Zoe's Top Ten Tips for Tweens Travelling in Morocco

Hello, from 30,000 feet above France.

As we are leaving Morocco, I wanted to share my...

Top Ten Tips for Tweens Travelling in Morocco 

1. Don’t touch carpets unless you want to end up in the basement of a carpet seller’s shop, drinking tea and haggling over a carpet that you did not even want in the first place. Also, never believe the ‘just for looking, just for looking’  line; it is always a lie.

2. Tagine is good, but try to eat other foods when you can. Because once you get out of town you will eat nothing but Tagine.

3. When shopping for souvenirs in the medina, if the shop your at does not have exactly what your looking for, go somewhere else. If you are in the Fez or Marrakech medina, or any other big medina for that matter, there will be a shop selling exactly what you want. You just have to look for it. :)

4. If you go to a local Hammam  keep in mind that its not a spa, it’s a bath house. So, people are dressed as you would be if you were taking a bath, and any idea you had of keeping your towel on will disappear the moment you enter the main room. ; )

5. In Morocco there are two kinds of taxis, Grand Taxi et Petit Taxi. Petit Taxis can hold three people, no more. It is illegal to have more than three people in a petit taxi.

6. When haggling about taxi fare, if the guy you’re talking to won’t give you a fair price, walk away. He’ll either give you a fair price or you can easily find someone who will.                               

7. Go to Fez last, if possible. It’s called the arts and craft capital of Morocco with good reason, you can find any souvenir you want with a better price and quality in Fez.  Because we are trying to travel light, we would rather carry souvenirs for the shortest time possible. So it makes more sense to go to the place with good souvenirs last.

8. Camels are much more comfortable for long periods when ridden side-saddle, just hold on VERY tightly when going up sand dunes. (trust me, I almost fell off)

9. It’s necessary to bring a varied wardrobe when your travelling in Morocco. You’ll be freezing in the mountains one day and sweltering in the desert the next.

10. Take lots of pictures, there are tons of interesting things to see in Morocco and even more things to take pictures of. From little shops in the souks, to stunning panoramas, Morocco is an extremely picturesque country.

Our Top Tens of Turkish Delights

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Some places that we've been in Turkey. Click to enlarge the map. 

It is hard to imagine, but after 11 weeks and 3,500 km of bus, car, dolmus, kayak, balloon, bicycle, paraglide and plane travel, we are about to wind up our travels in Turkey.

It has been really amazing to have a significant chunk of time to hang out here, but in the end, we really only saw a bit of Western Turkey, and most of those places had been well-beaten by tracking tourists.   

Then again, Turkey has a lot of amazing of places and millions of people come here for a reason. But I feel like we've made a good "downpayment" and that we've left a few things to see in case we can come back here again.   

Cue the Top Ten Lists!!!

To reflect on what we've done and learned, I challenged Tricia and the kids to name their Top Ten Experiences in Turkey.

Here is what they came up with. Click on the buttons below the photos to see our lists. 

Isaac's Top 10 Turkish Delights

As we wrap up our time in Turkey, each of us has drafted a Top Ten List of things that we enjoyed doing here. 

Here a list from our youngest Road Scholar, Isaac:

1. Playing FIFA 2015 in a video game arcade in Çanakkale, 
    
2. Swimming in the outdoor, saltwater, hot springs near the harbour in Çesme. 
    
3. Playing footsall in Istanbul at a local playground with some Turkish kids. 
    
4. Experimenting with soap bubbles and math games at the Rahim M. Koç Museum in Istanbul. 
    
5. Making silly photos on Photo Booth and playing Minecraft everywhere we went. 
    
6. Going on a hot air balloon ride with my grandfather in Cappadocia. 
    
7. Making spiral-structures out of Kapla with Samuel and Lucie  during our WWOOFing stay near Antalya, and making stop motion videos of dragons attacking them. 
    
8. Eating coconut macaroons from the Simit bakery in Alsancak, Izmir. 
    
9. Playing euchre with Pake (Trish's dad) in Fethiye, and sometimes stacking the deck so that I got a lone hand! 
    
10. Going to the water slide park near Bodrum on the last day it was open, so we didn't have to wait in line. 

Trish's Top 10 Turkish Delights

As part of our last week in Istanbul, we're all writing down a list of things that we liked in Turkey. Here is my Top Ten list: 

Tricia in her blog post debut!

1. Travelling with my kids.  I feel like this trip is a third wave of travelling.  I started travelling with one other female (my sister, or my friend Connie).  Then I travelled solo for work, and that's fine, though frankly a bit boring. 
   
   Then when Dwayne and I lived in Tanzania, I felt the huge difference of travelling with a fellow.  I remember men on the street wanting to confirm that I was Dwayne's wife, after which they would ignore me (being rather like his property, I was thus invisible). 
   
   Now travelling with kids in Turkey is a whole other thing again.  People have been unfailingly kind to our kids.  It's been lovely.  And their presence has radically changed the way that Dwayne and I travel.  We knew we'd have to slow right down, which we have.  We have spent way more time hanging out in parks than we would otherwise.  We carry toys in our luggage.  We've got a soccer ball that gets deflated when we're moving, and immediately inflated again when we arrive at the next destination.  We've got Lego, markers and other craft supplies, a frisbee, a kite...  It's a whole other thing, traveling with kids.  I'm so glad we're doing this.
    
2. Cappadocia.  For me, this was the best part of Turkey.  A fabulous mixture of hiking, exploring caves, rocky beauty and wonder, and fascinating history.  The underground cities were amazing, as was the balloon ride.
    
3. The ruins.  That includes Ephesus, Knidos, Aphrodisias, the agora in Izmir and more besides.  Folks here through the ages built stuff that lasts.  It's been fun to walk through history, instead of only seeing it cased up under glass in museums.  Here we could sit down and read from e-books in the library of Celsus, stand in the porticos, walk on the marble walk ways, and climb around the temples, do our own races in a stadium, strut and sing in ancient theatres, and debate in council chambers.  Super cool.
    
4. The ease of travel here.  Turkey has been a pretty low-hassle kind of place.  Buses are clearly marked, roads are smooth, we've been surprised at how easy going most merchants are, even in the grand bazaar or main tourist areas.  Maybe that's because we're in the off-season?  But we've found it remarkably easy to get around in Turkey.
    
5. Grocery shopping.  I hate any other kind of shopping, but I like buying groceries.  It's so interesting to see what food is available, what's not, what's popular, what gets lumped together in one store, and what you have to find elsewhere.  For example, there's only a little milk available in the refrigerator section, but there umpteen different sizes and brands of yogurt.  You can find a bit of produce, but it's often quite limited, so you have to find out when the local market is, which is chock full of a fabulous variety of fresh stuff.  There are special stores for chicken and eggs.  I don't know which comes first.
   
   (Now getting more specific....)
    
6. The hike from Kayaköy to Ölüdeniz.  It was a beautiful walk, and the views over the bays of Ölüdeniz were wonderful
    
7. Our day kayaking from Ölüdeniz to Butterfly Valley.  It was great to be out on the water.  And doing so on the day when hundreds of paragliders filled the skies was spectacular.
    
8. Our first time WWOOFing.  We spent two weeks with a lovely family, hoeing, planting, piling rocks, and eating very well. I could WWOOF again.  Maybe in France?
    
9.  Izmir.  It's a great town.  We had an AirBnB flat just off a cool pedestrian street full of life.  Izmir would be a cool city to live in.
    
10. Simit stands.  All over Turkey, we've found hot sesame Turkish bagels (simit) being sold for 1 lira (50 cents) from carts on the street or at bakeries.  Yum.  The food in Turkey has been very good!

Zoe's Top 10 Turkish Delights

As our time in Turkey comes to a close, each of us has written a Top Ten List of things that we enjoyed doing. Here is mine: 

TOP THREE    

        1. Swimming off of boats in the Mediterranean        Sea in Bodrom and near Knidos.

1. Real rock climbing near Antalya with Guilliame, Lucie & Samuel. 

     1. Going on a Hot Air Balloon ride in Cappadocia

RUNNERS UP

1. Visiting Pamukkale and Climbing up the travertine pools in Pamukkale. 
2. Touring the ancient underground cities in Cappadocia, where Christians used to hide from invaders.
3. Visiting Aphrodisia, an Ancient Greek-Roman city in souther-western Turkey. 

OTHER FUN THINGS

1. Staying with Lucie and Samuel near Antalya (and speaking beaucoup de français!)
2. Reading a book in the Library of Celsus in Ephesus.
3. the ocean spray game with Isaac in Izmir. 
4. Visiting the Aya Sophia, Istanbul
5. Exploring Istanbul, in Istanbul.(: