Marrakech’s Medina

Tuesday, December 3

Sam:

We didn’t do much this morning because our flight to Marrakech was in the afternoon. Before we got on the plane we had a quick dinner of Burger King and got on the plane. It was packed and squishy, but we managed to get the suitcases into the compartment.

We arrived in the evening and went through customs easily enough. We also got a bit of the local currency called Dirham. A euro is about ten dirham and a euro is about one and a half Canadian dollars. Mom and Dad had read that you can get free SIM cards in the airport, so they got two 10GB SIM cards for one hundred dirhams, or about fifteen dollars.

Trying to find our taxi was really fun. You have to book a taxi beforehand and then you have to look around for the one person holding a sign with either your name or the company’s name written on it.

When we finally found it, we were taken to our AirBnB where a nice concierge showed us around.

Charlotte:

Then we researched a place to eat. Dad and Mom decided on a restaurant called Cafe Kif-kif. Then, because in Africa they did not have Cabify or Uber, Dad installed a new taxi app called Roby.

We got to Cafe Kif-kif, and it was really different to any restaurant I’ve been to before. The building seemed really old fashioned. The cafe smelled so good, and there were 3 floors! We sat at the very top, and the top floor was open air.

We ordered different Moroccan foods to share. We tried kefta with eggs (little beef meatballs in a spiced tomato sauce with eggs poached on top), chicken couscous, chicken pastilla (a kind of pie with crispy pastry around the whole filling and icing sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top). For dessert, we shared Nutella pastilla (like a Nutella crepe) and cinnamon orange salad. Everything was so delicious! We all love Moroccan food.

Then we just walked home instead of taking a cab. All the buildings look very different from buildings in Canada or Europe.

Wednesday, December 4

Sam:

This morning we got to go on a walking tour of the Medina. We first walked to the meeting point where the guide would meet us. We got there a bit late, but he waited for us. His name was Zaim, and he was very religious. He didn’t shake my mom’s hand because of his religion.

We walked across the street to the big mosque where he told us all about his religion (he is Muslim) and the Koutoubia mosque.

Them, we walked around the little streets winding around the main square (Jemaa el-Fnaa) for a while, dodging all of the humans, vehicles, cats, and bikes. We don’t have too many pictures because in Marrakech the people don’t want you to take pictures of them or their shops/animals unless you pay them.

We saw tons of little shops called “souks” filled with leather products, rugs, souvenirs, and more. We then walked back to the main square to end the tour.

Charlotte:

We were going to get some juice from one of the many fresh juice stands, but as we started going near them, there with three booths in a row and all the sellers started yelling at us trying to make us go to their shop to buy their juice. It was really over the top! They were pretty aggressive, so we just decided not to have any juice.

A Berber woman approached us and asked if I wanted to have henna. Mom asked how much it would cost. The lady kept saying, “She’s so little. Pay what your want.”

We were told people would try to give stuff to us kids and not to take anything, but the lady just grabbed my hand and started drawing a design on it. I was worried that I should pull my hand away, but Mom said that it was okay.

It only took the lady less than two minutes to draw a pretty flower design all over my hand. Then my dad tried to give her 20 dirhams. She told us we needed to pay 200! Dad reminded her that she said pay what you want and she argued a lot. They were haggling back and forth and Dad finally got her to take the 20 dirhams.

A few minutes later, my hand was feeling really tingly and I didn’t like it. Mom took me to wash the henna off. We found out that most of the ‘henna’ used by street sellers isn’t pure and many people have skin reactions to it. Because I had to wash it off so quickly, the design is really light.

We went to have some lunch and there were lots of street sellers that were coming up to us in the restaurant and asking if we wanted to buy things. One funny thing was that we were eating and someone thought that we would want to buy socks! Also there were some people playing music. They wanted some tips, but we didn’t have any small coins yet.

Then we went to Cyberpark because we knew that we they had a washroom and because we heard that it was a nice park. We had to walk very far to get to the toilets, but there were many cool plants along the way. Like most of the Moroccan washrooms we had visited so far, there was no toilet paper. Most places had toilet paper for sale outside of the cubicles! Luckily, Mom keeps tissues in her purse!

We went back to our AirBnB and waited until 8:30 for our nice host, Hosni, to come and bring us dinner. He insisted on treating us to an authentic Moroccan meal because our Internet didn’t work yesterday!

Hosni and his mother brought us the most delicious kefta meal cooked in a large tagine. He included a yummy carrot and corn salad and bread. We ate it all up, it was so good! We also got to chat with Hosni for awhile, even though he wasn’t able to stay and eat with us. We all really liked him – he was very friendly. It is always nice when we get to meet our hosts.

Thursday December 5

Sam:

We had some breakfast at the apartment, then decided to go to a place called Jardin Majorelle or the Yves St Laurent gardens. We took a ton of pictures of the many cool things inside, like a big koi pond, tons of weird cacti, and some cool pavilions. We then got a large taxi to the Medina to try to find some food.

Charlotte:

Then we went to have a late lunch at a place in the market called La Cantine des Gazelles. We sat outside. Sam and I had an omelette with cheese. I loved the omelette but it wasn’t Sam’s favourite. Mom had zucchini cream soup and an eggplant dish and Dad had an avocado salad and beef tagine.

Then we walked back through the market again. We walked to the supermarket to get drinks and snacks for the next few days and went home. We packed for our excursion into the desert tomorrow and then went to sleep.