Here I am in Morocco, part I

A couple months ago I was looking at my map of Europe, and I noticed how close we were to Africa. So I said, "Hey Rob, we should go to Tanzania, it's not that far away!" And he said, "hmm" and then a few days later, after gathering opinions from friends, he said, "Morocco is a better place to go." By then I was wondering why on earth I had even thought about going. But I said, "Okay, Morocco, and then we can see Gibraltar, too!" Well, I had just a weekend in mind, but Rob booked 9 days of exciting travel: fly into Casablanca, then spend 2 days in Rabat, 2 in Meknes, 2 in Fez, another in Casablanca, and then a night in Madrid. OK. I can handle it. Then we talked with other friends, who told us about the more scary side of travel in an Arabic country, and I looked at websites for information on what we should bring, how we should dress, etc. They said bring your own toilet paper, don't wander alone, and if you want to be respected you should wear long sleeves and long pants (or long skirt). I planned to do all that, plus we got a passport/money holder for Rob to strap around his leg, and I sewed holders into my pants/skirts.
So last Saturday afternoon we took the train to the Munich airport, then flew to Casablanca via Madrid. We arrived at midnight to us, but only 10 pm to them. We had requested that our hotel arrange to have a taxi pick us up, but we hadn't had confirmation of that. So we were pleasantly surprised when we saw a man bearing a sign with our name. He grabbed my suitcase, and waiting impatiently while Rob went to an ATM to get some cash. Dirhams are the currency here, and they are only available here. As soon as Rob had his cash, the taxi man took off at a brisk walk (with my suitcase) so we quickly followed him. There are two kinds of taxis here, "petit taxi" and "grand taxi."
Petit taxis are available for local trips, and they go directly to your destination . You have to agree on the price, first, because most of them have "broken" meters. Grand taxis are for local trips or trips between cities. If you don't pay to have the grand taxi to yourself, you end up with 4 people in the backseat, and two people plus the driver in the front seat. And these are regular sedans. Mostly old (really old) Mercedes. The other option in a grand taxi is to pay for the privilege of keeping it to yourself. Spendy but nice!
As soon as we got away from the airport we knew we were in for a wild ride. Two traffic lanes in each direction become 3 or 4 lanes in each direction. Often we were driving down the middle. I have no idea how they don't have more accidents! Pedestrians crossed even the busy roads at random. Stop signs are only suggestions, and traffic lights are just tolerated.