Marrakesh

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Marrakesh

A full day today, but I’ll start with last night’s dinner at Dar Moha, a converted private residence.  We sat at the edge of a beautiful indoor pool.  Here are Joyce, Leah and Jalil, our guide:

There was live music:

The video is dark but you can hear:

The meal began with fourteen appetizers!  Here are some:

We had a lovely time.  This morning we began at the Bahia Palace, commissioned in the late 19th c. by Ba Ahmed, vizier of sultans Moulay Hassan and Moulay Abdelaziz, and featuring spectacular decoration.  Here are an entrance and a ceiling:

We then went to the Tiskiwin Museum, the collection of a single individual featuring Berber and sub-Saharan artifacts.  Here are a beautiful saddle bag and a reconstructed Berber tent (with occupant):

 Marrakesh is an old city with a beautiful 13^th c. minaret:

After walking a good part of the city we took a carriage to lunch:

After lunch we saw the Jardin Majorelle, a beautiful bamboo and cactus garden constructed and maintained by Yves St. Laurent, who left an endowment for its preservation:

Finally we went to the Medina, where we walked through the souk, which is more than twice as large as the one in Fes.  Amazing!  We ended at the El Fna Square, the very famous and incredible center of this city.  How to describe it?  Full of all kinds of exotic people and things, it’s where one goes to find the wild, the weird and the unusual, from snake charmers to jugglers to henna painters, etc.:

We found a henna painter who did a lovely job on Leah:

We also found a snake charmer who charmed Leah (but not with the cobras he had at his feet):

The “dentist” simply extracts teeth (see the pile on his table):

The Berbers wander and pose:

We’re off for a final and farewell to Morocco dinner, then four flights home tomorrow—Marrakesh-Casablanca-Paris-New York-Rochester.  It’s been a great privilege to share this adventure with Leah!