Bonjour from Marrakesh, where people speak four different languages, primarly French and Arabic, but also English and Spanish. A place where people drink mint tea, fresh orange juice and eat delicious pastries, steamed meat in tangines and the delicacies of lamb heads, and snail soup.
We started our journey waiting for an extra 2 hours in the airport at 1am, yawn. We got into Marrakesh from Barcelona at 3am Morocco time(2 hours behind Spainsh time). The town was d-e-a-d. Which was in stark contrast to what we witnessed when we got up the next morning; the city was very much alive with people, donkey carts, mopeads, trucks and people going about their day. That afternoon as we made our way to the middle of the medina and souqs (shopping area) and suddenly experienced a massive down pour. Good thing we had some rain gear, thanks to my metrologist boyfriend.
Later that evening we met up with our good friend Spench and went to dinner in the ville nouvelle part of town, where we found a swanky place to dine and have wine. Russ was insistant on having the best Moroccan wine money can buy, which was a challenge since this Muslim town is practically dry...so we had two bottles.
The next day was sunny, but not nearly as hot as I thought it would be here, it's about 60-65F. All three of us set out to find our friend Tyler and Aaron Reed's friend that sells carpets here. We found him and spent the day chatting, drinking tea, eating fresh fish and sardines, and looking at all kinds of rugs. Russ and I bought 2 rugs and Spench bought 2 kilim rugs. On the way to the carpets a beautiful lamp caught my eye, after seeing hundreds of lamps, I thought this one was special. I bargined hard for it and got it at a good price. Now with the realization that I have a massive lamp to deal with, which at the time was so worth it!
We spent most of day at the post office trying to find a box and wrapping for it, to no avail. We looked at having the lamp and the carpets sent DHL or FedEx, which was going to cost $400 to send home. Nope, not worth it. Luckly this morning my new best friend Spench sat with our packages to be sent home. (Thanks Spench, love you long time!)
Yesterday afternoon after the post office experience we saw some awesome sultan ruines. We found the best deals for eating to be in the main square, Djemma el-Fna where a dozen of the same stands are located side by side. Each stand has several multi-lingual employees who diligently try to bring you into their food stand.
The next day we were off for a one day trip to Essaouira...
Lee-Anne and Russ
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