Fountains & Geometric Designs In Marrakesh

Okay, so there are a lot of cool photos (probably too many for one post), but I also left out a lot!

Very old grave

More graves from pre-Islamic times

Man at Work

Yes, that is a Star of David.  

This used to be a synagogue.

Second floor of an alley.

Arabic writing: If you have your health

you have everything you need.

It May Be Touristy, But It's Fun!

Our first dinner in Morocco was at Dar Yacout, a place recommended by our friends John and Lisa, who had been there less than two years prior.  

Some info I consulted on restaurants in Marrakesh referred to the restaurant as a favorite with tourists, in a slightly condescending way, but we loved it.  The trip to the restaurant was worth it alone, as we zipped through the narrow, winding streets of the casbah, dodging cars and trucks and motorscooters and pedestrians as though we had entered a wildly perverse game of frogger.

I will save my observations about the craziness that is traveling on the roads in Marrakesh for another post (today we go to the Atlas mountains, so it will be interesting to see if there is road sanity outside of the city.  Color me skeptical.).  Carol and I are pleasantly surprised, however, how clean and beautiful the city is.  As she noted, I guess we were expecting some Arabic version of Yangon, but instead we got Phoenix with crazy drivers.

Anyhow, the outside of Dar Yacout is not much to look at, but the inside is a beautiful, huge house (palace?  riad?).  We were ushered up a beautiful circular staircase, into a  dark room of people, candles, tables, fountains, music, and promptly sat down for a drink.  It was my first Moroccan beer -- aptly named "Casablanca."  Carol had a gin and tonic.  Many Muslims might not drink, but they are sure happy to sell it to you.

Rose petals in a fountain

My bride, and our couch for a pre-dinner drink.

Dinner and music.

Columns and huge candlesticks

are everywhere in the restaurant.

A decorative piece.

An unusual looking light.

Once we were led to our table, waiters kept appearing, bringing food, and Moroccan wine.   You start with almonds and olives.  Then, the first course is the salad, which is like nothing we've ever seen before.  Instead of bring you a salad, they bring many plates, each with its' own individual vegetable, with some vegetables prepared different ways on different plates.  There were diced olives, eggplant, carrots, tomatoes, and more.  I'm pretty sure, even with the picture, there is no way I could remember it all!  There are a couple of phyllo pastries stuff with meat.  Then there is the Moroccan flatbread as well.

Our Moroccan salad -- ten plates of fresh

variety.  Mostly vegetables.  All good.

Next came the chicken dish, cooked with lemon and olives.  Nice and most, it fell off to the touch.  The main course was lamb tajine, which is brought out in a large tajine, and then ceremoniously dished out at your table.

Chicken, lemon, olives

The food reveal

Looking at the waiter gives

you a sense of the size of the

serving tajine.

With lamb as the main meat dish in

Morocco, we will be very happy here.

The Moroccan wine was pretty good.  I'm not sure I would drink it on a regular basis, but in Marrakesh, with the food and everything else, it was perfect for the night!

This is the masonry work of the circular

staircase.  This wall is hundreds of

years old.

By the end, we were quite tired, returned to the hotel, and promptly fell asleep, dreaming of geometric shapes, palm trees, ten plate salads, and lamb!

A Quiet First Afternoon

After being dropped off and checked into the hotel, we had a few hours to wander the hotel and its extensive gardens.  We also had a bottle of champagne and some snacks to greet us.  The hotel, the Mamounia, is pretty incredible -- one of the nicest hotels we've ever stayed in.  The management nicely upgraded us to a suite.

And, it's an old school Moroccan suite -- a half bath and walk in closet off the interior hallway, which leads to a beautiful sitting room, and then a massive bedroom.  The Islamic preference for arches is seen in the entries to each of the rooms.  Also important is the two balconies for our enjoyment.

The bedroom.  Note the ornate tile work

on the bottom quarter of the wall.

Ah yes, before I forget, I must make a note of the beautiful new airport.  From the inside the ceilings are high, and from the outside the design is spectacular, swooping, bending, and soaring.  The photos won't do it full justice, as I was hurrying to both take the pictures and get in our vehicle.

So the design of the airport is very impressive.

The photos do not do it justice.

Eager to stretch our legs after the Dulles to Frankfurt to Marrakesh,* we walked around the 8 acre garden of the hotel, before returning to our room for one glass each from the complimentary bottle of champagne.  We sat on our third floor balcony overlooking the huge hotel pool (it's heated, but we did not realize that, so we did not bring swim suits) and managed to finish the champagne and some snacks, including huge strawberries, they had left for us.


The view is full of palm trees, flowering bushes, and much more greenery than we expected.  Marrakesh (I'm using the English spelling here, primarily so I don't come off as Mr. Tourist Language Snob by insisting on the French "Marrakech) and surrounding environs are much more green than we expected (no, it's NOT the royal "we" -- this "we" reflects Carol's thoughts too. But now, because you assume Glen Bolger was writing about himself as the royal we, Glen Bolger is going to have to refer to himself in the third person at times in the blog).

One of the interior doors in our room.

Beauty from the room

The view from our room, including

the pool and much of the gardens.

(Apparently the snacks is a daily thing here -- yesterday, our first full day, we returned to a welcome of fresh plums.  Readers: You sure have a lot of parentheticals.  Writer: We do.)

We talked of travel, Morocco, and other news while watching the sun go down, reflected on the Atlas Mountains off in the distance.  We could even see snow on the mountains.

Moroccing The Casbah

And so we landed in Marrakech after flying through snowy Frankfurt, Germany.* I'm not sure Morocco was ever on our travel list, but with us wanting to spend some time in a new country prior to visiting Torie in Spain, Morocco beat out Portugal.

Several friends (faithful readers of the blog), including Kate R, John P, and Lisa G strongly recommended Morocco.  Kate's point is that Portugal is a lot like Spain, while Morocco is very, very different.

Carol was very nervous about going to an Arabic-speaking country on our own, so we had arranged for drivers/guides/and a nice hotel.  And that's how we ended up in an airport lounge in Marrakech with a Christmas tree in the closet.  Since it is March and not December, the artificial Christmas tree being in a closet and not out was not surprising.  Since it is Morocco, the fact that there is an artificial Christmas tree at all IS very surprising.  It's a mystery that we will not know the answer to.

Merry Christmas from Marrakesh!

Being an Islamic country, the other thing you notice right away is the predominance of geometric designs.  Those designs are not just in the mosques, but all throughout the public spaces.  We've been here a day and a half, and I've already taken more than 500 pictures, many of which focus on said geometric designs.

Typical geometric design.  This was in the airport

lounge in Marrakesh.  A sign of things to be seen.

There were long lines at passport control.  We were zipped through a special line that had exactly zero people in front of us.  The Moroccan passport control man tried to make small talk welcoming us to his country in English, so we made small talk back.  Our bags were already on the carousel, so it was a very painless entry.

* We have traversed Europe, and now Northern Africa many times by flying through Frankfurt or Munich.  And yet, we still do not claim Germany as a visited country, as we have never set foot outside of the airport.  Torie has plans to visit Berlin on her second spring break, which would make her the first of our family to really be there.