Marrakech | Life of Saturdays

CHAPTER 18

Marrakech begins and ends with the Jemaa el-Fnaa. Early in the morning it is empty, and all you can hear is the sound of the muezzin’s call echoing off the paving stones as the dawn breaks over the thousand minarets of the city. By noon it is crawling with snakes and their charmers, blowing magical notes from their flutes, and trying to con apprehensive tourists out of a few dirham by draping serpents over their shoulders for a photo. And when the sun sets, the entire square transforms into a bustling expanse of pop-up food stalls. The whole population seemingly descends on this chaos of smoke and sound and smells you have never smelled before.

The food was great, the mint tea was cavity-inducing-sweet, and the scene could have come right out of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. After all the things we’d seen so far, after all the miles we’d put on the road, this was the essence of Morocco we’d been searching for.

Of course, there is more to Marrakech than just the Jemaa al-Fnaa: the souk for one, which we spent the better part of a day exploring, but truly you could get lost in there for a week if you weren’t on a schedule. We also jumped into a jolly carriage and got trotted around town for an hour or so, seeing the medina walls and some back alleys we probably wouldn’t have found on our own. A tour of the botanical gardens was interesting, if you appreciated cacti, and we also ran across a man weaving delicate scarves on a loom that was probably older than America. And our hotel, Riad Limouna, with a peaceful inner courtyard complete with plunge pool, and a rooftop patio with a perfect view of the old city’s rooftops, was definitely something to write home about. To cap it all off, we got to do all this as a proper touring group, as we had finally met up with the better two-fifths of our expedition, our London based, dear friends, Jake and Jackie.

Apologies for the photobomb, I found Marrakech to be quite the photogenic city…

*Note: Photos with a “JR” suffix are credited to J^2

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