New places, New faces

These are my new friends! I don’t really know their names, but after purchasing curry in their shop, they wanted me to take a picture with them. Look at me, making friends wherever I go. CW had his first experience with that eclectic insanity that is a souk. We actually just happened to stumble upon it while we were exploring the city. It was there that we met Picaso. Evidently he thought we were interesting and thus followed us around for over a half an hour just chatting about the city and all of the murals he had painted. The curry we bought is perfuming our room and Chris is wearing the imitation D&G jeans that we bought due to the fact that his luggage is still missing and evidently since its Saturday, the airline is closed?

We had fresh squeezed orange juice, espresso, and bread with marmalade for breakfast. The hostel is really unique. The owner is incredibly friendly, but difficult to understand. The patio on the roof looks out over the port, which is less than a block away. All in all, it’s great.

After we were done exploring old medina, we rested our feet and headed out to a restaurant that served as the fortress protecting the port. It was built in the late 1700s and had cannons in place as they had been when in use. The actual café itself was on the roof and was open air with canopies of living vines, tropical foliage, and white umbrellas. The only lights sat on the tables in the form of votive candles. We had chocolate fondue and fruit (Laura, you would have LOVED it.) and the native tea, which begins with a lemony spark and has nice mint leaves in it.

The cultural differences are interesting, and seem to stand out more to Chris since this is his first time in a third world country. The disparity between the haves and have nots is overtly visible. The architecture is beautiful and we spent a good amount of our time while walking around, talking about what this place must have been before the streets were littered with waste and the buildings left to decay. It’s a strange place where most people wear imitation couture yet live in poverty.