Jennifer Jeffrey, Writer & Editor

From Paris to Bayview

Four days ago, we flew from Morocco to Paris, anticipating our last week of vacation. We checked in to our hotel, and were getting ready to hit the town when I logged on to my e-mail, and found this terrible message: our adopted greyhound, Petra, had escaped from her pet sitter in the Mission District.

She had been spotted by CHP running on Highway 101 near Caesar Chavez; the officer saw her duck off the highway, but was unable to follow her further.

We were dumbstruck. From thousands of miles away, we felt helpless and utterly miserable.

My sweetheart immediately dialed to the airlines, and managed to finagle a flight from Paris to London, and London to San Francisco the next day. By the time we hit the ground at SFO on Saturday afternoon, Petra had been missing for more than 48 hours, and had not been seen by anyone since the CHP sighting.

We raced home, dropped off our baggage, changed into sneakers, and headed out to the Mission. From Caesar Chavez, she could have gone in any direction – up to Bernal Heights, or over to Potrero. We drove slowly, our eyes straining at every white flash, every corner, every green space where she might hunker down and hide.

The Golden State Greyhound Adoption group was on alert; messages flew back and forth among the other adopters. They and others rallied to help, placing ads on Craigslist and posting flyers, even driving out to help search.

By Sunday night, we were dizzy with exhaustion. We were so tired that we considered pulling over to the side of the road and resting in the car instead of driving home. I hit a low point that night, imagining her out there in the cold. How long could she survive on the streets?

Nighttime in Marrakech: Yacout

When the sun sets in Marrakech, the darkness acts like a magician’s vanishing cloth. Gone are the cranes and the earth-moving claws; gone is the drone of hammers and saws. Even the raucous daytime traffic seems muted.

Lights go on all over the city at dusk, illuminating arches and doorways, revealing slivers of life in an ancient culture.

One such night, we took a taxi into the medina. This taxi, like most in Morocco, had long since lost its right side mirror. Small as it was, it barely fit through the narrow, serpentine streets. Children played in the street, dashing to the side just seconds before the car was on top of them; even when we passed within a hair of a man conversing on his phone, he didn’t so much as glance at us.

Our destination was a restaurant called Yacout, located in a riad. To understand the concept of a riad, picture a large square building with a smaller square cut out of its middle. Traditionally, the inner square was made up of living quarters, with narrow, rectangular rooms; the outer square was an open space, filled with a garden and fountains.

The medina is composed of hundreds of riads, built side by side, accessible only via narrow, twisting streets. In recent years, many riads have been converted into small boutique hotels. Yacout was a private residence for over 100 years, and was converted into a restaurant about 18 years ago. It is unquestionably the premier restaurant for traditional Moroccan food in Marrakech.

The taxi stopped in front of an unmarked door, where a man dressed in a jellaba stood guard. When we approached, he swept the door open with a flourish, and we stepped into a tiny foyer decorated with flickering lanterns. A young man in similar dress bowed and motioned for us to follow. He led us through corridor and up a spiral staircase, composed of ancient tiles the color of toast. The staircase wound up and up; eventually we were on the top of the building, on a rooftop terrace decorated with lanterns and potted orange trees. The city twinkled beneath us.

Blink and You’ll Miss It

Morocco is having a Moment. After years of slow, steady progress, the country is suddenly experiencing a tremendous growth spurt. Streets that haven’t changed for hundreds of years are being torn out and repaved; rivers are being dredged to make way for new waterways; small towns composed of rammed-earth buildings are being razed to make way for new housing developments.

Even as a first-time visitor to the country, it was immediately obvious to me that things are changing, and fast.

The reasons for the growth are mostly economic: the European Union is grooming Morocco for inclusion; numerous US companies are creating offices here to take advantage of the relatively cheap labor; tourism is expanding at a breathtaking rate; the monied elite from surrounding countries are building palatial vacation homes like so many miniature pashas.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in Marrakech.

Scenes From the Souk in Marrakech

Here is a peek at the most famous souk in Marrakech, the Jamaal el  Fna, located at the entrance of the old medina. This ancient market is a labyrinth of narrow hallways and tiny stalls, where sellers hawk everything from beads to leather slippers to cone-shaped towers of cumin and corriander. It is a lavish visual feast, but you must be careful not to make eye contact with the men who stand in front of the stalls; at the slightest hint of interest, they immediately engage you, trying to place merchandise in your hands so that they can begin to persuade you to buy something. If you aren't careful, you'll end up staring glumly into your mint tea as you debate how to carry your new 30-pound rug back home.

I hurriedly snapped pictures as I followed the crowd through the winding corridors, not stopping for too long in any one place, trying hard to ignore the questions that swirled in the air around me: "Excuse me, madam?" "Hello?" I wanted to linger, to touch and gawk at all of the pretty things, but I didn't want to have to explain myself every time - "No, just looking..." Shoppers here must be decisive and firm, unmoved by the history of an object, willing to walk away in a second. Softened by years spent in American stores, I'm not adept at this very different way of buying.

On the Way to Marrakech

We've been on a whirlwind tour of Morocco. We're only halfway through, and already I'm sorting through so many thoughts and impressions that I can't possibly sum them all up just yet.  The juxtaposition of past and present here is so intense as to be almost painful. We've spent the past couple of days in Casablanca, where the streets are a chaotic tangle of cars, bicycles, motorcycles and people, with the occasional burro thrown in for good measure. I saw a man balancing a crate full of live chickens on his moped yesterday morning.

The air is thick as chowder with diesel fumes and smoke - this in January, when the temperatures are still relatively cool. I can't imagine how it must be in the summertime. Traffic lights and street dividers are mere suggestions. There is no such thing as a pedestrian crosswalk; people stream across the streets at random, playing cat and mouse with the vehicles. Several times, I had the urge to fish my sleeping mask out of my bag and strap it on so as not to keep clutching the armrest in abject terror.

And yet, amid the mayhem, there is great beauty. We toured the jewel of the city, the  Hassan II mosque, built literally over the top of the Atlantic Ocean. Gorgeous. I wished, yet again, that I was a better photographer. We left Casablanca around noon today and began the drive to Marrakech, about 210 kilometers south.

It was quite a drive.

Waking from an Arctic Dream

I’m about to gush about the Ice Hotel, and I’m finding it somewhat difficult to begin. I don’t often gush about places I go or meals I eat. I’m not sure why; perhaps I like to keep my peak experiences to myself, to reflect upon in quiet moments. Perhaps I feel like the best things should be kept under wraps, in order to keep them special. It's silly, I know. The best things should be shared, not kept secret.

But the Ice Hotel isn’t a secret. It has been covered in documentaries and written about in destination magazines so many times that it has long ceased to be news. Everyone has heard of it. Been there, done that.

Perhaps that’s why I was so blown away; I honestly did not expect it to be so exceptional. I thought it would be like so many other things: overrated.

Only it wasn’t. It was a sumptuous feast for the senses, from start to finish. Taste, touch, sight, smell… the Ice Hotel engaged my entire body, and I was dazzled on every count.

For the sake of brevity (ha!), I'll just list three:

The -6 Degree Bedchamber

It's 11:28 pm in Sweden, and we're getting ready to go to our ice suite. The bed is set behind a forest of thick tubes of ice like so many frozen tree trunks. Bubble-shaped sculptures are scattered about floor. Our instructions are to go to the locker rooms, strip down to our thermals, put our boots on, grab our sleeping bags and run back to the room. Once there, we immediately jump into the sleeping bags and fasten them high around our necks.

I'm a wee bit nervous.

Today was one of the coldest days they've had here thus far this winter. It was -32 this afternoon. My eyelashes froze.

Our bedchamber for the night will be -6, which seems balmy in comparison.

I ate reindeer today! Twice. It was amazingly delicious.

More on that later...

Nighty-night!

It's Colder Here Than Wherever You Are.

The Ice Hotel has wireless Internet. That is nowhere near the most amazing thing about this place, but I can hardly believe that I’m uploading this post via my iBook as I lounge on a blonde pine bed, while deep piles of snow lie heaped on the ground outside my windows. Wireless Internet in the Arctic Circle! Somebody pinch me!

Excuse me if I sound giddy; it’s only because I am. I haven’t slept in nearly two days, and I just spent the past few hours wandering through rooms carved out of ice, each one designed by a different artist around a distinctive theme. Waterfalls. Angels. Time.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s been a very long day. Our flight was scheduled to leave Heathrow at 7:00 am this morning; before we went to bed last night, we set the cell phone alarm for 4:15. But we had spent a lovely evening laughing our heads off with a group of artists over Indian food at a restaurant near Hyde Park; we didn’t get to back to our room until after midnight, and frankly – why bother trying to fall asleep when you’ll only get to stay that way for a couple of hours? And besides: we were still on San Francisco time.

We managed to stay awake until 4:00, and then we stuffed our things back in our bags and phoned a taxi. The flight from London to Stockholm lasted about two hours. In Stockholm, we retrieved our bags and dragged them back through customs. Finally, around noon, we boarded a flight for Kiruna.

Going, Going...

In less than three hours, the Moroccan and I are embarking on an adventure. We'll fly from San Francisco to London, where we'll rest for a day before flying in to Stockholm. From there, we catch a flight to a tiny town called Kiruna in northern Sweden, where we'll stay at the Ice Hotel. On a bed of ice, no less! Really and truly.

If we don't freeze solid, we'll move on to Morocco.

I've spent the last two weeks searching for the right kind of hat and warm but-not-too-bulky gloves, and laying in extra stores of Chap-Stick.  Now everything is safely packed away.

I'm. So. Excited.

Look for a post or two from the great beyond...

Ushering in the New Year with Virabhadra

In my favorite yoga class last Saturday morning, the teacher guided us through a series of poses meant to symbolize letting go of the old and welcoming the new. We did a series of cleansing twists; we moved through a few exuberant sun salutations. We stood in Warrior II pose, arms radiating like arrows from either sides of our bodies, front knees bent, thighs parallel to the ground.

What do you need to let go of? the teacher asked us, quietly, as she moved throughout the room.  We responded silently, thoughts whirling through our heads.

My hamstrings quivered as I tried to stay in position. My calves clenched like fists. Darts of twinging pain remind me of the knee injury that changed the second half of 2006 for me; my body is not the same as it was one year ago. In some ways I feel like I’m starting over again in yoga, despite the fact that I've been practicing for more than 6 years.

We turned our back palms up to face the ceiling; releasing what we needed to release, holding on to lessons learned.

The hourglass that is 2007 contains just a few grains of sand; I have no doubt that it, like most years, will contain both pain and joy.

Here I am! Ready for whatever lies ahead. New tastes. New places. New insights. The New, hand in hand with old familiar favorites, ancient wisdom, the tried and true. And the journey continues…

Happy New.