Marrakech

There’s no way for me to describe everything we did today in detail, so here are some photos to give you an idea.  If you have questions about anything just leave a comment and I will elaborate.

The kids decorated the breakfast room for my birthday!

Our guides for the tour of Marrakech were Ahmed and Abdul.  Ahmed was clearly a pro and spoke perfect English – he told me that he learned English in Marrakech, with British and American teachers.  Abdul’s job was to make sure nobody got lost or flattened crossing the street.  When we reached the first crosswalk, Ahmed said, “We have now reached the most dangerous part of the tour – crossing the street.”  He wasn’t kidding.

It was a little crazy walking through the tight streets with cars, scooters, motorcycles, and other modes of transport whizzing by, but nobody got run over (knock on wood).

At the Koutoubia Mosque, Ahmed explained the significance of the 3 balls on top.  There are several theories, but one is that the largest ball represents Judaism, the medium ball represents Christianity, and the smallest ball represents Islam (in order of when the religion was established).  Larry, Marc, and Ben created a visual representation of the 3 balls of religion.

Ahmed was very interesting but the kids weren’t really into the historical parts.

These are traditional water sellers…I don’t think they really sell water any more.  They just earn money by taking photos with tourists.

The Bahia Palace is BEAUTIFUL.  Ben and I have been here before – it was one of the locations featured in my Doors of Morocco photo essay in Doors & Hardware magazine.

If I wasn’t into doors, I’d be into ceilings – so amazing.

There were 3 niches in the courtyard for meetings.  One for Muslims, one for Jews, and one for Christians.  That way, when someone arrived for a meeting, the big guy knew a bit about their perspective depending on which niche they were seated in.  This is the one for Christians.

And this is the one for Jews…the Star of David is evident in the decoration.

We mostly hopped from one shady spot to another, and surprisingly it was not super-hot.

For lunch, Ahmed dropped us off at Terrace des Epices – a beautiful and delicious rooftop restaurant.  We would never have known it was there.  The menu is on the big blackboards, in English and French.

My couscous…

Ben and Gia ordered this special beef dish that is buried in the fire to cook for 4 hours.

After lunch we went back to the riad and chillaxed for a few hours until it was time to venture out again.  Dani drove us in the Party Bus.  The Marrakech medina is surrounded by walls, and has 12 doors into the city which used to be closed at 7 p.m. to keep out invaders.  This is the one closest to our restaurant for dinner (Café Clock), which was in the Kasbah.

There are huge stork nests on top of the walls.

On the roof at Café Clock:

The boys ordered these amazing pancakes:

Norah and Andi making camel faces…

A birthday cake for me, arranged by the lady (Helen Ranger from Fez Riads) who helped me book the riads and a few other details for the trip.  There was drumming and singing by the staff.  My wish was that nobody would get diarrhea.

After dinner we walked the treacherous route to Djemaa el Fna.  I agreed with Ben that it was a must-see, but it was a little hairy.  Adlani was SO TIRED, I heard him say to himself, “I’m going to die here.  This is how I’m going to die.”  It doesn’t look so bad from this photo…

To really see what it’s like you have to look from above, so Ben marched all 16 of us up the 98 flights of stairs to get to the rooftop.

And we were finally able to get wine when the stores reopened after the holiday.  It made us very happy.

We lost an hour of sleep when the clocks jumped forward.  The end.