Day 2 in Marrakech and we’ve successfully navigated the Medina again. High five for these two old folk. Breakfast, where else? The rooftop terrace.
A study session in our room. Between google maps and our paper map, the route looks clear. Sort of. We wind around for 20 minutes and come to our first goal. The Bahia palace, built mid 19th century. It is buzzing with tourists but we manage to get in and marvel at the tile and marble. It is all rather spartan though. I am more interested in the paintings on display.
Time for refreshment. We’ve been given a tip that there is a rooftop terrace restaurant where one can sit and gaze down along the big square, Jamaa el Fna. As long as you don’t mind terrible service and overpriced coffee. We ended up at a different cafe with high prices and terrible service. Grubb told the guy at the entrance we wanted to be on the highest level. I guess the guy thought we wouldn’t make it up the stairs so he put us in a hidden elevator to get up to the 2nd story (3rd floor). Still, we could gaze at the snake charmers, the drummers, the multitude of stalls and the cars, taxis, motor scooters, bicycles and Tok Toks darting through the crowd. But I saved the best for last. They had ice cream! I had choco loco, three generous scoops – chocolate, vanilla, peanut butter, lots of chocolate sauce topped with whipped cream. That got our mojo cranking and was a good stand in for lunch.
Next goal, Le Jardin Secret. A small, lush oasis in the Medina. Enough said.
And then we are ready to call it an early day. We relax at the Riad for a couple of hours and then the quest for dinner. Grubb picks one out but on the way, I look up and see a tiny terrace built over the walkway. The menu looks good so up we go.
Two things to say: Our friend Marcia, just back from Morocco just as you were arriving, didn’t much like Marrakech. I sense the same from you. A crush of tourists. A crush of people and traffic. “Meh” sights, except maybe for the Jamma el Fna. That’s a shame, since it was my favorite place back in March 1988, when there were no motorbikes and not that many tourists.
About the high prices at restaurants/cafes overlooking the Jamma el Fna. When my down to earth Uncle Irving was in Venice with my Aunt Sylvia many, many years ago, they had an espresso at the piazza in front of St. Mark’s cathedral. When my uncle complained to the waiter about the high prices, and that you could get a cup of coffee in America for 25 cents (as I said many, many years ago) with free refills, the waiter said “sir, we give the coffee away for free, what you are paying for is to be seen.”
The medina is a crush of people, donkeys, carts, etc I can’t say I particularly enjoy it but it’s interesting. The new part of Marrakech, outside the walls of the medina has wide streets and is like most cities in the world.
It is tricky googling “tok tok” in the age of “tik tok”. I almost had to go to the second page!
Ha! They are called tuk tuks in other places, like Thailand.