Blanca & Ian's Travels Morocco
Trip Report - 2013 |
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Marrakech |
Accommodations
Riad Dar One
19 derb Jemaa el Kabir | Hay
Salam, Marrakech 40000, Morocco
T 212 661306328
Day by Day
We arrived at RAK airport at the same time as flights from Manchester & Birmingham so the terminal was abuzz but we cleared customs easily & retrieved our baggage. It was 28C outside which was a welcome change from home where I had seen snow flurries on the day before we left. Spring had skipped Toronto this year. RAK is just one small newish terminal which made it very easy to navigate & we met the sign-carrying driver that our hotel had arranged for us. We had arrived. Our first impression of Marrakech was very favorable as we exited the airport & headed into the city passing the posh Mamounia Hotel on the way. Everything looked clean & orderly with wide boulevards until we turned south from the circle just at the edge of the medina - medina means old city - into the real chaos of the streets of Marrakech. I was very happy that I wasn’t driving. That first assault to your senses is always the most vivid. Cars, trucks, horse-drawn wagons, scooters, bicycles, pedestrians – all weaving & dancing like a choreographer’s nightmare. Now THIS was the real Marrakech. Our riad was in a no-drive zone on the edge of the old Jewish quarter just south of the Bahia Palace. The hotel had staff collect us & our things for the short walk to our hotel. It was up a small stretch of a one way vendor-lined road that buzzed with constant traffic & we turned into a short series of three narrowing alleyways that would be a great film set for a horror movie. But then we stepped into the peaceful tranquility of our home for the next three nights – the Riad Dar One. The riad owner, Jean Peres, an expat Frenchman from the south of France, greeted us warmly & had us sitting down & drinking our first mint tea in a flash. A true gentleman, he explained the riad & the breakfast details & showed us to our suite. His riad is your typical small tastefully decorated open courtyard house with a small rose-littered pool with a gentle tinkling cascade of water in the atrium. So serene you wanted to whisper. The rooms are on the 2nd floor with our suite, the Sirocco, sharing the 3rd floor with a comfy terrace for the guests. We had a private terrace on top accessed via a circular metal staircase that had a panoramic view of . . . well . . . rooftops & satellite dishes with the odd stork’s nest thrown in for balance. Oh & not to forget the several minarets . . . but this terrace perch is one of the higher points in all of Marrakech. We had a coffee on the terrace & talked briefly to some other guests – a friendly pair of NY girls relocated in London who we saw every day & an unfriendly quartet from Canada. Shame on them! With some suggestions from Jean, we headed out to find an ATM & to have our first Moroccan dinner. Thankfully, both were very close to the riad. The ATM required some busy street crossing & a first whiff of some of the more unpleasant smells of Marrakech in the small & very decrepit Jardin Sidi Hmed El Kamel square but we got a mittful of dirhams (2000 is the maximum at the ATMs now) & made our way to the restaurant that Jean had made a reservation with. It turned out to be Le Tanjia, which is a tourist restaurant in a riad decorated with dark woods & Moorish plaster dimly lit with big brass Moroccan lights. They sat us on the second floor. The menu – which was to become all too familiar – was brochettes & tagines. We enjoyed fairly nondescript lamb brochettes but with our jetlag we probably would have been happy eating cardboard by this point & a half bottle of wine helped immensely. Just as we were finishing, the house DJ (really?) cued up some tunes & three belly dancers made the rounds of the various tables. Hmmm.
Then it was back to the riad for a nightcap of duty-free booze & bed.
Thud. |
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Le Tanjia Restauarnt |
Dar One's patio from our private veranda. Looking down into the draped central courtyard. |
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I vaguely remember hearing a distant call to prayer in the dark. Undoubtedly the pre 5am call. Always exotic & haunting in a very good way. Well . . . as long as it is far enough away. We had a really horrid scratchy recorded call in Istanbul that emulated from a mosque next door. The Blue Mosque would start it beautifully & then this horrid thing would kick in & drown it out. And in Cirali, Turkey, it musically echoed off the backdrop mountains . . . but it also woke the roosters & the dogs up. Anyway, I finally gave in & got up at 6:30 leaving my spouse sleeping. It was warm outside & it was really, really quiet for a city. I could only hear street noise when I climbed up to the aerie. A very light drizzle started & immediately stopped but it drove me inside so I wandered downstairs to rev up the iPad’s WiFi, managing to almost seriously stumble on the stairs in the dark. I still have the bruises. The whole riad was dead quiet with the night man asleep on the couch in the back room until the house started buzzing around 7:30. We had breakfast & hit the streets around 11am armed for action. We have dual cameras: her’s a Canon dslr, mine a Sony RX100 – an amazing little camera btw. We both had money – Euros & dirhams. And we pointedly both had our riad’s address & phone number in our wallets. A little incident in the Sistine in Rome had proven the wisdom of this. We headed up the beeline route: Rue Riad Zitoune el Kmid to Jemaa el Fna square, gawking at the sights, sounds & smells all around us AND dodging motor scooters, handcarts, bicycles in the narrow cobbled streets. This is not a pretty & quaint city. This is raw, vibrating place that assaults you & excites you in equal measures. After a cursory walk around the Jemma vendors & requisite snake & monkey dudes in the open square, we hit the souks - a souk is an open air marketplace often partially covered overhead. At this point, we were sight-seeing & price-checking but that didn’t last long. After a few minor purchases, we got sucked into a carpet store, complete with the mint tea ritual & yes, we bought a few small throw carpets. Not crazy money since we also knew our prices in NA as well as at source from our previous Turkish carpet experience. The Turkish Soumak carpets we picked up in Göreme, Turkey for our newly renovated bathroom really MAKE the room imho. My wife also conveniently had brought our sizes & her own tape measure, so we were prepared. After the usual what’s your price/what’s your offer exchange, we bartered him down to his exasperation level, which is always a good thing when you are negotiating. When he is ready to write you off, make him a do or die offer & you will usually get what you want for a decent price. It worked. I was happy that it was done & out of the way for the rest of the trip! We bought some washable veggie carpets that are made in Western Sahara (aloe vera supposedly) since they are for the kitchen.
At his suggestion, we went for lunch in the
Riad Timtam which was
nearby. Another average brochettes & tagine set menu restaurant (250dh)
but we ordered a la carte for less. The sunny courtyard where we were
seated was stunning & almost worth the price of the meal on its own.
The tile, plasterwork, greenery & roses were all pretty dazzling & a
nice respite from the mania of the street. Ditto the other carpet store
that you walk through to get to the courtyard. Service was
lackadaisical but we were starting to find that this seemed to be the
norm in most places, so we went with it. As antsy North Americans, we
always have to remember to slow down, take a deep breath & enjoy the
slower pace. |
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A Musical Instrument Store | A square in the souks | In the souks | |||
Jemma El Fna - Merchants |
Jemma El Fna - Snake Man You can just see it between him & the falcon |
Riad Timtam - courtyard lunch | |||
At this point in the narrative, I should tell you about our ongoing iPhone issue. My wife needs to keep in touch with home. With a new iPhone 5, she had planned ahead. She phoned our provider before leaving home & bought a $100 package that included X number of minutes & X number of text messages. She had downloaded directions for international calls. That way she could call her elderly parents & text her son. It all sounds good until you get there & the phone only returns a message nattering in a foreign language. The night before, we had asked the unfriendly Canadians for advice. Their suggestions returned the same result. Before we hit the street that morning, my wife had asked the riad staff. One of them went out & bought a cheap phone card so we could use his phone to phone our provider. Of course, the card expired while she was on hold. Frustration was growing in leaps & bounds throughout the day so we made this a priority. We hit the street again & found a payphone & bought another phone card with more minutes. This time we got through & we were informed that Bell Mobility won’t allow international roaming calls from a new iPhone account holder for 6 months. REALLY? AND YOU COULDN”T HAVE TOLD US THIS WHEN WE BOUGHT THE PHONE PACKAGE BEFORE WE LEFT HOME? Yes, there was yelling involved. “I’m sorry ma’am but if you keep using language like that I will have to disconnect”. After a while, they finally relented & opened the phone with a $300 limit & it worked. Ah . . . the joys of modern technology . . .
With this task completed, we set out on another mission. To buy wine.
On the forums etc, I had discovered that at least one of the riads that
I had booked was dry. Oh the horror! It was OK to bring your own but they didn’t sell
liquor in the restaurant. And I had read that liquor stores beyond the High Atlas Mtns
were few & far between. This is very true by the way but most riads
did have a very basic selection. Using my rudimentary French (a MAJOR asset for
our future adventures btw) I negotiated a fare with a taxi driver for a
round trip & we sped out of the medina & into the newer parts of
the city to the north. It is a whole ‘nother world out there. Wide streets &
boulevards with a seemingly calmer version of the traffic mania. He
took us to a well-stocked Carrefour somewhere near the Jardins Majorelle
& I bought 6 bottles of cheaper Moroccan red wine to help us survive the
trek south. This proved to be a very wise thing. |
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In the souks | In the souks | In the souks | |||
A balancing act outside the Medina | Outside the Medina | ||||
It was Friday night & the streets of the medina burst into activity as shopkeepers shuttered their stores & everybody – young & old, tourists & locals – all made the pilgrimage for this spectacle. And it was. The narrow alleys had scooter jams as they weaved through the crowds making their way to the square which was jammed with people by dark. Smoke & steam hovered over the stall cooking grills churning out goodies for the crowd & the smells were tremendous. Musical performers did their magic to the delight of circles of spectators – all clapping & dancing with the rhythms - but no pictures please! Even a few Henna ladies still sat on their stools in the dark. On one side, a free art exposition displayed the considerable talents of Moroccan artists. The Jemaa was hummimg & it was a major party for all.
After a walk around to peruse the various offerings, we
settled on Stall # 1, Chez Aicha, which is run by a local woman
according to what Jean, our friendly riad owner had told us. We grabbed some seats with a young Portuguese
couple on one side & some Brits on the other. The Portuguese guy worked
for the French TGV in Rabat & came down for the weekend to show his
girlfriend that life in Marrakech was very, very different from the
‘sterile’ cities in the north. We ate some brochettes & a salad & had a
blast. Do not miss this if you get to Marrakech! |
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Diners sit on benches & waiters circulate | Dancers | Cooking at Chez Aicha | |||
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Alley with motorbike |
Looking through |
Our entrance is just visible on the far left wall |
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This was site visit day. Marrakech isn’t just a big shopping bazaar although it fills this role admirably. After breakfast we aimed once again toward the souks for the trek to the Ben Youssef Madrasa. Another warm day in the high 20Cs albeit overcast. Our legs were a bit sore from our trekking the day before so we took our time browsing the stores on the way & chatting with the friendly vendors. They typically asked where we were from or tried to guess. No one ever guessed Canada but as soon as we told them, they immediately said: “Montreal?” “No, English Canada – Canada Anglais”. That would stump them because they thought we all speak French & live in Quebec. I guess my mediocre French fooled them. My grasp of the language is actually coming back slowly & the trip helped. I dredged up words that I haven’t used since high school French. I am exposed to both French Canadians & French associates through work which helps even though they always use English for me. I do have pronunciation down pretty well so I can fool a Parisian if I keep it really, really, really simple. I do a great ça va. And btw French is the immediate language that everybody defaults to if you are not Arabic. So freshening up on it before traveling to Southern Morocco is not a bad thing. My wife was often at a loss to communicate in the hinterlands where English petered out to a large degree.
It was easy to find the Madrasa/Medrasa/Médersa after a mid-trip
direction check with a vendor. It shares a square with the museum & the
mosque. As noted by many, paid admission also gets you into the
Marrakech Museum. Both buildings are great examples of Moorish/Arabic
craftsmanship with intricate wood carvings & delicately plastered
entrance ways. Oh & not to forget the tile work. As we both love this
architecture we wandered around both venues snapping pictures. The
museum displays were pretty much useless but the building was worth a
look. We encountered our first tour groups here but I won’t rant on
about them as I have in previous trip reports. |
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Ben Youssef Madrasa | Ben Youssef Madrasa | ||||
Ben Youssef Madrasa | Ben Youssef Madrasa | ||||
Marrakech Museum | Marrakech Museum | Marrakech Museum | |||
And he was true to his word. But we didn’t know that as we set out through the crowds. His English was quite good. I am at a loss to recall his story but I believe he was a native of Marrakech. He led us through streets & alleys (big ones thankfully) & he & I chattered the whole way – about 15 minutes. The surroundings were getting bleaker & smellier & more rugged with fewer people & our radar was on alert. I am sure that most travelers have had these experiences. You get in a situation & you have to trust someone you have never met - not necessarily blindly, but you are there & your options are limited.
Anyway . . . he delivered us right to the waiting arms of a tannery
guide. We were immediately given a handful of mint – they jokingly
called it Berber perfume – to help ward off the smell. We snapped a few
pictures of two tank areas as he was telling us that it was Berber day &
they were tanning camel hides today. This is not a fun place. As the
smell really hit us, my wife called a halt & informed us that she had to
leave. Right now. I gave the guy 20–30 dhs & we left. Back into the
not too pretty street in the not too pretty section of Marrakech.
Looking at a good map later, I would say that we were on Bab Debbagh St
near the gate. |
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Marrakech streets | Marrakech streets | Marrakech streets | |||
Marrakech streets | Marrakech streets | Marrakech streets | |||
The tannery |
The tannery | Cats | |||
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Berber Market | Berber Market | Berber Market | |||
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Marrakech streets |
Saadian Tombs |
Saadian pink cat |
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Dried flowers & plants | Shoes for sale | ||||
We strolled back to our room for a nightcap & to toast our time in
Marrakech. Another day could easily have been used here but we were
ready to leave the hubbub all the same. The constant parade of scooters
in the alleys in the popular areas was wearing awfully thin. |
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Pepe Nero lobby | Pepe Nero fountain - watch your step! | ||||
A Note about the pictures . . . For High Res Versions of the photos on this page go to: And keep clicking the magnifying glass in the lower right corner
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Next: Over the High Atlas