Category: Morocco

Feast your eyes …

Hmmmm

Might as well share these as they come thick and fast.

• Bought a SIM card for my old phone so can use as a satnav and phone. Paid in euros, change in dirhams, and we’re about £2 short at the end of the transaction
• Got confused about phones while trying to use google maps in the souk, and might have turned on dataroaming on my current phone. £6 for a day. Not really a scam but my flustration.
• Get taxi to Majorelle Gardens. Agree price. He drops us about half a mile away and was gone before we realised.
• In the souk, someone kindly points you in the (wrong) direction to the main Sq and very soon a kid pops up to guide you when you’re lost again. 50p (and he complained!).
• Same, but near the hotel when we knew where we were. But someone shouted out that the road was closed and a kid popped up to guide us again. Had run out of change by now …

It’s sometimes a battle, and despite that loving Marrakech.

The one lowlight so far is the inability to deal with the cold. We’ve been to places colder, but they are unable to warm up places, especially restaurants. So we were cold at breakfast and freezing when out in the evening. Oh, and melting at lunchtime in the full sun!

But we’re not complaining. We did the touristy thing of getting lost in the souk in the morning, rather ironically hunting for the secret garden😀. But once we gave up looking we found it.

Photos don’t really do it justice

as it’s this little oasis slap bang in the middle of the noisy souk.

Lunch in the main square as tourists have to do (and avoiding the snake charmers)

And finally the tombs. We remember these extremely well from 3 years ago and definitely worth a repeat visit. Probably identical photos as well.

Forecast to be the worst weather of the whole holiday, so might as well get it out of the way now.

– hotel is really quiet and comfortable even though it’s central. Jemaa El-Fnaa Square is the famous one, about 20 minutes walk

– afraid they haven’t got even close to cashless – haven’t used the card all day

– it’s a bit chilly!

– millions of cats but no dogs

It’s interesting to see and remember familiar things, although the old blog helps.

Old Palace – fairly sure it was closed last time.

New Palace – definitely been here before

And a lot busier than last time.

But it really was f**ing cold and worse when it rained so gave up and back to hotel.

Did get a bit of colour though

Another milestone – first time out of Europe since the pandemic. And it’s to the last place we were before lockdown hit.

Dream journey – not much more than 7 hours door to door without a hitch. Even Luton was ok mainly because there was hardly anyone there, and we had a row of seats to ourselves so what’s not to like.

Les Borjs de la Kasbah in Marrakech is our home for the next few days

and only time for a short explore that evening.

An Essaouira day, so pretty much identical to yesterday. Lunch at our favourite restaurant

And a walk along the beach, around the Medina and then home. Perfect journey, so home by 10.00.

So a few random photos to remind us.

Back in Essaouira so not much to report. Although the hotel room (suite) is wonderful. Eileen negotiated an upgrade and a discount at the same time.

Our terrace

Our sitting room

And just outside the door

We have been incredibly lucky with the weather throughout – although not so sure about the Moroccans as it seems the winter rains haven’t come. They’re probably all in the UK. But add that to the virus threat and the tourism industry is worried.

But for us it’s gorgeous. A bit like Oxwich but sunny.

And an arty shot in the old town.

Sunset. Cheers.

And finally a question:

Is the following picture:

a) our view from dinner; or

b) more amazingness from the incredible Greenland odyssey?

Well sort of. Back to Essaouira today.

Thought a map might be helpful, especially as Ouirgane is a tiny hamlet in the mountains.

But first, caught some nice early morning mountain pics.

One of the unexpected things about where we’re staying is the absolute silence when we went for a walk. Not sure where the birds were, but total silence is not something we’re very familiar with.

Then headed off after lunch. No lunch for Eileen – although she’s just about better, the idea of eating before a 4 hour car trip through the mountains didn’t appeal.

We took the scenic view.

Fabulous. The rest of the journey was fairly nondescript apart from the awful unmade roads for about 10 miles.

This was more typical though. Good roads, empty and lots of boring desert to look at.

So we resorted to listening to Radio 4 podcasts …..

But a little bit of light relief

And the shepherd, who clearly knows an opportunity when it arises comes scampering across the field “to say hello”. Ended up giving him a slightly larger note than I should have, so made his day!

Back at the same hotel for a couple of days before home.

Actually the same ones but from different angles!

Eileen a bit under the weather today so didn’t venture very far. Bu to be honest we didn’t need to. Not a bad place if you’re indisposed for a day.

Mountains

Only problem finding the hotel is that it wasn’t as far as we had been led to believe. I thought we had another 20 miles to go and we were there.

And that was the extent of the intrepidness today! But did find a grapefruit tree at the hotel, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

And then it’s all about enjoying the spectacular scenery. Not sure the photos do it justice. Anyway, these are from our terrace during the afternoon.

And finally another photo from Greenland which I couldn’t resist. Had never before thought about what is the biggest simultaneous temperature difference between us and Jo, but I guess that 60 degrees is likely to be the record (+27 here, -33 there).