Berberling
Jan. 27th, 2015 10:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lupestripeContinued from last night's 'Souks You Sir' Friends Only post...
The journey from Marrakech to Rabat felt quite quick, the journey back was purgatory. The train was around fifteen minutes late so we needn't have rushed in the end, with tardiness a frequent experience on the Moroccan railway system it would seem. This got worse at Casa Voyages station where we were sat for a full hour and a quarter with no reason given. There may have been a scheduled half hour stop here but it was definitely delayed, with the elderly man next to me telling me in English that the train was late, as if I didn't already know. He had a wife wearing traditional dress of blue and red spots on a white background with intricate henna tattoo artwork on her hands, while the gentleman opposite was a devout Muslim who turned to face Mecca as soon as we got on at Rabat Agdal and started praying for a period of time (perhaps around ten minutes), sitting cross-legged and rocking back and forth barefooted on his seat. It was quite interesting to watch and he did it again later in the journey, whispering the prayers to himself before bowing onto a purple pillow that was in front of him. Interestingly, the couple didn't do this although they may have been muttering something to themselves and later on they did play music that sounded a little religious but perhaps they just wanted to listen to some music (in fact this music just went on and on, literally for hours, and became quite annoying, so I think they just wanted to listen to music). While during prayer time, we kept silent out of respect, although the praying man's phone went off halfway through his prayers, which was somewhat inconvenient while the kids running up and down the corridor were just annoying. You have to admire the dedication though. All our fellow passengers were rather friendly although preferred sitting in silence, while we contented ourselves by reading, writing this journal or eating rather dry sandwiches from the buffet trolley. My blocked nose was getting progressively worse and I was sneezing more often, with no source of reliable tissue to be found on the train. The main toilet was hemmed in by a man with a myriad number of hard suitcases while the flush was merely a pan that tipped waste into the track so best avoided. Going through carriages to another toilet was an experience as the coupling was hardly the most precise meaning you felt the wind rush past you whenever you traversed carriages. I could wash my hands on occasion but it was far from ideal, although I must admit that the first class compartment we were in - with us occupying two of the six available seats - was pretty comfortable. For the small increase in price compared to the cramped second class service, it was definitely worth it, particularly as our cabin was climate controlled and could be shut off from the rest of the train for added peace (when our fellow compartment travellers weren't using their phones that is). I also noticed Wolfie was wearing another potentially questionable T-shirt, his 666 Number of the Beast one following his 'He'll Never Meerkat It To Ze Bottom' one featuring a meerkat trying to drink a pint from Friday. The length to which I've started enjoying mint tea was also demonstrated on the train, with me enjoying the standard cup I got on the train (admittedly with sugar). Perhaps I should try the likes of peppermint tea at home again. The guy next to me was also a fan of his mint tea but he was such a slurper to be offputting. With the train over an hour and a half delayed, our hopes of seeing the open air theatre in Djemma el-Fna, declared a 'Masterpiece of the World' by UNESCO in 2001 were dashed - we had hoped to sample some outdoor street food and enjoy the party, with cross-dressing belly dancers, music jam sessions and other aspects of street theatre accompanying over 100 chefs doing their thing. We had seen a bit of this last Wednesday but we didn't sit amongst it and eat there, and it would have been a good experience. Still, it wasn't to be and we were confined to McDonald's at the train station as having checked into the hotel, it was 10:30pm by this point and there was no other place open. We had hoped to go to La Renaissance bar, having promised the friendly barman there we would go before we left Morocco but it was getting late and Wolfie's deteriorating medics condition put paid to this. So in the end, we got a few Flags from the bar, being served by the security guard as there was no one else in the bar before watching Moroccan football, religious programming and bizarrely an episode of UK detective show Lewis dubbed into Arabic on TV. It was a bit of a subdued end to our last night in Morocco but perhaps for the best as we want an early start to see some more sights before we head home in the evening.
My cold had progressed by the time I woke up on Tuesday morning, necessitating more sleep to recuperate and thus scuppering our planned early start. It was quite difficult to lie down and breathe normally, while I was suffering quite violent sneezes on occasion. This progressed later in the day into a quite painful headache, which made the fun through customs and the flight back with the droning engine noise literally hours of fun. Still, the show must go on and we had a few more sights to see before catching our early evening flight back to Manchester and we were determined to see as much as we could before we left. As time was of the essence, we opted to take taxis, realizing in Rabat that they are fantastic value when they are metered. This proved to be the case in rip-off city Marrakesh too in all but one occasion, when the driver insisted on sixty dirhams for what probably would have been twenty dirhams on the meter. The first driver was arguably the best, both in terms of general chattiness and driving competence, with the second driver clipping a motorcyclist with his wing mirror (and subsequently giving the female biker a load of undoubtedly misogynist abuse that she ignored) and the third airport driver cutting in front of a fair few people and nearly causing at least three accidents. It was clear why his Mercedes was so beaten up and why Morocco is sixth in the world in road traffic accidents - the roads here are mental and as a pedestrian, when you cross one, it's largely a hit it and hope strategy, particularly as there is no time lapse between when the green man disappears and the light goes green. Cars can also turn right on red lights too.
Anyway I digress. Our first stop was the Saadian Tombs in the south of the city, very near the Kasbah Mosque. Italian marble was imported to create a stunning necropolis, with extensive gilding honeycomb muqaranas and local dark cedar wood at the top. The whole area including the graves were tiled with five different colours to represent the five pillars of Islam while the patterns also had a certain mysticism about them, forming shapes of eight sides to represent the three books of the major world religions and five pillars of Islam. This was a constant recurring theme, with three arches constantly present throughout the mausoleum representing the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qu'ran. Sultan Ahmed al-Mansour el-Dahbi spared no expense in creating this intricate complex tucked within the heart of the city. There were separate plots for the women, including an impressive mausoleum for his mother, while the children who died in infancy also had their own section. 170 chancellors, wives and concubines were relegated to garden plots while the alpha male princes were kept in the Chamber of the Three Niches. To enter these chambers, you had to pass through intricate wooden portals which were built purposely low so you had to bow down in respect to enter. The surrounding walls and ceilings also had holes cut into them, a rudimentary form of air conditioning, while the whole complex is now home to a number of stray cats, which guard the tombs jealously. Al-Mansour died in 1603 but just a few decades later, Alawite Sultan Moulay Ismail walled up the tombs for political purposes. They were only accessible through a small passage from the Kasbah Mosque, which was boarded up by the French in 1917, the same year that aerial photography discovered them. Even today, to enter them you need to go through a discreet passageway. Entrance was only ten dirhams - museums in Marrakech are extraordinarily cheap - but we did hire a guide as he told us a load of interesting things we wouldn't have discovered otherwise. One of them was Sunni Islam's compatibility with democracy, with the Sunni imams open to interpreting the Qu'ran in different ways rather than a stricter more theological bent. A couple of the tombs also had Classic Arabic inscription but surprisingly not many of them did. When our guide left us, we were left wandering around the courtyard in the glorious sunshine, listening to the deep clicking sound of the storks perched on the walls. There were quite a few tourists here, unlike in the other cities we had visited, but it was still pretty peaceful.
As we entered the tombs, as is so common here, we were accosted by a man with a souvenir shop who wanted us to take a look. We said we would see when we came out, hoping we could give him the slip, but he was waiting expectantly as we exited. When he asked us again about entering his shop, saying we had promised, we told him we needed to get food (which was true) and that we would be back (which wasn't). We grabbed a cake from the patisserie across the road - there are so many patisseries across Morocco and they do excellent baked products at very cheap prices, must be the French influence - and nipped out of sight, walking up towards our next destination, the Badi Palace. The roads were their usual warrens and we got lost, but we adopted a new policy when asking for directions, collaring tourists who were heading in the opposite direction. This at least meant no one would try and sell us something, while they were more likely to know anyway as they had probably just come from there. It worked! Sadly though, a spice cellar on the corner of the street leading up to the palace was very interested in giving us directions and generally chatting, which would have been fine but we knew what was coming. Soon came the talk about the spices he was selling, including a collection of twigs that looked like pot pourri which were good "for lazy women who cannot be bothered to cook" (we encountered this sales pitch surprisingly frequently), so we bade a very quick exit which to the uninitiated may have seemed rude. Sadly it's a necessity here. We eventually found the Badi Palace, a huge ruin again right in the heart of the city. Built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Ahmed el-Mansour, it was the very definition of decadence, with gold, turquoise and crystal adorning the palace. At end was the crystal rooms while there were separate living quarters for guests, ironically the best preserved with fountains and beautiful mosaic tiles, again of five colours (white, green, blue, yellow and black) like the tombs we had visited earlier. Upon completion, a jester commented it would 'make a beautiful ruin', a devastating portent as it was looted just 75 years after it was built. El- Badi means 'The Incomparable' and you have to use a lot of imagination to picture what it would have looked like in its former splendour. There are four sunken gardens, now replete with orange trees, while the pools in the middle give some idea, as does the grandiose ruins of the square shaped audience pavilion. These are not the highlights of the Badi Palace though - the view of the sprawling city from atop the pise ramparts gives an idea of the sheer scale of the city (plus it's wonderfully pink) while the Koutoubia minbar is the other highlight, which sits pride of place in the former summer residence of the Sultan. Built from 1137 to 1145 out of cedar wood, the minbar is truly exquisite, with marquetry inlay and gold and silver calligraphy. Made in Cordoba, it was shipped over and reassembled in Marrakech to be used for Friday prayers every Friday. The imam stands halfway up the minbar so as to be in submission to the Prophet, with the minbar acting a little like a pulpit in a Christian church. The Kufic text was great to view as it detailed the history of the minbar as well as the Qu'ranic teaching it espoused. The pattern itself was also intricate, with lacing of black and white squares weaving it's way along the side panels, creating a repeating square based pattern. Considering the minbar is nearly 900 years old, an awful lot of it has survived, and indeed it's the most complete work of it's type still surviving. It was great to observe it, although sadly we couldn't do the same with the Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts exhibition which is closed on Tuesdays.
Upon leaving the Badi Palace, we tried to find the Bahia Palace, which had been our initial destination all along as I wasn't convinced that we had seen it. Soon though we discovered we had seen it before as down the road from it was the tea man who had conned us out of £50 worth of tea. He said hello to us again, with a rather large grin, as we dipped into the Jewish gold market which was our main destination before we had been accosted by him last Wednesday. In the end, it wasn't really worth it as many of the shops were closed, meaning we headed back to the main roundabout to flag down a taxi and head towards the Jardin Majorelle, which we had tried to visit last Friday but found out it was a longer walk from our hotel than we had thought.
The Jardin Majorelle was gifted to the city of Marrakech by Yves Saint Laurent after the city adopted him in 1964. Saint Laurent and his partner bought the stunning electric blue villa and surrounding gardens to preserve the vision of Jacques Majorelle, the previous owner, who was an avid plant collector. The garden started cultivating in 1924 and opened to the public in 1947, and there are now over 300 plant species there, including a vast variety of cacti, reminding me of my trip to Mexico. There are also a few impressive pagodas and water features painted in similar electric blue while there is a monument to YSL in the form of a fragmented Roman column which marks his passing in 2008. There is a little studio dedicated to his Love posters over the course of thirty years while there is a rather expensive boutique and cafe too. Unlikely on Friday when the place was quite deserted, there were quite a few tourists walking around and many selfie takers generally getting in the way. The advent of the selfie has really become a bane when it comes to observing tourist sites and getting your own pictures. Inside the art-deco studio villa there is now an impressing museum dedicated to Berber art, detailing the dress of the native tribes of Morocco depending upon from where they come across the country. The showcases of jewelry, intricately made and quite showy, was probably the highlight as it was set in a mirrored room of infinite stars. Many of this jewelry features enameled, chiseled and filigreed jewels set into precious metalwork with complex patterns adorning them. Berber women where a lot of jewelry, much of it headdresses with dirhams adorned on them (interestingly the dirham coins have two dates on them - the Christian and Muslim years), while many of the costumes we had seen when in the High Atlas on our tour last Thursday. There are also exhibitions on Berber leather craft, carpet weaving, weaponry, metalwork and instrument making and an odd collection of painted doors that looked like a Berber version of B&Q. It was a nice exhibition, if a little small, while we both enjoyed wandering around the tranquil gardens. Indeed, like in Cambridge in England, we noticed just how tranquil many of the palaces, museums and gardens were, despite being right in the heart of the noisy city.
With an hour or so to kill, we decided to try and make good on a promise and headed to La Renaissance for lunch. On the way, there was a huge traffic jam with loads of locals beeping their horns incessantly if that would make any difference. We opted to walk, turning down a range of differing taxi offers as we left the Jardin, and were delighted to see some signs in the Berber language with its odd writing style, with the main Berber language (there are many different dialects) being given official language status in a Morocco in 2011. The walk to La Renaissance seemed far longer than it had done before but once we arrived, we treated ourselves to a tasty four cheese pizza and sat outside watching the cars navigate the busy crossroads upon which the restaurant was sat. Sadly, as we were outside, we weren't permitted to drink alcohol but mint tea was probably better for my deteriorating cold. We also got hassled by many sunglasses salesmen and shoe shiners but we told them we weren't interested and they soon went away. After our meal, we headed back to the ibis to pick up our bags before enjoying one last Flag Speciale (our 16th of the trip) in the hotel bar before getting a taxi to the airport (and an extortionate can of depressing average "premium" Casablanca - two 330ml cans and a small Pringles for nearly £15!). The view of the sunset, perfect like a rainbow, as we took off will stick in the memory.
Morocco is a maddening country and completely different to anywhere else I have been. The first few days was a bit of a culture shock and we struggled to get into the pace of life -demonstrated by our £50 tea experience - but we got more accustomed to the bargaining and the souks as the trip progressed. The people were all generally friendly but often had a financial motive, particularly those in shops or people willing to show you around. And yet many of these people were also very generous with their time, showing us things we never had a hope of seeing had they not been there to guide us. I have been to Muslim countries before but this was my first Arabic one, with the culture a radical departure from what I am used to. This made the trip all the more exhilarating though and I would like to visit this region more. Marrakech was arguably too touristy but out of the city, and particularly in Rabat and Casablanca, I think a real Morocco definitely emerged. If I come back, I would probably do the north of the country or possibly Tunisia for a bit of variety. The trip felt a lot longer than seven days but they were definitely seven strange days. However both Wolfie and I feel very enriched from the experience and are hopeful we can visit this region again sometime. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my trip.
The journey from Marrakech to Rabat felt quite quick, the journey back was purgatory. The train was around fifteen minutes late so we needn't have rushed in the end, with tardiness a frequent experience on the Moroccan railway system it would seem. This got worse at Casa Voyages station where we were sat for a full hour and a quarter with no reason given. There may have been a scheduled half hour stop here but it was definitely delayed, with the elderly man next to me telling me in English that the train was late, as if I didn't already know. He had a wife wearing traditional dress of blue and red spots on a white background with intricate henna tattoo artwork on her hands, while the gentleman opposite was a devout Muslim who turned to face Mecca as soon as we got on at Rabat Agdal and started praying for a period of time (perhaps around ten minutes), sitting cross-legged and rocking back and forth barefooted on his seat. It was quite interesting to watch and he did it again later in the journey, whispering the prayers to himself before bowing onto a purple pillow that was in front of him. Interestingly, the couple didn't do this although they may have been muttering something to themselves and later on they did play music that sounded a little religious but perhaps they just wanted to listen to some music (in fact this music just went on and on, literally for hours, and became quite annoying, so I think they just wanted to listen to music). While during prayer time, we kept silent out of respect, although the praying man's phone went off halfway through his prayers, which was somewhat inconvenient while the kids running up and down the corridor were just annoying. You have to admire the dedication though. All our fellow passengers were rather friendly although preferred sitting in silence, while we contented ourselves by reading, writing this journal or eating rather dry sandwiches from the buffet trolley. My blocked nose was getting progressively worse and I was sneezing more often, with no source of reliable tissue to be found on the train. The main toilet was hemmed in by a man with a myriad number of hard suitcases while the flush was merely a pan that tipped waste into the track so best avoided. Going through carriages to another toilet was an experience as the coupling was hardly the most precise meaning you felt the wind rush past you whenever you traversed carriages. I could wash my hands on occasion but it was far from ideal, although I must admit that the first class compartment we were in - with us occupying two of the six available seats - was pretty comfortable. For the small increase in price compared to the cramped second class service, it was definitely worth it, particularly as our cabin was climate controlled and could be shut off from the rest of the train for added peace (when our fellow compartment travellers weren't using their phones that is). I also noticed Wolfie was wearing another potentially questionable T-shirt, his 666 Number of the Beast one following his 'He'll Never Meerkat It To Ze Bottom' one featuring a meerkat trying to drink a pint from Friday. The length to which I've started enjoying mint tea was also demonstrated on the train, with me enjoying the standard cup I got on the train (admittedly with sugar). Perhaps I should try the likes of peppermint tea at home again. The guy next to me was also a fan of his mint tea but he was such a slurper to be offputting. With the train over an hour and a half delayed, our hopes of seeing the open air theatre in Djemma el-Fna, declared a 'Masterpiece of the World' by UNESCO in 2001 were dashed - we had hoped to sample some outdoor street food and enjoy the party, with cross-dressing belly dancers, music jam sessions and other aspects of street theatre accompanying over 100 chefs doing their thing. We had seen a bit of this last Wednesday but we didn't sit amongst it and eat there, and it would have been a good experience. Still, it wasn't to be and we were confined to McDonald's at the train station as having checked into the hotel, it was 10:30pm by this point and there was no other place open. We had hoped to go to La Renaissance bar, having promised the friendly barman there we would go before we left Morocco but it was getting late and Wolfie's deteriorating medics condition put paid to this. So in the end, we got a few Flags from the bar, being served by the security guard as there was no one else in the bar before watching Moroccan football, religious programming and bizarrely an episode of UK detective show Lewis dubbed into Arabic on TV. It was a bit of a subdued end to our last night in Morocco but perhaps for the best as we want an early start to see some more sights before we head home in the evening.
My cold had progressed by the time I woke up on Tuesday morning, necessitating more sleep to recuperate and thus scuppering our planned early start. It was quite difficult to lie down and breathe normally, while I was suffering quite violent sneezes on occasion. This progressed later in the day into a quite painful headache, which made the fun through customs and the flight back with the droning engine noise literally hours of fun. Still, the show must go on and we had a few more sights to see before catching our early evening flight back to Manchester and we were determined to see as much as we could before we left. As time was of the essence, we opted to take taxis, realizing in Rabat that they are fantastic value when they are metered. This proved to be the case in rip-off city Marrakesh too in all but one occasion, when the driver insisted on sixty dirhams for what probably would have been twenty dirhams on the meter. The first driver was arguably the best, both in terms of general chattiness and driving competence, with the second driver clipping a motorcyclist with his wing mirror (and subsequently giving the female biker a load of undoubtedly misogynist abuse that she ignored) and the third airport driver cutting in front of a fair few people and nearly causing at least three accidents. It was clear why his Mercedes was so beaten up and why Morocco is sixth in the world in road traffic accidents - the roads here are mental and as a pedestrian, when you cross one, it's largely a hit it and hope strategy, particularly as there is no time lapse between when the green man disappears and the light goes green. Cars can also turn right on red lights too.
Anyway I digress. Our first stop was the Saadian Tombs in the south of the city, very near the Kasbah Mosque. Italian marble was imported to create a stunning necropolis, with extensive gilding honeycomb muqaranas and local dark cedar wood at the top. The whole area including the graves were tiled with five different colours to represent the five pillars of Islam while the patterns also had a certain mysticism about them, forming shapes of eight sides to represent the three books of the major world religions and five pillars of Islam. This was a constant recurring theme, with three arches constantly present throughout the mausoleum representing the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Qu'ran. Sultan Ahmed al-Mansour el-Dahbi spared no expense in creating this intricate complex tucked within the heart of the city. There were separate plots for the women, including an impressive mausoleum for his mother, while the children who died in infancy also had their own section. 170 chancellors, wives and concubines were relegated to garden plots while the alpha male princes were kept in the Chamber of the Three Niches. To enter these chambers, you had to pass through intricate wooden portals which were built purposely low so you had to bow down in respect to enter. The surrounding walls and ceilings also had holes cut into them, a rudimentary form of air conditioning, while the whole complex is now home to a number of stray cats, which guard the tombs jealously. Al-Mansour died in 1603 but just a few decades later, Alawite Sultan Moulay Ismail walled up the tombs for political purposes. They were only accessible through a small passage from the Kasbah Mosque, which was boarded up by the French in 1917, the same year that aerial photography discovered them. Even today, to enter them you need to go through a discreet passageway. Entrance was only ten dirhams - museums in Marrakech are extraordinarily cheap - but we did hire a guide as he told us a load of interesting things we wouldn't have discovered otherwise. One of them was Sunni Islam's compatibility with democracy, with the Sunni imams open to interpreting the Qu'ran in different ways rather than a stricter more theological bent. A couple of the tombs also had Classic Arabic inscription but surprisingly not many of them did. When our guide left us, we were left wandering around the courtyard in the glorious sunshine, listening to the deep clicking sound of the storks perched on the walls. There were quite a few tourists here, unlike in the other cities we had visited, but it was still pretty peaceful.
As we entered the tombs, as is so common here, we were accosted by a man with a souvenir shop who wanted us to take a look. We said we would see when we came out, hoping we could give him the slip, but he was waiting expectantly as we exited. When he asked us again about entering his shop, saying we had promised, we told him we needed to get food (which was true) and that we would be back (which wasn't). We grabbed a cake from the patisserie across the road - there are so many patisseries across Morocco and they do excellent baked products at very cheap prices, must be the French influence - and nipped out of sight, walking up towards our next destination, the Badi Palace. The roads were their usual warrens and we got lost, but we adopted a new policy when asking for directions, collaring tourists who were heading in the opposite direction. This at least meant no one would try and sell us something, while they were more likely to know anyway as they had probably just come from there. It worked! Sadly though, a spice cellar on the corner of the street leading up to the palace was very interested in giving us directions and generally chatting, which would have been fine but we knew what was coming. Soon came the talk about the spices he was selling, including a collection of twigs that looked like pot pourri which were good "for lazy women who cannot be bothered to cook" (we encountered this sales pitch surprisingly frequently), so we bade a very quick exit which to the uninitiated may have seemed rude. Sadly it's a necessity here. We eventually found the Badi Palace, a huge ruin again right in the heart of the city. Built in the sixteenth century by Sultan Ahmed el-Mansour, it was the very definition of decadence, with gold, turquoise and crystal adorning the palace. At end was the crystal rooms while there were separate living quarters for guests, ironically the best preserved with fountains and beautiful mosaic tiles, again of five colours (white, green, blue, yellow and black) like the tombs we had visited earlier. Upon completion, a jester commented it would 'make a beautiful ruin', a devastating portent as it was looted just 75 years after it was built. El- Badi means 'The Incomparable' and you have to use a lot of imagination to picture what it would have looked like in its former splendour. There are four sunken gardens, now replete with orange trees, while the pools in the middle give some idea, as does the grandiose ruins of the square shaped audience pavilion. These are not the highlights of the Badi Palace though - the view of the sprawling city from atop the pise ramparts gives an idea of the sheer scale of the city (plus it's wonderfully pink) while the Koutoubia minbar is the other highlight, which sits pride of place in the former summer residence of the Sultan. Built from 1137 to 1145 out of cedar wood, the minbar is truly exquisite, with marquetry inlay and gold and silver calligraphy. Made in Cordoba, it was shipped over and reassembled in Marrakech to be used for Friday prayers every Friday. The imam stands halfway up the minbar so as to be in submission to the Prophet, with the minbar acting a little like a pulpit in a Christian church. The Kufic text was great to view as it detailed the history of the minbar as well as the Qu'ranic teaching it espoused. The pattern itself was also intricate, with lacing of black and white squares weaving it's way along the side panels, creating a repeating square based pattern. Considering the minbar is nearly 900 years old, an awful lot of it has survived, and indeed it's the most complete work of it's type still surviving. It was great to observe it, although sadly we couldn't do the same with the Marrakech Museum for Photography and Visual Arts exhibition which is closed on Tuesdays.
Upon leaving the Badi Palace, we tried to find the Bahia Palace, which had been our initial destination all along as I wasn't convinced that we had seen it. Soon though we discovered we had seen it before as down the road from it was the tea man who had conned us out of £50 worth of tea. He said hello to us again, with a rather large grin, as we dipped into the Jewish gold market which was our main destination before we had been accosted by him last Wednesday. In the end, it wasn't really worth it as many of the shops were closed, meaning we headed back to the main roundabout to flag down a taxi and head towards the Jardin Majorelle, which we had tried to visit last Friday but found out it was a longer walk from our hotel than we had thought.
The Jardin Majorelle was gifted to the city of Marrakech by Yves Saint Laurent after the city adopted him in 1964. Saint Laurent and his partner bought the stunning electric blue villa and surrounding gardens to preserve the vision of Jacques Majorelle, the previous owner, who was an avid plant collector. The garden started cultivating in 1924 and opened to the public in 1947, and there are now over 300 plant species there, including a vast variety of cacti, reminding me of my trip to Mexico. There are also a few impressive pagodas and water features painted in similar electric blue while there is a monument to YSL in the form of a fragmented Roman column which marks his passing in 2008. There is a little studio dedicated to his Love posters over the course of thirty years while there is a rather expensive boutique and cafe too. Unlikely on Friday when the place was quite deserted, there were quite a few tourists walking around and many selfie takers generally getting in the way. The advent of the selfie has really become a bane when it comes to observing tourist sites and getting your own pictures. Inside the art-deco studio villa there is now an impressing museum dedicated to Berber art, detailing the dress of the native tribes of Morocco depending upon from where they come across the country. The showcases of jewelry, intricately made and quite showy, was probably the highlight as it was set in a mirrored room of infinite stars. Many of this jewelry features enameled, chiseled and filigreed jewels set into precious metalwork with complex patterns adorning them. Berber women where a lot of jewelry, much of it headdresses with dirhams adorned on them (interestingly the dirham coins have two dates on them - the Christian and Muslim years), while many of the costumes we had seen when in the High Atlas on our tour last Thursday. There are also exhibitions on Berber leather craft, carpet weaving, weaponry, metalwork and instrument making and an odd collection of painted doors that looked like a Berber version of B&Q. It was a nice exhibition, if a little small, while we both enjoyed wandering around the tranquil gardens. Indeed, like in Cambridge in England, we noticed just how tranquil many of the palaces, museums and gardens were, despite being right in the heart of the noisy city.
With an hour or so to kill, we decided to try and make good on a promise and headed to La Renaissance for lunch. On the way, there was a huge traffic jam with loads of locals beeping their horns incessantly if that would make any difference. We opted to walk, turning down a range of differing taxi offers as we left the Jardin, and were delighted to see some signs in the Berber language with its odd writing style, with the main Berber language (there are many different dialects) being given official language status in a Morocco in 2011. The walk to La Renaissance seemed far longer than it had done before but once we arrived, we treated ourselves to a tasty four cheese pizza and sat outside watching the cars navigate the busy crossroads upon which the restaurant was sat. Sadly, as we were outside, we weren't permitted to drink alcohol but mint tea was probably better for my deteriorating cold. We also got hassled by many sunglasses salesmen and shoe shiners but we told them we weren't interested and they soon went away. After our meal, we headed back to the ibis to pick up our bags before enjoying one last Flag Speciale (our 16th of the trip) in the hotel bar before getting a taxi to the airport (and an extortionate can of depressing average "premium" Casablanca - two 330ml cans and a small Pringles for nearly £15!). The view of the sunset, perfect like a rainbow, as we took off will stick in the memory.
Morocco is a maddening country and completely different to anywhere else I have been. The first few days was a bit of a culture shock and we struggled to get into the pace of life -demonstrated by our £50 tea experience - but we got more accustomed to the bargaining and the souks as the trip progressed. The people were all generally friendly but often had a financial motive, particularly those in shops or people willing to show you around. And yet many of these people were also very generous with their time, showing us things we never had a hope of seeing had they not been there to guide us. I have been to Muslim countries before but this was my first Arabic one, with the culture a radical departure from what I am used to. This made the trip all the more exhilarating though and I would like to visit this region more. Marrakech was arguably too touristy but out of the city, and particularly in Rabat and Casablanca, I think a real Morocco definitely emerged. If I come back, I would probably do the north of the country or possibly Tunisia for a bit of variety. The trip felt a lot longer than seven days but they were definitely seven strange days. However both Wolfie and I feel very enriched from the experience and are hopeful we can visit this region again sometime. I hope you have enjoyed reading about my trip.
