On Our Own in the Souks of Marrakesh and the Jemaa el-Fna
Free at last!
We are as giddy as children let out of school as the groups head left and we head right, going deeper into our favorite territory, the souks (small shops) in the great city of Marrakesh.
Before we ever went to Marrakesh, many years ago, we read a book by Elizabeth Warnock Fernea, author of Guests of the Sheikh, called A Street in Marrakesh, talking about how her family lived in the center of Marrakesh, among Moroccans, and the adjustments they made as they grew to learn more about their environment. You know how you can read a book and feel like you had lived it? We felt we had lived in Marrakesh.
When we visited with our son, we had a car and were driving all through Morocco. We had left Ouazazarte and driven over the Atlas Mountains, stopping here and there to buy fossils and “thunderballs” which are also called geodes. It was late, and dark when we got to Marrakesh, and we had to stop and ask directions at a gas station how to find our hotel. We knew we were near, and we didn’t know how to close the distance. This was before smart phones and Google Maps.
Our son and I watched AdventureMan from the car, and as we watched him ask the two men working there, one pointed left and one pointed right. We were dying laughing. And, actually, both were right, there was an obstacle between us and the hotel and you could go right – or you could go left. At that moment, a motorcycle drove up, listened to the question and offered to guide us to our hotel. This is the essence of Morocco to us; the kindness and the hospitality of the Moroccans.
I wish I could remember the name of the hotel, but our room was huge, and full of tile work. Our son had his own area, on a separate level in the same room, and his own TV. It was a far cry from a sterile, modern hotel; this was full of color and detail, tile and wood work.
The next day, we hired a private guide for a tour of Marrakesh, and had a wonderful time exploring all kinds of wonderful places.
So now, off we go, and the smells and the feel of the souks almost make us giddy; we are back in our element.
As we wander, we can hear roosters crowing, and, in the middle of the souks, we find a souk devoted to roosters. It is the middle of the afternoon, a quiet time of day, perfect for wandering.
Me and my attraction to light fixtures 🙂
A mural of the Koutoubia mosque; one of the reasons we felt so secure in this souk is that if you get lost, you just look for the highest tower around, and that is the Koutoubia mosque, which takes you to Jemaa el-Fna.
We walked to our content, and then settled in at late afternoon to a cafe with a terrace high over the Jemaa el-Fna, where we had our choice of tables and could watch the market come to life. As we sipped our mint tea, the other tables filled; Moroccan families, tourist couples, assorted characters. The day is gorgeous, we have a shaded location, life is sweet. We’ve soaked in the sights and the smells. We’ve done more than our 10,000 steps. We enjoyed this afternoon immensely.
Dining in the Dar Es Salaam, Marrakech
We have driven a couple hours to get from Casablanca to Marrakech, and the bus lets us off just a short walk from the restaurant, the Dar Es Salaam. I don’t believe this restaurant is open to the public; I believe this restaurant is a dedicated group-tours service restaurant.
I admire what they do. They have a lovely venue, it looks like it might have been one of the grand old homes in the city, or even an old mosque. It has elaborate decorations, and lovely spaces. Whatever it was at one time, it has been gutted, and turned into a restaurant that can seat and feed many many people in a very short amount of time.
Those are not leftover bread crumbs on the table, they are rose petals to welcome groups.
Tables were marked with signs indicating Smithsonian and/or Purple, and as soon as eight people were seated around a table, service began, first hot towels, then water and small appetizers/mezze. They were pretty good. Most were not heavily spiced.
Appetizers were some kind of lentils, a beet salad, a mashed potato and pea combination, something maybe with a little lamb, and olives. The olives were delicious.
They served a huge tajine with some kind of beef dish. It was well cooked, like beef and carrots, with little or no spices that I could detect. Nourishing. Filling.
The venue is spectacular. It is truly a fabulous environment in which to take a meal. The catering service has paid attention to detail, with rose petals on the table, good settings, enough water, good sweets at the end of the meal and hot mint tea poured with a flourish. The restrooms were clean and there were several. I admire the way they can serve so many people so quickly, get-them-in, get-them-out and give them a meal in which there is little to object to . . . unless you’ve had Moroccan cooking before, and like a little taste in your food. We like taste in our food.
We’ve been married and traveling together for so long now that we know we aren’t going to be able to stay with the group. We love Marrakech; we’ve been here before. The last time was with our son, about fifteen years ago, but not a lot has changed. Our group leader looks a little worried, until we explain that we know the city, we speak Arabic and French, we know the customs, and we can find our way to the hotel on our own when we are finished. We walk – we almost run – away before anyone else knows we are gone.
Underway on the Guadalquivir
Before we even get underway, we hear the big engines start to rumble. AdventureMan wants to sleep a little longer, but I am exited and want to watch us cast off and head down the Quadalquivir, which is Spanish for the Arabic Wadi El Kebir, or big waterway. Or valley. I always think of wadis as dry, a place to potty under the bridge when you live in a country with few public conveniences, but the Guadalquivir is big, and deep, as wide as the Neckar River when we lived in Heidelberg.
The sun is coming up as we depart:
Most of what we pass is countryside, low and fertile.
Now and then we encounter another boat.
We meet and chat with other passengers as we watch the countryside go by. Soon, there is a lecture (none are mandatory, but all are interesting) about the context of the voyage, which is called Passage of the Moors. We get a lot of information from different lecturers, some of it repetitive, which is good, because when you hear it more than once, it might stick. There are lectures for the whole boat, and lectures for separate groups, and as we are in a gathering of the Smithsonian group, we pass Cadiz, en route for Casablanca. My heart grieves; I had dearly wanted to see Cadiz, but instead we had the wonderful day seeing Seville on our own, hopping on and off the bus and visiting the two museums.
This is an oddity. This is a small ship, and does educational trips, but educational trips for grown-ups. There is not one single child on board the ship, nor are there things for a child to do. There is a swimming pool, but it is outside, and unfilled; the weather is probably too cool. There is a spa, and there are lounges and a library, there is a lot to do – if you are an adult. (You can find the ship by Googling Voyages to Antiquity)
I skip the afternoon lecture to sit out on our balcony, which is large, and has beautiful wood fixtures, deck chairs, and a nice table. I read, I watch the waves go by, and wish I had a fishing pole. We are on the sunset side of the ship, so I get to take a photo of the sunset over the Mediterranean Sea.
And the next morning, we enter Casablanca!
We dock, and for a while watch other ships come in, watch dock life in Casablanca, and pack for our day and overnight in one of our favorite cities in the world, Marrakech. The ship we are watching coming in is a sister ship to the ship that went aground in Italy not too long ago, a much bigger ship than we are on.
Our entry visa into Morocco:
Seville’s Folklorique Museum
Just across a large plaze is another wonderful museum, one I could happily spend many days in. Once again, they waved us through, they would not take our money. There were several exhibits showing us how things came about, how they developed wheat grinding, for example, how fabrics were woven, all with tableaux and short videos. We watched one very long video about a church that carries the Saint or Madonna around the town on a special cart once a year, and celebrates with a festival.
My favorite part of this museum is one whole wing devoted to textiles, embroidery and gossamer shawls, that remind me so much of the ancient, transparent “shayla” the elderly women used to wear as veils in old Qatar and old Kuwait. Nothing like the black opaque headscarves and face coverings of today; these were light and airy and as fragile as a spider’s web. I have one I treasure, but I keep it wrapped in a box because it can tear so easily. Here is a whole wing of a museum with glorious examples of exquisite handiwork of this nature.
Hand embroidered cut-work:
Hand worked lace and cut-work on fine linen:
Decorative tools and utensils:
The Folklorique Museum and tile patterns done in stone and mosaic:
Gossamer lace work:
Glorious white work:
Finely woven and embroidered silk:
We would haunt the flea markets of France, and find many similar treasures in France, tossed out by people who wanted new and glossy. I bought linens of all kinds, but nothing of this quality.
We were thrilled to have this extra day to see Seville more thoroughly, and to explore these two museums. Once again, and easy 10,000 steps 🙂
Hopping off at Seville’s Museum of Archaeology
We had wanted to see this museum, and thanks to this bonus day, woo hoooooo, the Hop-On Hop-Off bus lets us off just a short walk through the park to the Museum. The Museum attendants waved us through, wouldn’t even take our money, and directed us to start down-stairs.
This museum is full of treasures, carefully curated, beautifully edited. The pieces they display give good information. We found something lovely in every room. MdventureMan often commented about how good this museum was about placing the find in a meaningful context:
I am always interested in early needles 🙂  How man figured out how to make them from tiny bones, how they got the eyes in the needles without splitting them, fascinates me.
Bonus Day in Seville and the Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus
Our dedicated tour guide, Antonio, is very dedicated and very professional, and he works very hard to keep us all happy. When we see him the next morning, and ask him when the ship will be departing, he has a perplexed look. It’s past departure time. The ship isn’t moving. An hour later, the ship isn’t moving.
Then comes an announcement; because of all the rain, the Guadalquivir River has silted up and must be quickly dredged. We will depart tomorrow.
The schedule had been to go down the river to Cadiz, and for groups to go off to visit the sherry factories in Jerez. AdventureMan and I have travelled together well for so many years because we are quick to recognize when we just don’t care. We don’t care about sherry, or how it is made (OK, OK, yes we are passing on an opportunity of a lifetime, but . . . it’s OUR lives! We know what makes us happy!) We tell Antonio we are not going to Jerez; we will spend the day in Seville.
Tour directors always look a little worried when you tell them you are going off on your own. I can imagine they have experiences that back them up, but we don’t have to take a tour just because we paid for it, and we intend to have a great day on our own. He very graciously helps us get information for the Hop-On Hop-Off bus (I had ridden the one in Barcelona and loved it) and wished us well.
We weren’t sure where we were going, but there was a tourist office nearby where they pointed us down the street and told us where we could buy the tickets. They also gave us maps of the city and the bus routes.
Hop-On, Hop-Off Bus
The bull fighting ring:
Bodega Mezquita in Cordoba, Spain
As soon as our guide finished talking, we quickly walked to the Bodega Mesquita and were greeted and seated within seconds 🙂 The menu was huge, but it also had photos to help us along. When we return to Seville from Cordoba, we are boarding our ship. We expect to stop in Cadiz, and have another opportunity for a dinner out, but eating in a country, in our experience, is a meaningful part of the whole experience, one we don’t want to miss!
They bottle their own brand of oil and vinegar:
When we got there, there were only a few people, but within minutes every seat was taken. This is the interior:
We wanted to try real Spanish gazpacho; it was really good. AdventureMan says mine is better, but I think the taste was close. I like mine, too, but I was happy to taste REAL gazpacho and to find mine was not far off. We also had a mixed salad.
Then we had a pork steak of the region. Things came one by one, there were also some meatballs, but somehow we didn’t get a photo of those.
By the time this little tuna steak arrived, we were stuffed. We had split the dishes, and thought it would be about right, but we ordered too much, and we also ran out of time. AdventureMan had to pay the bill while I used the (very clean) restroom, and we raced to try to find silver filigree jewelry in our ten minutes before the meeting up time, which was a hopeless thing to do. Oh well, I do have enough jewelry 🙂
Cordoba, The Mezquita, and Sharing Sacred Spaces
(Yes, it is Christmas Eve, and my part of the preparations are all done. AdventureMan is cooking a duck for the family dinner tonight, the Gulf Coast jumbo shrimp is all cooked and shelled and de-veined, the Rotkohl spicing up the kitchen, the salads and side dishes ready to go. 🙂  I have time, oh, the great luxury of time, to write . . . )
When we lived in Amman, we often went to Syria. I went once with an archaeological group, visiting several sites in the bleak cold of the Syrian winter. One site I didn’t see a lot of hope for, the site of St. Simon the Stylite, a hermit who sat atop a pillar and was considered holy. In truth . . . I scoffed.
I scoffed until I reached that isolated hilltop, and saw the giant pillar, and felt how very cold it was as the icy wind blew. We were there two or three hours. I had to confront my unwillingness to believe and the fact that with every zinging atom in my body, I could feel that this was a sacred place. Saint Simon chose a weird sort of sacrificial life, but in God’s eyes, I suspect it mattered. I know visiting that site changed me, and changed my ideas about sacred spaces.
Today, I get to write about a visit to another sacred space, a space you can feel resonating from the moment you enter, the Mezquita.
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It’s early breakfast for the Smithsonian group, and then we check our whisper guides and board our bus en route to Cordoba.
Traveling with a group is a novelty for us. It means using an alarm clock to be at scheduled breakfast and getting on a bus for a 2 hour drive. On our own, we wake when we wish – usually early, but not so early as with this group. We are not usually at a breakfast with a lot of people looking for food at the same time. We are not used to coffee makers that make one cup of coffee at a time while a 100 people line up for coffee. These are things that are not normal in our experience. We might find a local small store, pick up some water and some small snacks, and hit the road, stopping here and there to take a photo or just savor a view, have some water, soak in the fresh air. On the other hand, these bus drivers know where to go and there is no getting lost trying to find the right route out of town.
En route to Cordoba, most of the jet lagged Smithsonian group slept. Wide awake, I watched as acres and acres of olive groves and wind farms passed by. We saw an ancient fortification on the side of a hill that had a view to die for – 270 degrees plus of visibility.
It is raining once again as we arrive in Cordoba, but almost immediately it stops, and by the time our group has walked up the hill by the Mezquita, the sun is out and the day shows great promise. Cordoba is beautiful. Everywhere you look is some exquisite detail. Cordoba is a treat for the eyes.
Even the police are polite and helpful, directing tourists to where they need to go:
Art Nouveau bench:
Flower pots on the stucco walls:
Tourists coming up to The Mezquita:
Masques in a local art shop:
Finely wrought silver filigree jewelry:
At one point, we had a choice: Do we go shopping or do we have lunch in a highly rated local place? I bet we could do both, and we opted for lunch – more on that to come. At the end of lunch, we had only ten minutes to shop and not enough time to get back to this wonderful shop. I won’t call it a regret; lunch was a wonderful experience . . . and I do love filigree, and this artisan had beautiful silver filigree . . .
Ben Maimonaides, a Jewish scholar and ethicist, with wide influence. This was a continuing theme on the entire trip, that the interaction between Jew, Christian and Moslem in this period led to a great leap in ideas and artistry. The interaction was like pollination; science and the arts and mathematics and medicine bloomed.
I wonder if this is happening today, as Moslems, Jews and Christians study together in universities, to they interact and inspire one another? Is it possible that in spite of dire political headlines, under the radar, people are learning to cooperate and collaborate in the interest of a better world?
(Wikipedia: Aside from being revered by Jewish historians, Maimonides also figures very prominently in the history of Islamic and Arab sciences and is mentioned extensively in studies. Influenced by Avicenna (c. 980 – 1037), Averroes (1126–1198) and Al-Farabi (ca. 872–950/951), he in his turn influenced other prominent Arab and Muslim philosophers and scientists. He became a prominent philosopher and polymath in both the Jewish and Islamic worlds.
Bulls everywhere, LOL
An artistic courtyard
Love the little blue pots, and love the people who take care of them!
After our walking tour of Cordoba central, we gather in the gardens while our guide goes to pick up our tickets to take us inside the Mezquita, built as a mosque, becoming a cathedral after 1492.
Did I mention we learned two major dates on this trip: 711, when Tariq crosses into Spain (Jebal Tariq . . . Gibraltar) and 1492? Americans know 1492 as the year “Columbus sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred ninety two, but 1492 is the year that the Moslems were driven out of Spain, weeping at the loss of Andalusia, Al-Andalus.
When the Moslems were driven out of Cordoba, the huge, beautiful mosque, Al Mesquite, was not destroyed, but recycled, repurposed, space holy to one faith became holy to another. I love it that the original mosque, with its spectacular soaring arches and inspirational proportions, was recognized, and re-utilized. Holy space is holy space. We worship the same God. We saw the shrine to John the Baptist in the Grand Ummayad Mosque in Damascus; why should we not share holy spaces?
This is what you see immediately upon entering the Mezquita – a gorgeous kind of meshrabiyya covering the windows, patterning the light as it enters, keeping the harsh heat out and shrinking light in star like patterns across the floor.
The interior of this mosque/cathedral takes my breath away. It was crowded with tourists, but it just swallowed them up and maintained its sacred integrity. We could wander off and still hear our guide, thanks to this whisper-technology, where we all had headphones and our guide could broadcast. This was a place where I needed to wander off and experience it on my own, but felt some responsibility not to get too far afield from the group. I didn’t want to be a pain in the neck for the guide. And I also didn’t want to be a part of the group within this structure. It’s a problem.
Just look at these spaces:
I’ve always had a thing about light fixtures, LOL, I probably should own a lamp show except I would only stock what I like and I would have a hard time selling anything in the shop. Guess it’s just a good thing for me to admire light fixtures and not to have to manage them.
The beautiful Mihrab (points you in the direction of worship in a mosque) from the original mosque:
The Christian altar built in a structure added to the original mosque:
With a piece depicting King Ferdinand holding a globe:
As the tour ended, our tour guide warned us that we had only an hour and a half for lunch, so not to go to a restaurant, just find something quick, or shop, and BE BACK ON THE MEETING PLACE AT TWO!
We had seen a restaurant we wanted to try, so raced to it. We hate being rushed, and part of the fun of traveling is trying new kinds of food in new places!
Aladdin; Back to our Roots in Seville
We have discovered this tour group stuff isn’t so bad as long as we have time and opportunity to go off on our own, stroll the cities, find delicious places to stop and eat  . . .
But this evening is the Smithsonian gathering, where we all meet one another, and it is a lot of fun. The group is from all over the US, and is full of people about our own age who love travel and love to learn about the countries they are visiting. They have all lived such interesting and varied lives. Â There are little appetizers, mostly the famous Seville ham, sliced into transparently thin slices, and cheeses and olives. The wine if flowing freely. We all introduce ourselves, visit a little, and then it is over.
We never thought we would want to eat again, after our lovely lunch at Al Tobaso, but decide we need a little something so we won’t be awake at four in the morning, starving. Just down the street from our hotel, we see just the place. We are hungry for something light, and here is Aladdin, with it’s menu of Arabic “tapas,” so we order grape leaves, hummus, baba ghannoush and felafel. It is fresh, and delicious, and we drink it with mint tea in beautiful Moroccan tea glasses, in preparation for our departure, tomorrow, for Cadiz and the voyage to Casablanca.
We slept well!
Sunny Afternoon Stroll in Seville
(Sorry for the lengthy break; Paris terrorism, Thanksgiving, Pre-Christmas and grandparenting takes its toll 🙂  We are taking care of our grandson when he gets out of school, and 5 years olds have so much ENERGY!)
From a torrential morning, we have landed in a warm, sunny afternoon. After lunch, we stroll the avenue, spotting monuments to Ferdinand, Isabela, Columbus and a memorial on the back of the Alcazar.
The Cathedral is glorious in the sun:
And when we see the line going into the Alcazar, we are so happy we went in the morning:
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