Funniest Thing for June '04

Tell ITN about the funniest thing that ever happened to you while traveling in a foreign country. There are no restrictions on length. (ITN prints no info on destinations in the U.S., Canada or Mexico.) The ITN staff will choose each month’s winner, who will receive a free one-year subscription to ITN. Entries not chosen cannot be acknowledged.

This month’s winner is LISA PETTY of Eagan, MN:

My brother Jeffrey and I were in Agadir, Morocco, where our cruise ship had stopped for one day. Knowing beforehand that we wanted to go to Taroudant, about 100 kilometers inland, our plan was to take a local taxi from the pier to the Agadir city center, where we would find an inter-city taxi to Taroudant.

The local taxi, however, did not take us where we expected it to and so, having a small city map out of a guidebook, we set out on foot to the inter-city taxi depot. We were quite frustrated when none of the street names we saw on signs matched the street names on the map.

After wandering for a little while, trying without success to find a matching name, we noticed that many of the intersections and street shapes seemed to match those on the map. Using the intersections and street shapes as our guide, we did finally arrive at the taxi depot.

After we bargained for the taxi that would take us to Taroudant, I stepped across the street. When I returned, Jeffrey said to me, “I figured out why we were having so much trouble with the map. It’s not a map of Agadir; it’s a map of Taroudant.”

The really funny thing is that it worked!