I signed us up for a cooking class so that we could leave Marrakech with a good taste in our mouths. We were supposed to meet our host/instructor at the Bab Doukkala mosque along with ten others who spoke English. After yesterday’s rat-in-a-maze misadventure trying to scout where the mosque was ahead of time, I convinced Ella…
The blue dot only goes so far
…and the rest is up to Allah Today was about charting the journey. After striking another palace off the list of Medina destinations (a nineteenth century ruin that was crumbling to dust), along with some tiled tombs (of sultans turned to dust), we picked out three different museums that we hoped would give us a closer…
Oh whoopee, a three museum day
Dar Si Said: Museum of Regional Handicrafts, emphasis on carpets, lives in an 18th century palace. A small one. As you might guess, lots of tile,a few fountains and arches. There were explanations in Arabic, French and English, of the different regions and how the carpets differed from region to region. Musee Tiskiwin Marrakech: Moroccan…
From rooftop to rooftop
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….
Sunday at the palace with Ella
…and a million other people! That would be the Bahia Palace inside the Marrakech Medina. Built by Ba Ahmid, a fat 19th century sultan who made sure there weren’t many stairs, and who named it after his favorite wife, Al Bahia, “the brilliant.” It has courtyards with fountains and geometric inland tile as well as exquisite…
The Minaret and the Militia
Above the crowded bustle of a Medina’s streets will invariably be the towering minarets blaring prayers, like Allah’s air raid siren, five times a day. No matter how much chaos goes on below, spiritual order is maintained, and with it an eerie sense of clerical control. Traveling from the Atlas Mountains to the Atlantic we passed…
Marrakech madness
Oy, into the chaos we plunge. We arrived in Marrakech this afternoon. Our last day with Ali and now we are on our own for the remainder of our time in Morocco. About a 4 hour drive, including one stop for tea and a police checkpoint where Ali got pulled in for speeding. Believe me,…
Medina Riviera
Yesterday. If it weren’t for the prayer broadcast from the minarets five times a day, I would have thought that we were mixing with the holiday crowds on the coast of France. I’ve given up trying to exchange pleasantries in Arabic; the lingua Franca in Essaouira is French. And it seems like there’s a crepes vendor every…
If you can find your room…
Grubb thinks it’d be fun to chart the path to our room. From the entrance into reception, pick up the key Back across reception and up to the next level, thread through salons Out to a terrace, walk across, turn left, walk a little farther Then turn right, step up into a hall and continue…
Seagulls never sleep
In Taghazout, the crashing of the surf was our night music. Here in Essaouria, the continual cawing of the seagulls drowns out anything else. Except for the music on the square. We are not far from the fish market where the gulls are on an endless quest for discarded fish parts. Leaving windows open last…