Saturday, August 11, 2007

Thursday August 9 – into Marrakech

Today: Overslept, had been up all night anyways as the Imodium seems to wear off about 2am. It is grey and raining; Everyone says they have never seen a rainy day in August. We have a second guide today, a Moroccan woman named Naim who speaks little English, but is very pleasant and willing to learn new words. After a ride into the medina – the old city – we begin our walk. We visit the Bahia Palace, and the burial place of kings. We stop by the Rrad – a bed and breakfast – that Naim manages for a French couple and get to see a more traditional kind of accommodation while enjoying a cup of mint tea in a dry place! We visit a community oven where families who don’t have one bring their bread for baking. Then on to the Medersa, a traditional Islam boarding school for boys, no longer used. The rooms are very small, but slept 4 in each. The tile work is beautiful in all of these places, and the doors and ceilings are magnificent cedar creations.

Lunch is Italian food – pizza even! – but I am still afraid to eat. The afternoon we explore the souks – long narrow dark alleys full of every kind of craft and item you could dream of. This is where a second guide really comes in handy because one wrong turn and we would probably never find out way back! In one spot there is a heap of twisted metal – the iron workers nest – next to a lovely arranged shop of metal lanterns. In the leather souk the smell is pretty bad; in the jewelry souk there is both junky stuff and beautiful silver. It is not always easy to tell the difference and the sincerity with which the sellers promise it is the very real thing at the very best price is astounding. A familiar chant: A small shop with a small price. There are shoes and bags and clothing and housewares and it is so overwhelming! It is easy to lose track of what you want and just become enveloped in all the possibilities. We visit a ‘pharmacy’ of spices, and a shop full of beautiful handmade djellabahs (but no one buys one!). We finally make it out to the big square where taxis zip through aimlessly and snake charmers draw crowds with their pythons and vipers. There are also monkeys, and one man with a table full of human teeth and a few examples of the dentures he could make for you. You can buy food or fresh squeezed orange juice. Sometimes there are acrobats but we don’t see any. We wind our way through and back to the van for the ride to the hotel, tired from a long and fascinating day.

A nice hotel dinner after which the adults retire, and the kids gather for a last evening’s hanging out. I hear that it didn’t break up until after 11 – and Sam had to be up at 3!

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