocco, taxi is an important option. It is quite cheap and all taxi cars have taximeters.

There are:

1. 'Petit taxi' for 1-3 persons that are taken personally (but you driver can pick up other persons).
2. 'Grand taxi' for 6 persons (worth thing to see: 2 passengers at front seats, 4 - at rear ones); all passengers pay separately; these taxis are very popular in countryside and absent in Casablanca, for example.

One point should be emphasised for the petit taxi: there are taximeters and no bargain, formally. It means, that, formally, you just ask a driver for your destination and, if confirmed, drive and then pay as the taximeters claims. Tariffs are different for days and nights (after 8 p.m., I think). And there is the smallest payment (6 dirhams for days in Marrakesh; these values are printed in the top-right corner of wind windows).

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If you are planning to have your own kitchen, you would probably know that:

1. Mostly, the raw food from street markets, big markets and even supermarkets is good (especially, local vegetables, meat, fish). It is fresh and natural. Of course, you can find some 'over-packed-in-plastics' goods like cheeses and other stuff. But the local meat looks like a real meat. Fish is good and various.
2. Prices can be strange. For example, almost all cheeses are foreign and expensive (10-30Dh/100g), meat is expensive (40-100Dh/kg), but the local fish is cheap (10-40Dh/kg).
3. There is funny point about the fish: it is much more cheaper than meat, but they prefer, for example, sheep. In Saint Petersburg (Russia), we try to prefer fish because it is healthy (though, it is more expensive).
4. They have honey in huge cans. 1.8kg of eucalyptus honey costs 99Dh (Aswak Assalam supermarket). You know, 1.8kg of honey is a catastrophe.
5. I would like to say that Morocco is very suitable for vegetarians. Cereals are cheap and various, lots of vegetables, nuts are moderately cheap.

This night I made my last, I think, bicycle ride to the centre of Marrakesh just to finally conclude, that:

There is no salsa in Marrakesh. Unfortunately.

The problem is that I used to dance salsa & swing in Saint Petersburg. Of course, I would like to find any dances there, in Marrakesh. What can I say:

1. At the moment, there is a dance school hold by the Puerto-Rican, Ricardo, in Es Saadi hotel. I visited that once: 2-3 pairs of dancers with a level something like 'beginner intermediate'.Ricardo teaches the Puerto-Rican kind of salsa (the same or very similar to Salsa Casino). Actually, you can find it nice, it is called 'Quartierlatin Danceacademy Marrakech' in Facebook.
2. This school holds Latin parties. Unfortunately, they are quite rare (once per 3 weeks), I have not seen any.
3. Daily, Ricardo signs in Africa'n'Chic club with his band (after 10 P.M.). This club is somewhere marked as a place to dance salsa. Nope: nobody dances there, even the band does not play salsa music (at least, I did not hear it today).
4. I think, there is the same for the South of Morocco (Marrakesh is very modern city compared to cities of the South Morocco).

P.S. And virtually nothing about swing. :)

I was happy to escape from the cold springtime of Saint Petersburg (in Russia, of course) to see the Sunshine State of USA.
It was an excellent way to open the swimming season, too (instead of the traditional plunging in our cold lakes in early May:). I talked with many people, satisfied my dream to drive in the country of roads, hitchhiking...
By the way, as for the hitchhiking, there were many legends about USA that I trusted and that was crashed by the reality. And, of course, I saw the only state of many.
I took a small car for rent, and drove around Florida in a week. I slept in different campgrounds booked in advance (KOA is great). Sleeping in your own tent is quite cheap and similar to separate buildings in comfort. What I was surprised in campgrounds, nobody uses tents instead of me :).
So, thanks to all that friendly people, to that hot sun. I got an excellent trip:
Orlando - Melbourne - Titusville - Palm Beach - Pahokee - Cyprus National Park - Fort Myers - Naples - Venice - Saint Petersburg (in USA) - Orlando.

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