March 8-9, 2019

Hellooooo Queens👸🏽 & Kings🤴🏾 and welcome back to yet another peek inside my life! This publication will be the second in the series of my reliving my birthday trip/cruise to Spain! Let’s get into it!

So, throughout the duration of the trip, we had no internet service. Whyyy?!?! Because Norwegian was price gouging with those internet prices! We weren’t having it, so we opted to go without! So aside from the monstrous internet prices, the cruise had absolutely NO ENTERTAINMENT WHATSOEVER!!! Well they did, but definitely nothing geared to our age group. All of my previous cruises were on Carnival Cruise Lines, and I was used to there being activities to get into every night! Comedy shows, 2-3 shows a night, the piano bar, the “club” at night, etc… On Carnival, we had a nightly routine… Go to dinner, meet up with friends, hit the bar on our way to the comedy club, hit the next bar after the comedy show, on our way to the dance club/bar! Nightly epic adventures that ended between 2-4am. It was expected! On this Norwegian Cruise, I’m not sure if we picked the wrong boat, the wrong time of year, the wrong ports, or just the wrong cruise line altogether. In plain terms, the boat was BORING!!! We didn’t attend ANY events on board. It was all art shows, health expos, yoga classes (that we would have been interested in attending if you didn’t have to PAY FOR IT!). Needless to say, we opted out of those too. Legit, our most exciting times on the ship were breakfast, lunch (sometimes) and dinner! We concluded that this was simply going to be a “work trip” aside from it ultimately being a relax and rejuvenate trip, cause the fun on board was definitely limited!

So March 8th, our first full day on board the ship was just a day at sea. I believe we spent the day catching up on some much needed sleep! Aside from our daily meals, our other favorite past time on the ship was waking up early morning and taking a walk on the track. Doing so, we were able to witness some of the most AMAZING sunrises! The mornings were always so peaceful walking the track. It was either pitch black when we got up there, or the sun was just beginning to rise. Either way, I have a bunch of amazing pictures from walking around the ship!

First of all, I would like to give props to Apple for being the dopest! Even without internet service, every picture I took was Geo-tagged to the area we were sailing in, which is being a great help to me with profiling all these pictures! So, on March 8th, we were sailing the Mediterranean Sea & the Alboran Sea. Sasha and I woke up around 7 (or earlier) and headed up to the track, where we were blessed to witness our first sunrise of the trip.

There’s this amazing sense of closeness and one on one personal space that you enter with God when you wake up at early hours of the morning to watch the sunrise. At least that’s the experience I had. It was quite surreal for me actually. On the top deck of this boat, surrounded by nothing but water for as far as the eye can see, in a foreign country, in the middle of nowhere, then right before your eyes is the unveiling of the most beautiful sun. It felt like God spreading the curtains of a darkened room (the world) and revealing His greatest creation (His Son). I literally have dozens of pictures like this in my phone because I was in awe! Our morning walks were always amazing!

After our morning walk, we headed down to the main dining room for breakfast! Breakfast quickly turned into our favorite meal of the trip. Our breakfast regimen evolved over the first few days of the trip until we locked in on our favorites that became our every morning go to! From the beginning though, each breakfast started off with three consistents… A juice flight, a sliced banana & half a grapefruit… EVERY MORNING!!! It was life!!!

After breakfast we strolled around the boat as we headed back to our room. The sun was fully up and for the first time we made it to the very back of the boat. That was another awesome view as well!🌊

Once we made it back to our room we watched movies (Crazy Rich Asian, Ant Man & The Wasp, Night School & RBG were playing on repeat) and caught up on some much much needed rest! As I said, nothing was cracking on the boat, so we planned our day around our meals! Nap time lasted until time for us to wake up, shower & get dolled up for dinner!😂🤣 And also witness the beauty of the sunset! Not sure if I mentioned in the previous blog, but Sasha & I had a balcony room (the only way I choose to cruise) so while getting ready, we’d have the curtain to the balcony open and watch the beginning of the sunset. A great deal of the scenery pictures I have in my phone were taken right from my balcony! The sunset that first night was beautiful!🥰

Soooo Beautiful in fact that it prompted an impromptu photo shoot with nature on our way to dinner!🤷🏽‍♀️🤗

Dinner that first night was delicious! Can’t remember what everything was called, but it was all really good! Those little spring rolls, as compact as they were, turned out to be a delightful treat! One that was missed for the remainder of the trip because I never saw them on the menu again!😩🤦🏾‍♀️

Our after dinner plans weren’t extravagant. We wanted to go back to the room and just hang out for a bit. We were making it an early night because the next morning was a stop at the first port of our trip, MOROCCO!!! We were so amped! So we wanted to get enough sleep so we could get up early, hit the track for a workout, grab breakfast, then be dressed and ready to explore Morocco! 💃🏽💃🏽💃🏽

March 9, 2019… Morocco…

We started the morning of Morocco off with a walk on the track as we watched the beautiful sunrise. I’m guessing Morocco is a big import/export spot because there were tons of shipping containers off the side of the boat.

Ok, so after breakfast we headed back to our room, showered, dressed, and headed off the boat. WE WERE IN MOROCCO!!! Soooo now let’s get into why this blog has this title…

Sasha and I had never ventured this far in our travels, let alone stepped foot on the continent of Africa before, so we were BESIDE OURSELVES in excitement. The closest to the motherland we’ve ever been and would ever be until we do it big and plan our Africa trip. So even if it was just for a day, we were ready for a great time! We were ready to be able to say, “I’ve been to Africa and this is what I did”… So we didn’t purchase one of the pre-planned excursions through Norwegian because quite honestly, none of them piqued our interest, so we just wanted to go off and explore the city and see different sites… Cool right?! WRONG!!!

We get off the boat and the moment we clear our security check point, we are BOMBARDED by the local resident taxi drivers shoving a damn map in our faces in a feeble attempt to show us all the different places they could drive us to around the city. So the very first guy, we stop to indulge his spiel… $200 EACH!!! That’s what he was trying to charge us for this “tour”. Oh, and I forgot to mention that they’re not licensed taxi drivers with a company, these are people with their own personal cars and a damn map!!! First of all sir, I must of forgot to look in the mirror before exiting this boat, because clearly someone must have mistakenly doodled “boo boo the damn fool” across our foreheads! Norwegian wasn’t even charging those prices for excursions! We’re not paying that for a hot ass unsanctioned Uber ride around Morocco!!! Then to add insult to injury, as if it should have been taken as some type of backwards compliment, he says, “the both of you can be my wives for the day!”. TF?!?!😩🙄😒🤦🏾‍♀️🤯Amused to say the least, we kindly decline and attempt to walk off… Peep I said ATTEMPT because we didn’t even get 10 feet before the next man walks up to us trying to plead his case… $100 EACH!!! 🤯🤯🤯 Like whooooo do y’all think y’all are?!?! Who do y’all think we are?!?! And are people really paying these prices or are y’all trying us to see if we’re dumb enough to fall for the oke doke?!?!🤔🤔🤔 Again, we ATTEMPT to walk off and this time I’m sure we didn’t even make it 5 get before the next man is walking up to approach us… By pusher #3, we’re over the whole fiasco because clearly they’re trying to play us. No longer stopping or pausing to hear them out, we continue walking towards the pier exit. We’d decided that we were just going to walk around the area for a bit, see what we can see, then return to the boat and record one of our YouTube videos (that we have yet to post). So as we continue to walk, these taxi men have resorted to walking alongside us to continue talking seeing as though we’re no longer stopping to engage. CAN YOU SAY AWKWARD?!?! Firstly, they have no sense of personal space! We’re women, you’re men, there’s a bubble that needs to be between us that clearly you all have burst and entered on your own accord! Secondly, by this time, we’re probably passing taxi man number 5 or 6 and it’s become blaringly evident that they are all working together in this scheme because every subsequent offer is just below the previous in price range! Plus they’re literally all standing within feet of each other, congregating and watching us approach before they attack! So we’re walking… Every time someone approaches now, we’re just life no, no, no, we’re good, we’re just going to walk…etc. Right when we get to the end of the strip, and now the taxi ride price has dropped to a whopping $5, this ass of a man, I guess in his last futile attempt to convince us and I suppose “scare us” into a “safe taxi ride” with him says, “it’s dangerous out here!”.😒🌾👀🌾😤

Literally that’s all it took to kill the rest of our ENTIRE mood and we were throwing middle fingers to all of Morocco as we turned on our heels and headed back onto the damn boat! “It’s dangerous out here?!?!” Ok, well our black assess are about to live to get taken another day, cause back to this boat we went!!! Like seriously, WHO SAYS THAT?!?! We were pissed! 😤😡🤬 Like you can’t take no gracefully as an answer, as if we were the only 2 people getting off this huge boat!!! Go harass the next group in line! But to try to use scare tactics of two women and then think we’d be dumb enough to hop in a car with you still?!?! Umm no! Firstly, our mamas ain’t raise no damn fools, secondly, black people are skeptical by nature, we always waiting and ready for something to pop off so our antennas were already up from driver #1, thirdly, we’re very aware that women, tourists, foreigners get taken all the damn time in real life! We’re all three of those wrapped in one! We literally felt like we were about to be disappeared and our next call would be to Liam Neeson telling our captures, “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I will find you and I will kill you”… Not today Satan! So we took our black assess back on the damn boat!!!

As lengthy and drawn out as this whole ordeal sounds, we were off the boat for a collective total of 10 minutes!!! That’s it… That’s all… 10 minutes was all we experienced of Morocco and we’d had enough! And in those 10 minutes, we also rode the most intense emotional rollercoaster known to man! From elation, to apprehension, to annoyance and irritation, to anger, then threatened, to enraged, then solemn, then exhausted. We were overdone! Both attitudinal at this point, we marched back up to our rooms, and you guessed it, TOOK A DAMN NAP!!! We needed to restart the whole day! A whole redo!

We woke up to my second favorite part of our days… The sun setting…

We freshened up, dressed and headed to dinner…

As if any indication of how our Morocco experience would be, the sailing into and out of Morocco was awful! So turbulent and rocky, the boat swayed and swayed! Sasha and I were singing Tobe Nwigwe’s Wavy at dinner!😂🤣

After dinner Sasha and I headed back to our room and we did record our first YouTube video of the trip. (I swear we’re going to get it posted). It was a “Best Friend Tag” video! So hilarious! And stay tuned for when we do post it to see the drama that ensued during our recording.🙄🤦🏾‍♀️ Morocco tried us in every way…

OKAYYYYY SOOOO LESSONS I’VE TAKEN AWAY FROM MOROCCO…

1. If cruising, book a pre-planned excursion…
2. I’d probably prefer to fly into Morocco and stay at a resort instead…
3. Travel with a bigger group of people if there is no pre-planned excursion and you just want to solo explore the city…
4. Or travel with a man…🙄😒

Ok, that’s all folks! Thank you all soooo much for continuing on this blogging journey with me! It has been fun fun fun! I’m already approaching 1 year since I’ve started on this journey!!! Gotta think of what I want to do to celebrate my One Year Blog Anniversary/Birthday!!!🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 Anyway, stay tuned for the remainder of my birthday trip blogs AND I’ll make a mental note to announce when Sasha and I post our Best Friend Tag video! Oh & If you haven’t done so already, check out our YouTube Channel “Bestie Boxes” and catch up on our past videos! Until next time Queens👸🏽 & Kings🤴🏾!!!

Stay Loyal, Stay Royal!
XOXO
Freddie J.

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