Take the Train from Casablanca going south. (The Marrakesh Express)

I’ve never heard a train song I didn’t want to ride.  I’ve ridden the Rock Island Line and the City of New Orleans.  Some songs I can never ride.  The Super Chief and Phoebe Snow are 30 years gone.  But you can still “take the train from Casablanca going south.”   We rode the Marrakesh Express.  The song is more about anticipation than the ride, but the ride, while crowded, is worth it.  You clickety clack from the coastal flats through rolling hills and dessert.  There are settlements of brown adobe brick, circled by a wall, looking like they grew out of the earth, except for the whitewashed mosque.  Hedges of prickly pear cactus, our compartment mate called it “Berber’s Foot.” surround fields, nearly brown, despite the spring.  We saw sheep, goats and camels from the train, but unlike the song, not a single pig, you wouldn’t in Morocco.   From April 2005

Looking over my pictures I am amazed I don’t have a picture of the train itself, only shots from the train’s dirty windows.

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