Marrakesh Day One

I have a lot to write but not a lot of time to do it in. Normally I think I would be okay but the keyboard is not only a French keyboard but a French-Arabic keyboard. Somewhat difficult to handle. Please forgive mistakes.

The first thing that I noticed stepping off the plane was the haze that covered the horizon. It is a bit odd to long for a desert but when you spend winter in Paris you can understand the delight of debarking in a desert.
After finding our tour group, we boarded a bus and headed into the city. So far there seems to be only one candidate for my old French guy friendship experiment and he really is not even that old.

Marrakesh is an hour behind Paris so it was just after 11AM when we got to the hotel. We had the day largely to ourselves so we set out for a walk before lunch. With no plans we just started ambling along. Two minutes into our journey a man noticed we had crossed the street and were not turning. He told us that we had to go left to the Medina. We hadn't exactly been looking for it but we thanked him and turned left. Two minutes more and we had another friend. This friend took us to the Medina and then led us through the non-touristy parts of the inner city-through cold covered portions of the inner walls, into nooks hiding a vast array of tanners soaking goat skins, downstairs into dark "boulangeries" with brick hearth ovens. It was a unique experience and the man was genuinely nice (all schemers are). I had an idea something was going on and thus wasn't too surprised when we were led into a few shops towards the end of our journey (Morgane astutely noted that his conversation died down considerably once he realized we weren't buying anything). After we politely declined the shopkeeper's entreaties our buddy got us a cab and we returned to the hotel five euros in the hole. It was money well spent.
After lunch and a nap Morgane and I went down to the pool (Since I forgot to pack any trunks when I left for Paris in December I bought a pair of "Burberry" trunks for twenty bucks). When we got out to the pool Morgane immediately noticed that no one was swimming (if this were literature class the professor would tell you the author is "foreshadowing"). We sat down to read at a table while I worked up a sweat before the plunge. It was a very dry sunny day and well into the 80s. Over a period of twenty minutes I didn't witness a soul in the pool. Not so much as a toe tester--again, foreshadowing. After finishing a chapter I decided it was time to do a few laps, maybe a white-tail dolphin and call it an afternoon.
I almost passed out the second I hit the water. It was like the poolboy had imported snow from the mountains and dumped it into the pool. I felt like I was being stabbed with tiny needles all over my body. I could barely breathe let alone make it to the side of the pool. I've had my fair share of cold water swimming but this was a new kind of cold, it was like swimming in a slushy.
My immediate problem upon coming up for air was that I couldn't touch the bottom--i.e., stand and catch my breath. Gasping, I paddled over to the side of the pool so I could compose my self. When I got out of the water I realized I was on the wrong side and the only way back was to dive in and swim back. Holding back my rage at the pool I said a little prayer and dove back in. I repeated the same gasping frantic swim to the other side. Once I was out and drying off my skin felt like pins and needles. It was akin to the feeling you get in winter when you put your cold hands under hot water. And thus my plans for an early morning swim on day two went out the door.