Morocco Trip Recap

It's time to wrap up my coverage of Michael's and my amazing honeymoon to Morocco last November. I hope you've enjoyed our photos and tales.

For those of you considering a trip to Morocco, I would highly recommend it. I think you'll find enough reason why in my blog posts these past two months.

Here's a recap:

• Morocco Part I: Accommodations


• Museum of Marrakesh


• Ali Ben Youssef Medersa


• Djemma el Fna by night


• Journey to the Atlas Mountains


• Road trip to Essaouira


• Jardin Majorelle


• Marrakesh Odds and Ends
  

Most things you can do in Marrakesh and the environs without prior reservations. In fact, not having a set itinerary can allow you to experience some of the details of life there, without the stress of being a tourist on a schedule.


One thing, however, I would recommend planning ahead: booking some time at Les Bains de Marrakech. This is a spa in the Medina where Michael and I were able to live like royalty. The highlight was the hammam (Moroccan bath) we experienced together. Normally, baths are segregated by the sexes. However, here we were able to have a private hammam. This consisted of sweating in a very hot room, being slathered down with herbal soap, scraped off with exfoliating mitts, doused with water, and then given a four-handed back massage.

The heat and sweating was quite intense, but it was all worth it. Afterwards, I felt more relaxed than I can ever remember being. We got to shower off the remains of the sweat and soap, and then wrapped ourselves in bathrobes, and retired to the soaring chill-out courtyard filled with comfortable low beds and decorated with candles, fountains, and rose petals. To top it off, we were served the most refreshing mint tea. It was heaven!

Check out the website (above) for a photo tour of the place. It's all the more amazing that this spa is tucked away in an alley so close to the dust and chaos of the crowded city.

And that's it for now. I hope you'll get to experience it one day! Feel free to leave a comment or drop me an email at gonnamakeachange@gmail.com if you have any questions or would like some advice on planning a trip to Morocco!

Marrakesh Odds and Ends

As I wind down with my coverage of our trip to Morocco last November, here are some things I haven't yet shown you.

Marrakesh's famous landmark is the Koutoubia Mosque and its minaret, which, interestingly, has served as inspiration for church towers and buildings the world over. The minaret helps you find your direction in Marrakesh, as you can see it from many places in the city. It's a particularly impressive sight at nighttime.

Just imagine coming back from a night out at the Euro-style clubs in the new part of town, leaving the high-rises and gardens and wide avenues for the increasingly narrower streets and alleys lined by ancient buildings and filled with people and streets stands, your compass being this minaret. That was our journey home one night.

Michael and I took a cooking class one morning. La Maison Arabe is a famous Marrakesh hotel and restaurant that has a satellite location 15 minutes outside of the center of town where they have their swimming pool, special event facility, and cooking school. Behind very non-descript doors, you find an unbelievable oasis.

We're talking gardens, an 18 meter long swimming pool, and unbelievably gorgeous buildings. If money were no object, I would throw a soiree here in an instant! Want to daydream? Then you must check out their website here to see their kasbah salon.

Michael and I, after we suited up in our aprons, got a chance to wander around the grounds. We saw rosemary hedges, as pictured above with Michael. Moroccans do not use rosemary in their cooking, so instead, it functions as shrubbery. Michael was aghast (it's his favorite herb). Various other herbs, though, were cultivated for culinary use in the garden. There were also bushes of tiny red, yellow, and purple peppers -- pictured with me, above -- as well as olive trees.


Mohammed, a professor at the University, was our translator, and our instructor was a dada, or traditional Moroccan cook. The dada showed us what to do, and Mohammed translated and helped us. We learned how to make a roasted pepper appetizer and the classic chicken tagine with preserved lemon and olives. (Once we got home, we purchased a tagine of our own and now enjoy making Moroccan tagine dishes when we have the opportunity.)

Michael and I each prepared our own individual tagine. It was fun and interesting, and the best part was the beautiful surroundings. When our food was finished cooking, a waiter served it to us outside.

We wished we had brought our bathing suits, so we could have taken a dip in the beautiful pool. But it was November, and the pool was not heated, anyway. I put my hand in and found the water bone numbingly cold. So, nothing really lost there.

After a walk back through the garden, we were at the gate and piling into the shuttle van. Time to go back into the fray of Marrakesh.

Back in the new (French) part of Marrakesh, there was a very popular McDonald's. I had to take a picture of their local special: the McArabia. Note: we did not actually eat at McDonald's on the trip.

Here was the doorway to a mosque in the Medina. You almost wouldn't even notice it unless someone pointed it out, which someone did. The narrow streets of the Medina are packed with so many details, I could've taken a million photos.

I found the artwork on the back of this truck interesting. Also, that there are words in English and bald eagle heads. Hmmm.

This was the door to the house across from our hotel. Earlier in the week, we had seen cuts of meat being wheel-barrowed into the house. We had wondered what was up. As it turns out, the Saturday night we were at the hotel, there was a wedding here. From our roof, we saw across to their roof, where servant girls were looking down at the party in the courtyard. We also heard the noise till the early hours of the morning. But it was all good (we had just gotten married the week before, after all).

If only we could have gone across and taken a peek at the actual celebration. Unfortunately, it would have been a little obvious that we were crashing the wedding. So we just heard their music and imagined what must have been going on.

The Djemma el Fna by day is filled with various tourist traps, including the ubiquitous snake charmers.

Yes, we paid money to have snakes draped on us and have our picture taken.

Michael even kissed the snake, as part of some good luck ritual.

So there you have it. These are some of the highlights I hadn't yet featured here. We saw and did so much in seven short days in Morocco. Unfortunately, we weren't able to capture everything on film. But at least we got a lot of it. The rest is for our memories!

Jardin Majorelle

One day in Marrakesh, we left the walls of the Medina behind us to find the famous gardens called Jardin Majorelle. It took us a while to find the place, despite our map. With all the dusty tan buildings in the newer part of the city it was hard to imagine that somewhere inside there was an oasis.

But find it we did. The gardens, previously owned by Yves Saint-Laurent, feature countless plant varieties, water features, and assorted fauna.

You could completely forget what is outside the walls!

The colors are absolutely brilliant. The blues and greens soothe, while the reds and yellows excite.

What a relaxing place to be!

What is this?

We took a closer look at the fountain.


I even made an unexpected new friend.

This is actually one of the few portraits of both of us on the honeymoon.

Can you believe the color saturation?

More color.

Turtles enjoy a pond.

I really don't have too much else to say about this site. It was beautiful and relaxing and the pictures tell the whole story!

Djemma el Fna by night

My coverage of our honeymoon to Morocco last November continues. Michael helped write this post.

One of the unique draws of Marrakesh is the Djemma el Fna: the legendary square and market in the city's old medina quarter. Michael and I had been looking forward to visiting it right away, and despite our jet lag, it was our first stop after we arrived our first evening.

The Djemma is the center of activity every night for both tourists and locals. It features hundreds of food stalls and bright lights that are wheeled in by donkey carts in the late afternoon. Vendors tempt customers to stop and sit down for dinner with lavish meat and vegetable displays and touts who call you "my friend" and prevent you from walking any further.

The square is rimmed with cafes and restaurants featuring outdoor patios overlooking the show. Here's a picture we took from one such cafe.

The other section of the square hosts a dizzying variety of entertainers. You find small groups of Arab and Berber musicians, story tellers (interesting even when one doesn't understand their words), male bellydancers dressed in drag (female bellydancers would not be tolerated in a public space like this in Morocco), snake charmers, traditional dancers, and more. Each has a lantern and a large group of Moroccans and tourists around them.

Here's a view of this area from the same cafe:

Each entertainer has his own shtick. One sings with a chicken on his head or his instrument. Michael took a picture of me with the chicken man. Of course, this was in exchange for a number of dirhams. If anyone attempts to take a photo of an entertainer without paying up, said entertainer will make a spectacle of the photographer. We saw this happen with one particularly scary looking male bellydancer.

We had to work up the courage to actually eat at the Djemma. Well, let me correct that. I had to work up the courage. Michael would have eaten at a stall the very first night. But I wanted to go with something "safer" at the beginning of the honeymoon -- a well-known restaurant on the square called Cafe Argana. But later on in the week, we decided to try the stalls.

Here's Michael as we sat there at a stall, waiting for our food.

We had traditional Moroccan fare: I had a seven vegetable couscous, and Michael had some sort of meat dish. After that, we actually tried out a few more stalls. I got a freshly squeezed orange juice, and Michael tried a steaming bowl of snails!

Imagine the feel of a county fair, but with twenty times more food vendors and all of them right next to each other. Then imagine them with strange and exotic dishes, signs in Arabic script, and sounds of tribal-like drumming in the background. That's what it's like to be in the heart of the Djemma food stalls.

For more Djemma pictures, check out FXCuisine.com. This is a VERY accurate representation of what the Djemma looks like at night...including snails.

For some travel advice, check out this NYT article about Marrakesh that was published exactly when we were there!

Ali Ben Youssef Medersa

Back to Morocco! I'm onsite at a conference right now, so I don't have much time. But here are some of the sights we saw at Ali Ben Youssef Medersa in Marrakesh, once the largest Koranic school in North Africa.

Now it is a historical site and a beautiful testament to Moroccan art. Consistent with Islamic tradition, there are no representations of humans or animals in the tilework and carvings. Instead, we see geometric shapes and inscriptions in Arabic script.

What amazing design!

Museum of Marrakesh

Ok, in order to do my story any kind of justice, I'm going to have to tell this out of chronological order. I will save the tale of the sensory overoad that was our first night in Marrakesh for this weekend, when I have more time to write.

On our first day in Morocco, we went to several different museums. The most impressive was the Museum of Marrakesh, housed in a former palace.

Wow! Check out that chandeliere. This is a room that just took my breath away.

I tested a lavish relaxing nook.

How's that for a chill-out area?

Can you believe all that tilework? This is the real deal, folks! How amazing would it be to have a house -- or even a room -- like that?

Morocco Part I: Accommodations

This has been quite a week. Last Friday, I was promoted to a new position, so my days have grown longer and more intense. As a result, I have not had as much time at night to write here. But I am going to do my best to get back into a rhythm! Now, as I promised last weekend, I am going to start coverage of Michael's and my trip to Morocco last November for our honeymoon.

Why Morocco for our honeymoon? "How did we come up with that crazy idea?" Michael and I take a moment to ponder. Well, we decided pretty quickly that we didn't want to go to any of the typical honeymoon destinations. We wanted to go some place exotic...but it also had to be relatively close (no more than one day of transit time). It also had to be some place that neither of us had been to before, which ruled out some options in Latin America and Europe.

I found a package trip online for a trip to Marrakesh, Morocco that looked very interesting. It included a stay in a riad (a traditional Moroccan house or palace that has interior courtyards or gardens), candlelight dinners on the rooftop overlooking the city, a daytrip to the nearby Atlas mountains, a visit to a fancy hamam (steam bath spa), and more. I showed it to Michael, and he said, "Let's go!"

Now, this was a rather expensive package, so we decided to put together our own trip, using the web and Lonely Planet. TripAdvisor led us to a French-owned riad, Dar Silsila. At that time, it was the #1 rated hotel in Marrakesh (it's since slipped to a still exceptional #4 out of 309 properties).

The hotel looked great, and it was very reasonably priced -- no small feat, we found out, in surprisingly pricey Marrakesh. The reviews were all glowing, and reviewers said that the best part of staying there was that the owner helped his guests put together their trips: making reservations at some of the best restaurants in town, planning daytrips, and recommending the most interesting things to see and do. Ah-hah! A hotel that can help us create our own package! And the top of the TripAdvisor list to boot!

I got in touch with Jean Patrick, the owner, via email, and we quickly made our reservation for the Junior Suite. When we went, Jean Patrick was just finishing up some additional guest rooms. Originally, the place had 4 rooms, but now there are several more to accommodate all the people who want to stay.

But enough with the description! Here are the pictures we took!

Our room, the Junior Suite -- not an actual suite, but it was very romantic and it did have a sitting area. We sometimes would return to our room and find red rose petals strewn on the bed.

The sitting area of our room -- the narrow doors are to closets

Tiles at the threshold of our room. The tilework everywhere was amazing!

One of the courtyard sitting areas. There were candles at night, and the sofas were very comfortable.

Looking down at the courtyard from our room -- water feature to the left and a table set for dinner to the right. We had dinner here twice.

Breakfast in the courtyard: coffee, fresh orange juice, local bread, fresh yogurt, honey, preserves, and butter were included in the room rate.

Dar Silsila is along a narrow, unassuming alley. You have no idea what beauty lies inside!

Next up: our first taste of Marrakesh!

Catching up

This has been a packed week, hence why I didn't have a chance to post the past few days. But I haven't forgotten about you!

First, I want to give a shout out to my friend, Kristine, at K's Apartment. Kristine writes delightful accounts of her travels and life in New York City. Kristine also features her friends, and the other day she wrote a really kind post about me! Thanks, Kristine!

Now, my plan for some upcoming posts: I realized that I haven't written anything about Michael and my honeymoon in Morocco last November. That was such a fabulous, different trip, and I'd love to share some of the highlights. Here's just a taste -- a photo I took at the Ali Ben Youssef Medersa in Marrakesh:

More tales from Arabian nights to come!