First off - Happy Fourth of July. It has been a while since the last update, primarily due to our trip to Morocco. We had a fantastic time and have too many stories to probably tell them all. We visited Fes (that is Fes in the background behind us), Essaouira (picture below artfully framed by Jo), Marrakech, and the Atlas mountains during our trip and enjoyed each place we were at. From the medina's and souks of Fes and Marrakech, to the beautiful beach and seashore at Essaouira, and the hiking among the Berber villages in the Atlas mountains, Morocco is an interesting country. We found the food fantastic and enjoyed our fair share of tangines, couscous, and pastillas (a phyllo pastry stuffed with cinnamon, chicken, and vegetables). We had a personal guide in Fes and Marrakech who did a great job and really helped us understand the sites and culture. We were glad we were able to take advantage of Jo's business trip to Casablanca to have a 
week's visit.
week's visit.So our best story has be our carpet buying experience. We had decided before we went that we might want to purchase a new carpet - probably for the front foyer. So we dutifully informed our guide, who took us to a carpet store (one at which I'm sure he receives a commission). At which point, reality was suspended. The store sales person begins to haul out literally 30-40 carpets to show us the wide range of choices. We start to winnow down the choices at which point he quotes a price for 6 carpets - yep that's right, 6. We wanted one! We, as all the tourists I'm sure do, informed him we were only interested in one (the one we wanted is shown in the picture). He asks us to just give him our best price for 6, since we can just keep the one and sell the other 5 back in the states to cover the cost of the trip. He knows lots of tourists who have done that - yeah right. We 
then launch into 30 minutes of haggling trying to get the price for the one carpet we like and him trying to get our best price for 6. Eventually we wear him down, or so we thought, and he now starts trying to get our price for only 3. He quotes a price where he says he is giving us one of the 3 for free. We still try to haggle just on one. Another 20 minutes of haggling - if you do the math we have now been shopping/haggling for a carpet for an hour, you know how much I love to shop - we are about ready to leave. He says one last time what is our best price for 3 carpets, we put in the value we would probably have been willing to spend for the one we wanted and he suddenly agrees to it. And voila, we own 3 carpets. Now since he started out at 125,000 dirhams for the 3 and we are now at 48,000 dirhams we are thinking not a bad deal. Naturally, after we get back to our hotel later that day we find that a typical carpet goes for 14,000-16,000 dirhams, so all we did is get him to sell 3 carpets for roughly typical price - and remember, we only wanted 1! In looking back on the experience we can now laugh, but at the time, we were a bit shell shocked. So if anyone is looking for a really nice, brand new authentic Moroccan carpet - give us a call. We are thinking about putting two of them on eBay to see if we can sell them. The one bright spot in our carpet experience - we had the best mint tea of the entire trip at the store.
then launch into 30 minutes of haggling trying to get the price for the one carpet we like and him trying to get our best price for 6. Eventually we wear him down, or so we thought, and he now starts trying to get our price for only 3. He quotes a price where he says he is giving us one of the 3 for free. We still try to haggle just on one. Another 20 minutes of haggling - if you do the math we have now been shopping/haggling for a carpet for an hour, you know how much I love to shop - we are about ready to leave. He says one last time what is our best price for 3 carpets, we put in the value we would probably have been willing to spend for the one we wanted and he suddenly agrees to it. And voila, we own 3 carpets. Now since he started out at 125,000 dirhams for the 3 and we are now at 48,000 dirhams we are thinking not a bad deal. Naturally, after we get back to our hotel later that day we find that a typical carpet goes for 14,000-16,000 dirhams, so all we did is get him to sell 3 carpets for roughly typical price - and remember, we only wanted 1! In looking back on the experience we can now laugh, but at the time, we were a bit shell shocked. So if anyone is looking for a really nice, brand new authentic Moroccan carpet - give us a call. We are thinking about putting two of them on eBay to see if we can sell them. The one bright spot in our carpet experience - we had the best mint tea of the entire trip at the store.Needless to say, we had many other interesting shopping experiences in Morocco since there never is a price listed on anything. But all in all, we had a wonderful time and some great memories to reminisce on in the future. Back home, email had piled up at work that we both spent the week digging out from under. The garden is a disaster since we have continued to have torrential downpours since April. Only the beans and potatoes are looking likely as crops this year. Just to calibrate for those thinking 3/4 of inch of rain is a lot - we had 6 inches alone on Wednesday and a similar amount on Tuesday. This doesn't count the 2 inches or so we have had about every other day. Now you know why we don't have flat roofs in the east. This coming week, I'm off to Pfizer's UK research site and Joann (of course) will be home the entire week.
Hope everyone enjoyed their fourth of July break.
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