May 1st - May 3rd Marrakech, Morroco

On Monday May 1^st we drove from Fez To Marrakech. It took us almost 11 hours driving though the Middle Atlas Mountains.  Initially, there were many wildflowers along the road, field workers riding donkeys or bikes loaded down with grasses, and many agricultural vehicles all occupying the same 2 lane road we were on. Our driver Mohammed was very careful. We first stopped at  Ifrane, at about 5,000 feet elevation called the "Switzerland of Morocco", and reputed the second cleanest city in the world. This is a ski resort because of the regular snow that they get in winter. They also have a golf course under construction for summer use, and the area is a recreation center for the Moroccan wealthy.

Large cedars in background

Barbary Apes live in cedar forests and are really monkeys not apes

We continued on to a ancient cedar forest, where we stopped to feed the monkeys peanuts and admire the largest cedar tree in the park, which was 800 years old . We then drove on winding roads though the mountains, later passing a sizable lake fed by mountain streams.

Lake fed by water coming off the Middle Atlas Mountains

 After five hours we came onto the valley area, which became monotonous with wheat fields and many fruit tree orchards (apple and peaches). The houses at this point were mainly all painted red or other shades of clay, and again had flat roofs compared to the sloped roofs further up where heavy snow required this. 

The last three hours after lunch made us begin to think we should have taken the train, which was much cheaper and faster than this trip, which cost $300. It took our driver a while to find our lodging, the Kasar Anika, which was in the Mellah, old Jewish Quarter outside of the Medina area. On arrival we were given mint tea and cookies by the pool and then taken up to our suite . We enjoyed a light dinner by the plunge pool. The temperatures for next day in Marrakesh were expected to be over 100 ° F and we had a walking tour set up for 2:30 in the afternoon!

Tuesday morning we decided to get an early start to our initial visit of the souk area. We took a petite taxi to Djemaa El-Fna, which is the main square just opposite the 12th Century Koutoubia Mosque.

Djemmaa El-Fna main square

 We then wandered up what looked like a main artery into the souk and just kept going straight and trying to stay under covered areas as much as possible because of the heat.

We wandered into the spice souk area and while David was intrigued by the chameleons for sale and the "thub" lizards (Ornate Uromastryx in English), similar to the ones we used to catch in the Saudi deserts, Leslie was checking out all the natural dyes that you could purchase as well as lumps of alum.

Ornate Uromastryx

 David bought some of the blue Majorelle powder which he was told came from a flower. The color is named after the French artist Jacques Majorelle who bought a home in Marrakech in 1924 and painted the garden walls, fountains, features and villa this very intense shade of blue, for which he trademarked the name Majorelle Blue.  This color he had noticed being used in Moroccan tiles, Berber burn houses, and around the windows of kasbahs and the local adobe homes.

Moroccan olive black soap and alum

We walked back to the main square and took a taxi to Café Clock. We had enjoyed the sister restaurant in Fez so much we decided to find the one in Marrakech.

Sweets attracted honeybees

While the food was delicious the location is not very good for business as they are not on the tourist route like in Fez. The date cheese cake was delicious! We then took a taxi back to our Ksar as the heat had really picked up and we wanted to rest a few minutes before we were to meet our tour quide Abdou with Amazigh Cultural Tours and the local city tour guide for our walking tour. After meeting Abdou and seeing a map we had a much better idea of our trip plans for the next week in which we will be traveling with him and a driver Rashid through the high Atlas mountains to the Sahara desert and back to Marrakech before being driven to the coast. This tour company offers tours focusing on textiles and jewelry so we hope to visit some interesting places and digest and decipher new information on the crafts of Morocco.

Our city guide Mustapha, dressed in his jelaba with hood up, took off at a rapid pace out the Ksar door and we were following along hugging the sides of the building for shade and to stay out of the way of the dangerous motorcycles.

Guide Mustafa leads the way

These motorcyclists are not required to have a license nor wear a helmet. They go racing down the medina pedestrian alleys with total disregard for pedestrians, bicyclists, donkeys and push-carts!
We first stopped at the Palais el-Badi, a 16th Century palace now a total ruin with only storks to keep us company in the heat (not worth visiting) before we went to the beautifully decorated in Moorish style,  Palais de la Bahia. According to Mustafa, Moorish architecture requires three elements to be present, a painted wood ceiling, decorative plaster work on the wall and zellij tile work on the floor.

Bahia Palace courtyard

The intricate wood carving and plaster work framed by orange trees and the sounds of water from the fountains gave the open courtyards a restful, relaxing feel and definitely much cooler than outside the Palais. Several movies have been filmed in this location, Jewel of the Nile, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much and many others.

Corner of wall and ceiling showing decoration

Decorated Ceilings at Bahia Palace

We walked on to the Dar Si Said which now houses the Museum of Moroccan Arts which is well worth a visit as both the restored building and the exhibits are interesting. The labels unfortunately are in French and Arabic. 

After enjoying again the cool of the Dar we were marched out in the heat again down winding alleys to two specific souks; the metal workers where lamps and other wrought iron items are made.We whizzed past the spice market that we had loitered at in the morning and which still had the chameleons on display as well as the women preparing and using henna on any willing customer. The Spice market was the old slave trading area until slavery was banned in 1960.

Metal working area

We passed through more alleyways to end at the nuts and fruits area where we bought some walnuts and candied ginger for our trip. Mustafa pointed out a restaurant terrace overlooking the mosque as a good restaurant choice, so we went there and had a pizza and grilled vegetable salad. We decided we were going to be having many Moroccan and Berber meals in the coming days so we should have something Western.

Noise of snake charmers in the square

As we now knew our way back to our Ksar accommodation, we decided to walk through the square as it was Saturday evening and there was a lot of action. Sure enough we got hassled in a most unpleasant way by the snake charmers by trying to give them the money to take a picture and they proceed to put a snake on David's shoulders and then try to charge him for something he did not want: He kept shouting “Get the snake off me!”

Yves St. Laurent's garden with Majorelle Blue

The next morning another tour guide Rita, an Australian co-owner of the tour company, met us to visit the exquisite Les Jardins Majorelle to see the private

collection of Yves St Laurent at the new Musée Berbére including regional Amazigh (Berber) costumes, jewelry and carpets.

We then went to the souk to visit Al Kawatar Association of handicapped women working with embroidery.  As we had expressed to Rita an interest in looking for old glass beads for a necklace that we had seen in Turkey she took us to her bead shop La Croix d’Agadez & l’Art  on Fhai Chidmi Rue Lamoissine Kissariat where we purchased some old glass trading beads. The beads were weighed on a scale and charged accordingly. After lunch of a deliciously cool gazpacho soup with an omelet and gazelle horn cookies in the spice market, we walked through the Dye Souk. We bought more small bags of lump indigo, Saharan blue from oysters, alum, and several other colors. 

Dyed Yarn

The small Tiskiwin Museum, housing a private collection of textiles, jewelry and artifacts from the Saharan basin, was closed when we passed by with Rita, however later in the afternoon when it cooled down, we were out on the streets again and found the museum open. Its contents would be more appreciated if you saw it first before the YSL collection because of the difference in the displays. We decided we had had enough of dodging motorcycles so we arranged to have our dinner in the Ksar so that we could repack and leave one big suitcase behind with them for collection on our last night.