3 years old in Marrakech
Trip Start
Jan 03, 2009
1
17
50
Trip End
Ongoing
Marrakech, Morocco
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
We hooked ourselves up with an organized trip to visit a few Moroccan cities. The first on the list is Marrakech. Traveling with 40 other people isn't usually our style, but we have little time in this country, and we want to see as much as possible. We're signed up for a few other organized trips, but nothing after South Africa. ... but i digresss. Let me tell you about Marrakech.
So we caught our tourbus led by a guide named Lotfi Armandi. Lotfi is a scholar in his on right. He seems to know a lot about history, the arts, religion, politics, and pop culture. He pretty much talks non-stop, but what he has to say is generally all pretty interesting information.
We drove to Marrakech (about 3 hours from Casablanca) and the bus dropped us off in the city square. There were tons of people out there working to make tips in whatever way they can. There were snake charmers (I saw 3 cobras, 2 boas and handfuls of little black snakes) with their drums and moroccan horns. There were people with monkeys on leashes. Tons of dancers and musicians and henna tatoo stands. There were also a lot of people just asking for money. One of the first people who asked us for money was a small, wrinkled old man with a walking stick and wearing a djellaba (in case you don't know what a djellaba is, google search jawas from star wars). Barrett freaked out saying, "mommy! he's a witch!" which in fact, he did look a lot like. Barrett yelled that a number of times during our moroccan trip in fact...
We walked to a really amazing restaurant for lunch. The decor was incredible, and it was in a very old building that we'd never have found if we were trying to find it on our own. They gave us "moroccan salad" for starters which was a number of little bowls with spiced, cooked veggies to eat with rice and bread. A beautiful plate of oranges for dessert.
Afterward, Lotfi took us for a stroll through the souk to do a little window shopping. There were lots of interesting things to see, and smell, but the vendors were pretty aggressive to say the least. I bought Bear a little Moroccan shirt for his birthday. I called it "a prince shirt that he would wear to find a princess to marry". He liked that story, and didn't want to take his shirt off that night.
Later the bus took us outside the Medina gates to the newer part of Marrakech where our hotel is. We hooked up with Les and Judy (who also took a trip to Marrakech, riding camels through the palm groves) via the walkie talkies. We took Bear to McDonalds for a happy meal. The most interesting part of that was that the mcdonalds is located in the Marrakech train station (i kept hearing Marrakech Express by Crosby Stills and Nash going through my head).
