Morocco Part 1

We went to Morocco for a week in December and visited Marrakech, Imlil, and El Kebab (where my friend Yorda is working for the Peace Corps.)  This is going to be a series because it was awesome, and I wrote in my journal a lot. 

Welcome to Marrakech!

Em, Dave, and I flew into Marrakesh after a stressful ride to the airport. Our ride had been sick for weeks and did not wake up to her alarm, phone calls from us, or Emily throwing soft yet dense objects at her window - which all occurred at 5 AM.  In a panic, Em called me and my 'brilliant' plan was to take our car and leave a key in the secret compartment and bribe a friend to pick the car up from the airport.  Luckily, Emily's host mom was awake (since she was leaving for Nicaragua on the same morning) and she awesomely drove us to the airport.  After running through the airport trying not to knock little old ladies and families down - I believe Dave hurdled over a chair, we saw that the terminal was quite far.  So, we had to run down a hallway, down a set of a stairs, over a moving sidewalk, through customs, and up another set of stairs, and we finally make it to the gate, with maybe 2 minutes left.  Somehow, I was one of the first people on the plane* and managed to snag us 3 exit row seats and we were finally off to Morocco.  

We booked a beautiful Riad (Moroccan guest house) through Homeaway that fit 8 people for the same price as a hostel. It was a traditional Moroccan house with 3 floors, beautiful stonework, a rooftop terrace, and a courtyard with 2 orange trees and a fountain where we ate our breakfast.  When we arrived Fatiha, our host, served us traditional Moroccan mint tea.  Yum!

D outside our room on the balcony overlooking the courtyard.

Our beautiful courtyard.

Our Riad was a quick 10 minute walk to the main square of Djeam el Fna. We left and went to meet Mounir, someone I contacted though CS in order to get a real, un-touristy view of Marrakech.  We quickly became friends because he is awesome.  We could not have gotten through our time in Marrakech without him, and our friend Eric would have been stuck in Fes but more on that later. He took us to an AMAZING restaurant and juice place called Agnaoue which we went to every day we were in Marrakech for their juices.  We then walked around the famous Marrakech souk (market) and ooggled at the beautiful fabrics, crafts, shoes, etc. 

The twisted derbs of the souk - getting lost is half the fun!

Beautiful Cookies

That night we visited Djema el Fna - a UNESCO world heritage site.  It is crazy walking there - you have to walk through narrow streets dodging people, motorbikes, cars, bikes, donkeys pulling carts, horses pulling carts, people pulling carts, beggars, merchants with their wares spread on the ground and more!  The Djema at night is amazing:  storytellers, gnawa musicians, impromptu banjo and drum concerts, women applying henna, and people selling these amazing delicious cookies.  During the day the huge square is full of snake charmers, monkeys, water sellers, and merchants.  By night is totally different:  more people, more things to see, and my favorite - where bare concrete was a few hours before almost a hundred restaurant stalls are set up!  It was amazing.  

Storytellers speaking in Darija so we didn't understand it - but very cool!

Dried fruits/nuts stalls

We went back to our Riad where Fathia had spent hours cooking a traditional Moroccan dinner- a fresh salad with argan oil, Beef Tagine with prunes rolled in sesame seeds, preserved lemons, and soaked almonds.  For dessert:  an amazing chocolate, banana, and orange blossom pie.  Wow!  We spent the night drinking a Cote du Rhone style (Moroccan!) wine in our awesome candlelit courtyard.  We tried not to eat the whole pie, buton unsuccessful. 

Fatiha decorated our courtyard with candles and put our amazing dinner in the dining room. 

LOOK AT THIS PIE!!!!

"The smells are amazing:  Fathia's cooking, spice stalls, people, diesel.  The last two don't smell bad, just different - it actually reminds me a bit of the Philippines.  As I write this the call to prayer is sounding and I'm sitting on our rooftop terrace watching the sunset.  What an amazing city!" 

*  Differences between Europe and the States:  EasyJet doesn't assign seats, so its basically first come, first served, much like Southwest used to be.  However, people don't really line up, its more of a giant mob.