MARRAKESH IS CRAZY!!!

We arrived in Marrakesh last night, more or less in the middle of the night (shortly after midnight). Driving through the new part of town, we passed blocks and blocks of brightly lit, five star hotels, and the streets were lined with every luxury car imaginable. Beautiful, well-dressed people were heading into hotels and clubs, and it was our first indication that this city is totally nuts.

The hostel is gorgeous. Normally, I don't post pictures of the places I am staying, just because it seems a little imprudent to provide this photographic evidence to the general internets, but this place is so gorgeous (and I'm leaving in less than eight hours) so I'll take the risk.

The "dorm room" we stayed in was actually a big, open room with lattice-work stained glass doors separating the room from the courtyard. It reminded me of a desert camp, with tents draped over some beds and beautiful lamps hanging from the ceiling.

My little bed was by the fire place. It was a little small but I was so excited when I saw it. This is the perfect bed for an Anne:

In the morning, we booked our desert tour (more on that in a bit) and then Scotty and I split up for the day to explore Marrakesh independently. I stopped in a cafe to get something to drink. The orange juice in Morocco is UNREAL - I am not normally a huge orange juice fan, and I don't really like pulp, but drinking the (pulp-filled) orange juice here is something of a transcendent experience. Tough to convey how good it is, and now normal orange juice is forever ruined for me.

Anyway, I went into a cafe looking for a drink, and was perusing their list of juices: orange, mango, grapefruit, etc. But then things got a little weird: avocado. Almond. Walnut. I had no idea how you could get juice from a walnut, and the menu offered no explanation other than "noix (walnut)" on the juice list. I ordered it without knowing what would turn up.

Here is what the waitress brought:

It was SO GOOD!! It tasted a little like milk, at first, but with a delicious walnut after taste. I have Googled to find out more about what I was drinking, because I really thought it was basically powdered walnuts added to milk, but apparently there isn't any milk and it's just soaked walnuts and water, blended with a few other flavors added. Here's a recipe if anyone is curious. This gets added to the list of things I will try to make at home!

At the heart of Marrakesh is Djemaa el Fna, a huge square which is closed to cars during the day. This is pretty much the center of the action, and provides an entrance to the souqs. I struggled to take a picture to capture what a beehive of activity this place is, but here is one that has a few of the elements that make this square so fun:

If you click on that picture and look at a larger version, here are some of the things you will see:

• On the far right hand side is a motorcycle. Although the square is closed to cars, there are still motorbikes and motorcycles zipping through, swerving around anyone who strays into their path.
• In the lower right hand quadrant are two men with monkeys on leashes.
• The various umbrellas in the foreground are providing shade for small-scale vendors - men and women sitting and selling cigarettes, keychains, henna tattoos, and a variety of other small stuff.
• The larger white tents in the back are selling larger wares - lamps, leather, fruit etc.
• The man in the orange fleece is attempting to dodge the two men in dark robes who are trying to hand him a snake.
• All of this is being supervised by all the people sitting in the shade of the terraced cafes which surround the square.

In addition to the vendors, there are various "performances" going on in the square. This one mostly involved having a lot of snakes on the ground. If a snake got agitated and attempted to attack/escape into the crowd, he was corralled under one of the flat-ish straw baskets you can see on the ground behind the man, which seemed like a pretty optimistic containment method to me.

As soon as I took this picture, one of the snake guys asked me for money - which is to be expected. I gave him 5 dirham, which is about $0.60. He tried to tell me that the price for a picture is TWENTY dirham, to which I just said, "No." He argued with me about it for a while but I stood my ground. I was thankful that he didn't take advantage of his distinct advantage - namely, that he has an indeterminate number of cobras at his disposal. Eventually he gave up and went to hassle all the other picture-takers.

Many of the booths sold heaps of dates, dried figs, and nuts:

From Djemaa el Fna, the next place to wander is the souqs. These are winding streets filled with shops selling all sorts of goods. As you walk through the souqs, it is inevitable that you will get completely lost - they ramble without rhyme or reason and the shops all start to look alike. Worst case scenario, you can pay a small child to lead you out but luckily I kept my bearings enough that while I never really knew where I was, I always had a general idea of how to get out.

Here is a rug shop in a less crowded part of the souk:

The next picture is, to me, the embodiment of wandering the souks. They are covered in places, open in others, with scarves, lamps, rugs, purses, dresses, pots, pans, wood carvings, tassels, and jewelry overflowing from every shop and filling the narrow alleyways. There are people everywhere and the ever present motorbikes race through. Sometimes there are chickens and cats underfoot as well.

Here is a store I had to restrain myself from going into - THE TASSEL STORE!!

If you're wondering why I couldn't go into the tassel store, here is a lolcat approximation of how I feel about tassels, and what would have likely happened had I gone in.

My favorite stores in the souq were the lamp stores. If I had a way to get them home, and a home to put them in, I would have found it hard to resist buying ALL THE LAMPS.

This store specialized in red/orange/yellow lamps:

So many lamps!!

I was actually looking to buy something in the souqs: a new shirt. I was a little too efficient in eliminating unnecessary clothes from my pack, and I realized this morning that I am suffering a shortage of shirts. So, I thought I could find one in the souq. Unfortunately, everything sold there was ridiculously bright and over-embroidered - I was hoping to find something that would be serviceable for the foreseeable future, so, basically, boring.

After a lot of wandering, I suddenly saw the perfect shirt - it was a light tan, with three-quarter length sleeves and just a little embroidery around the neckline. I stared straight at it, which for most shopkeepers was usually enough interest to get them to hurry over and extol the many virtues of the shirt in question ("Ahh, yes, a beautiful color, finest cotton - feel the cotton - so soft, all hand embroidery, very fine, very fine..."). No one came forward. I made a more exaggerated show of looking at the store, hoping that the proprietor would appear, which he eventually did, but he mostly just looked at me. Darn it - this meant that I was going to have to admit that I wanted the shirt, which would put me in a more difficult position to haggle for a good price.

"This shirt?" I pointed to it. He pulled it off the dummy but it was clearly too small. There were three or four on either side of it which were similar and would have been acceptable, so I gestured to them and said, "More sizes? Any of these?" He gestured that I follow him into the shop, and proceeded to pull down several shirts from the wall - none of which were like the ones outside. As he handed me a bright blue shirt with a lot of gold embroidery, I pointed back outside, "Like those?"

"Yes, yes, no problem," he said. "Just the same." He retrieved a black dress with red embroidery and held it up for my approval. "No, no." I said. "LIKE THOSE." I went back outside. "Where can I get this? Is there another shop?" (Sometimes these guys have a "brother" who happens to own another shop that has JUST WHAT YOU NEED.) I was beginning to realize that I was not going to get my shirt. "You give me one day, I make you this shirt," the guy told me, but since we're leaving tomorrow and this sounded like an expensive endeavor, I thanked the guy for his time and bid a sad farewell to THE PERFECT SHIRT.

Sometimes the narrow alleys of the souq would open into larger squares:

At night, Djemaa el Fna is filled with restaurants which are torn down at the end of each night and rebuilt the next day. We decided to go down here and find a place to eat. We thought we'd be "finding a place" but this actually turned into "walking along, avoiding waiters touting their restaurant, until we were physically wrestled into an establishment". Literally. This happened. Scotty and I set out with Francie, a German girl from our hostel, and while we were walking, Scotty was blocked by two guys who linked arms and wouldn't let him pass. The other guys in that restaurant started clapping and chanting until we finally acquiesced and sat down.

Once seated, we really became part of the problem, joining the clapping and shouting as other tourists passing by were harassed. (This was pretty standard at all the restaurants - you didn't so much have a "choice" where to eat - just a point where you could not physically progress any further.)

Here was our New Years Eve dinner:

It was delicious! We headed back to the hostel with the intention of returning to the square at midnight - it's 11:40 now and I'm not sure if that will be happening. We have to have a fairly early night because tomorrow we leave FOR THE DESERT. Our expedition leaves at 7:00, bright and early!! We'll be gone for three days and two nights, staying in desert tents and seeing a lot of sand dunes. No posts for the next few days but an exciting one when we return!!