LYNN’S SPAIN/MOROCCO
JOURNAL
Day 9, Friday, May 17
Marrakesh
The hotel, Hotel Oudaya, also comes with breakfast—out on the terrace by the pool. It was served buffet style—like in Madrid. In the morning we had our city tour. Of course we went into the medina and had the hard sell by various kinds of merchants. The rug salesman in particular really tried to schmooze us, even though he had been told that we had already bought an Arabic-style (deep pile) kind of rug in Tetouan. He tried to sell us a kilim (flat weave) instead. He was quite a flirt as well—offered 5,000 camels to Philip for me. Philip refused saying what would he do with a bunch of camels! We also stopped at a wood store—saw many beautiful boxes, bowls, and animals—but just bought a little turtle for Emily.
Weaving
Carpets
The
Carpet Salesman
First stop on the tour was really our guide’s apartment—his wife was already waiting in a taxi to go to the lab for his mother who has Parkinson’s disease. She had a vial of blood in her hand. He dropped us off at the Majorelle Garden, a formerly private garden that now belongs to Yves St. Laurent, while he drove his wife to the lab. It was a pleasant place to stroll for 15 minutes—lots of named plants, some of which we have in California, such as jade plant and white lilies, fish ponds, lots of almost cobalt blue on walls and pots.
Next was the medina, already described above. We ended up in the Djemaa el-Fna—very different during the day—same juice guys but more entertainers. We found a snake charmer who draped snakes around our necks—our guide said I was brave! He didn’t know I actually like snakes and am not at all afraid of them. Anyway, they had been defanged and so were not dangerous.
With the Snake Charmers
High point for me was the Koranic school (medersa) of Ali ben Youssef. There students (boys) lived, ate, slept, and studied for 9 years. Depending on how good a student you were, you got assigned different accommodations—top students got single rooms. If it were a double, the second student lived in a loft, accessible via rungs set across the corner of the cell. As usual, there was a central courtyard with a beautiful pool. It is in the process of being restored by private money.
In the souq, Philip did buy a pair of camel babouches—more than I paid for mine—and his smell! We also ran across the train guy we had met on the train from the middle of nowhere (near Tetouan) to Sidi Kacem—he sat in our compartment and kind of watched over us. He was riding a bike in the market area—he seemed happy to see us and asked how we were. I wish we had taken a picture of him. We discussed lunch and the Koutoubia minaret but decided against. I got the feeling that our guide was finished and wanted to get home to his family for mid-day lunch and prayers. If we had gone out to lunch (he showed us the restaurant), I’m sure he would have gotten a cut though. In the afternoon, we rested—slept, wrote on my terrace.
The evening program was the Palais el-Badi and dinner. The cab driver dropped us of at our request at the Koutoubia minaret, from which we had planned to walk to the el-Badi palace—big mistake because we had a very hard time finding it. We wanderer around quite a bit before we found it, with the help of a kind-of guide, and finally found it, thus only leaving only 15 minutes to explore it. It was but a ruin, but oh what a ruin! I could have used a bit more time—like at least 15 more minutes. It was the most famous palace of Marrakesh and built by Admed al-Mansour between 1578 and 1602. It was torn apart by Moulay Ismail in 1696 for his new capital at Meknes—he also stole marble from Volubilis. What is left is basically four walls and a rabbit warren of underground storerooms, dungeons, and corridors, which we were able to explore a bit. On top of the walls were many storks and their nests.
It was easier to find our way back to the Djemaa el-Fna, where we were able to catch some Berber acrobats. On the way back, I was consulting my guidebook wondering how to get to the square. A woman asked if she could help—I told her where I was going, and she told me the way. I think she was genuinely trying to be helpful—but I was suspicious that she wanted money—but there are genuinely nice people in Morocco, something I should remember.
On a restaurant on the square, we took coffee and orange juice (for four times what I paid on the square) to rest and get a view from a terrace. It was more exciting at night when we had had our first glimpse of the square. We negotiated a horse-driven carriage ride almost back to our hotel. It was a pleasant way to get back to our hotel, even on Mohamed Avenue because of honking cars and exhaust fumes.
Philip had found a restaurant near the hotel with lots of different kinds of couscous, but when we went by, it was empty—not a good sign. So I found a restaurant with authentic Moroccan food according to Lonely Planet so we wandered further down Mahomed V, which we had been driven down by horse-driven carriage earlier. This was Restaurant al-Fassia. It was upscale from Jack-Line—we found that out right away because you needed reservations to sit outside. Plus, there were real (not plastic) flowers, candles, nicer linens, more flourish (scented towels and water after dinner). We sat at a corner table and enjoyed watching our fellow diners: a family with a child, another couple, and a business dinner.
The latter was composed of a smooth talker businessman (Asian) and a couple from the area. The couple was another businessman and his wife. The lingua franca was English, which the wife plainly did not speak very well. The Asian businessman flirted with all the waitresses, some of whom were quite pretty—smooth, coffee-colored skin and dark hair. Our waitress was particularly pretty but also a little snotty. I had chicken tajine spiced with olives and citron confit (my sandwich in the train given to me by our Moroccan friend was also spiced with lemon confit). I was given the recipe in French but have since forgotten it. Philip had couscous again, his favorite—we even got some harissa this time. The food was marginally better than the food at Jack-Line—we paid more because it was fancier. We walked back to the hotel in the cool of the evening and reorganized all our stuff to go into the Atlas Mountains.