Life in the Old City

We left our hotel for a market outside of Marrakech today. The drive took us towards the Atlas Mountains, and we could see their snow capped peaks. I am amazed at how nice the streets are. There are NO potholes. Everything is clean and neat. There is a tremendous amount of new construction going on everywhere. It appears that most of the visitors are French, it is spoken everywhere. This is the new Morocco and Marrakech. But in the afternoon we would experience the old city.

The market has all sorts of goods brought by mule from the various tribes who live in the mountain. There are two mule (or donkey) parking lots, housing many more mules than autos. I am sure this is how it was 1000 years ago. The contrast with modern Morocco is amazing.

We returned to the city and after lunch took a long walk thru the Medina. The Medina is the Old Town. It is narrow streets only fit for walking and motorbikes. Nothing has changed here. No neon, nothing new. This is exactly what we expected to experience, being transported 1000 years back in time. We peaked in on a Koranic kindergarten where the children learn the Koran. Today was Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, but this being Morocco, where they like to cater to European guests, everything continued to be open, except during the call to prayer, when some shops would close and the people would go to the Mosque.

We visited a new museum dedicated to the Caftans that so many of the men and women wear. In Marrakech the men wear a real neat looking Caftan with a hood. It looks like thousands of monks are walking around the city, but it is their normal wear. This is apparently the only city where the men wear hooded Caftans.

There are a lot of Rug stores in Marrakech. We are definitely rugged out. We had been warned that one is constantly being hassled by people trying to sell you goods, but we haven’t experienced a lot of this annoying behavior, perhaps because we are with a group.

We visited an expatriate jeweler who has lived all over the mid-east and now has a shop in Marrakech. Unfortunately Cathy bought earrings, opening up a whole new world of costume purchases for her, because up to now she hasn’t worn them. Oye!

Dinner was at a French Restaurant then we returned to pack for an overnight to the ancient Roman city of Essaquira located on the Atlantic.

I am constantly amazed at how different it is to be in a Muslim country, the veil, the call to prayers, the men in Caftans, wearing white skull caps representing that they have been on a Hajj to Mecca, all of these feel normal here as they should, and not the least bit threatening.

We expect the rest of our Moroccan experience to be far different from what we are experiencing in Marrakech. Hopefully the one similarity is they all have Internet. If they don’t, I will relate our experiences when I get back to a wired environment.