So, Nick and I decided to go to Marrakech, Morocco. Warm, for sure, and different, I hoped so. A London winter can feel like a lifetime. This winter in particular seemed to drag, especially since we got our coldest weather in February. By the time it snowed, it already felt like we'd had our fill of winter weather. So, having an African holiday planned made those cold mornings and dark evenings a little more bearable.
We flew Easyjet from Gatwick to Marrakech on a Thursday afternoon. Despite a hideous experience flying back from Berlin after Christmas 2010*, Easyjet has been my airline of choice while living in London. I guess better the devil you know. This time, we actually had two flights that landed at their destination early. EARLY. Totally unheard of.
We got in about 8.45, and through our hostel had organised a taxi to pick us up, which ended up being a smart idea. Driving along the unlaned roads under a big fat yellow moon, I knew I had definitely found somewhere different.
We stayed at Douarskoll Guesthouse which was adorable, was right in the medina and made us delicious food. We also had an amazing room. It had a mezzanine! It was like sleeping in a treehouse. Here it is:
This was the view from the roof terrace. You could see all the way to the Atlas Mountains, which I obviously forgot to take a photo of.
the things we did:
Marjorelle Gardens
Cacti and brightly coloured pots. Marjorelle Gardens was created by a French guy called Marjorelle in the 20s. After falling in to disrepair, Yves St Laurent bought the gardens and restored them to their original state. It was the greenest place we saw in Marrakech; everything else was a dusky red, or dirty yellow. As per the rest of Marrakech, there were cats and badly dressed tourists crawling all over it.
In Marrakech in general, it was a different kind of tourist makeup than I was used to. There were more couples, groups of older travelers, and lots of families as well, which surprised me a bit. No large groups of young people, but I suppose the lack of readily available alcohol puts them all off.
Bahia Palace
This palace had sweet Moroccan style decoration. And even more cats.
The ruins of Bahii Palace
Not cats this time, but storks. They build these amazing nests up in the top part of the ruins. It was very hot at the ruins, with little shade, but pretty sweet imagining what it would have looked like in it's original glory.
Djemaa El-Fna
The main square was absolutely insane. A tourist trap, without a doubt. It is ringed by market stalls selling the usual fare, and in the day time, the square itself is full of juice stalls, date stalls, people with monkeys, people with monkeys wearing clothes, snake charmers, women offering henna, men offering cigarettes, men in traditional dress offering photos, donkeys, motorcycles, cars, bicycles.
At night, there are proper food stalls where you can have dinner, and also people performing. We didn't get too close to the performances, but one late afternoon performance we saw, involved some belly dancing performed by ladies in Muslim dress, so very conservative, but with the risque bikini tops and bottoms over their conservative clothes. Belly dancing finds a way.
The last night we were there we ate in a restaurant looking over the square. We saw the sunset, and therefore the sundown call to prayer. We watched all the men, and some women, head in to the mosque. We watched street sellers setting out their wares to catch the women waiting for the men, and the men on their way out of the mosque. It was amazing to watch a bit of life in Marrakech that wasn't trying to sell us something.
where we ate and drank:
Cafe Arabe
We went here every day and that's not a bad thing, nor a lazy thing on our part. It was just a really lovely place to spend the early evening. The top floor was a terrace that looked out over the rooftops of Marrakech, so you could watch the sunset. They served alcohol, which we appreciated, and the food was average, which by Moroccan standards, was good.
I really struggled with the food in Marrakech which annoyed me, because I like food so much. I think it was because Marrakech was an olfactory overload. Smells everywhere. Good smells like spices and leather and fresh fruit. But also terrible smells like dirty animals, smelly people, sewage and rotting food. The smells put me off eating and the food just wasn't good enough to tempt me.
where i shopped:
One of the main drawcards of Marrakech are the markets, the souks. They sell everything and they want you to buy it. A polite, no thank you, or non merci, was probably the phrase I used the most while in Marrakech. We soon discovered that the market street closest to our medina was the best. Perhaps they got used to seeing us, but we rarely got hassled as we walked down it.
One afternoon I stopped to talk to this kid about the kittens outside his father's antique stall - he was an amazing kid, really confident and verbose, and he sold me an antique amber ring. Turns out Sarah Jessica Parker and other Sex and the City actors shopped there when they were in Marrakech filming the (awful, insulting) second SATC movie. His father's two stalls were crammed with amazing antique jewelry and I was so jealous of the story he told about Sarah Jessica Parker, plucking rings and necklaces willy nilly and chucking them in a bowl to buy. So jealous, so so jealous.
the end:
All in all, Marrakech was everything I wanted it to be. Hot. Different. A holiday. A great travel story.
nick & lorrie, bahii palace, march 2012
* The plane was delayed by hours, and when we finally got on a plane, it wasn't even an Easyjet plane, or an Easyjet crew. After far too long in the air, we were told that we couldn't land at any of the London airports due to inclement weather, nor any nearby. The closest airport that would take us was Liverpool. We waited even longer while on the tarmac - it was the middle of the night, so they had to open the airport for us. Once we finally got through immigration, we had to sit around in the closed Liverpool airport to wait for coaches to take us back to London. We were twelve hours late to Gatwick. It was MISERABLE.
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