After 12 hours of flying we finally arrived in the hot dusty city of Marrakech. Upon exiting the oddly empty Menara airport we were pounced upon by taxi drivers. I quickly heard that about 5 of maybe the12 drivers were named Mustafa, maybe I misnamed the blog. Our driver drove like a madman whose wife was about to give birth in the backseat, we swirved into oncoming traffic and around bikes and donkeys at breakneck speed. In the end we arrived safely at the edge of the Medina of Marrakech.
Jordana and I do not do reservations, this is a great way to travel but also a bit tough in a large, hot and dusty city. The streets of the medina are very narrow, so the taxis let you out on the edge of the old town. We wandered around looking for a hotel sweating like a fat kid in a bunny suit, kinda like the one I wore on the Halloween of 84. We were followed by touts who yelled come look my friend, to look is free. The thing with hotel touts is that when they follow you into a hotel they also get commission, which means that you end up paying that commission. Hence you try to avoid all touts. This leads to you turning into a rude guy who ignores everyone on the street who tries to speak with you.
As it so often works out just when things are looking like they cant get any worse we stumbled upon a fantastic little hotel, Riad Hamza. A riad is an old restored house and is huge. This riad is 4 floors with a centre courtyard open to above with a water fountain and a small seating area. The tile work is beautiful and we have breakfast on the roof top terrace.
We showered up and headed out to check out the town. Strolling through the Djeema el fna which is an assault on all your senses. The djeema is a huge square filled with snake charmers, monkeys dancing, story tellers, fresh orange juice and best of all an array of food stalls. It was here we enjoyed a fabulous dinner of calamari, aubergines, olives and bread. After dinner we were pretty wiped out having not slept in over 24 hours, so we headed to a quiet cafe. We ended the night people watching, while sipping fresh mint tea and eating sweets which Jordana insisted upon.
