After eating mechoui the day before for a late lunch, and then having some bean soup at the Jemaa El Fna for dinner, I began having a stomach ache around 11pm or so when I went to bed. I took some medicine and hoped that it would pass, but it continued all night, and by the time I woke up in the morning I realized I had full blown food poisoning. I’ve had food poisoning before, but this was in a league of it’s own. At one point I actually laid in bed on my phone trying to navigate my health insurance company’s website to see if being hospitalized in a foreign country would be covered, but thankfully it didn’t quite come to that.
When I first woke up I was in so much pain that it was unbearable, but when I started vomiting about an hour or so later it actually seemed to relieve some of the discomfort. Every time I stood up for more than a few minutes I’d get dizzy (I’m sure the heat wasn’t helping either) and had to lie back down, so at about noon I finally realized that going out for the day was never going to happen. At one point I tried jumping out of bed to run to the bathroom and my feet got tangled in the sheets and I ended up throwing up on the floor before I could make it all the way there. I had to go downstairs to find a maid to tell her what had happened so it could be cleaned up and luckily she was very kind about it. I made sure to tip her very well as a thank you. Not too much later a friend of the manager who spoke very good English came over to see if I was okay and to ask if I needed them to call a doctor. I wasn’t able to keep down any water and was afraid I might need to see a doctor, but the worst of it passed soon after and by about 5pm I was finally okay enough to go out to get some money from an ATM for shopping the next day.
The day ended up being kind of a waste as I wasn’t able to do anything thanks to the bout of food poisoning, but I was at least glad that it happened that day instead of the day after when I had to leave the city to take the train back to Casablanca to fly back home. If I had gotten sick that day I’m almost certain I’d have missed my flight because there was no way I could have travelled in that condition.
The next day I woke up still not feeling 100% but decided to make the best of it. I’d planned to do most of my shopping for the trip the day before when I’d been sick, so I had to cram it all in before leaving for Casablanca later in the day. I didn’t have much time to hunt for bargains, but I did manage to get everything that I really wanted including a decorative tagine, a decorate bowl, a jewelry box, some pottery, and a variety of other things, including a new suitcase to hold it all. I took everything back to the hotel and packed it all to take with me later that day. I’d hoped to visit a hammam on my last day since I hadn’t gotten around to it before on the trip, but I since I still wasn’t feeling super great I decided that sitting in the heat of a hammam would be a bad idea, so I skipped it.
The Jardin Majorelle (click for more)
Instead I decided to squeeze in a trip to the Majorelle Garden (Jardin Majorelle). I took a long walk from the street near the Jemaa el Fna to the garden, and I realized when I got there that I really should have taken a cab since it was quite a long way away. I’d heard great things about the garden, but didn’t think that it quite lived up to the hype. It was still nice though, and was a good way to spend some time. I took a cab back to Jemaa el Fna and then got some henna on my feet from a henna artist there. While I was waiting for it to dry the woman who had done my henna saw the cheap watch I’d bought for the trip hanging off the side of my bag and asked me to give it to her in exchange for some more henna on my hands, so I agreed. When it was all dry I went back to the hotel and grabbed my bags to head to the train station.
I took a cab from the Jemaa el Fna to the train station, and my train left around 5pm. I tried to sleep most of the way so I’d forget about my discomfort, and we arrived in Casablanca just after 8pm. I took one of the cabs out front to my hotel and checked in. I stayed at Hotel Central again, the same place as at the beginning of the trip. I was in the room for a few hours before I pulled back the bed spread to discover the room I’d been given had bed bugs. I grabbed my things and ran back down to the check-in desk to request a new room. The new room was up on the roof, and had a strange musky smell from the bathroom, but was at least bed-bug free, so I went to bed ready to get up early for my last day in Morocco.
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