Mustapha, Mohammed and me – Mad Mods in Marrakech - Day 3

[BONZO]

Friday 20th November

Cast:
Me (Shaun) - Mad Mod number 1
DW (Alison) - Mad Mod number 2

I had a lovely night’s sleep and woke up to find that Alison was nowhere to be found. Maybe rubbing that old oil lamp had paid off after all! – LOL

Apparently she’d given up and gone to sit in the lounge area after being woken by the call to prayer and then a cockerel crowing for about 2 hours!

After getting dressed, we took breakfast on the rooftop terrace as before and had an equally delicious relaxing breakfast. There were a few differences today – pistachio yoghurt and pain au chocolat. We talked about options for the day and the various Hammam spa options available. We made our choice and asked Kate if she’d kind enough to make the booking for us which she did. We couldn't get in today so had appointments for tomorrow.

This morning we decided to go and visit the El Badi palace as we’d got to grips with walking about the area by now.

en.wikipedia/wiki/El_Badi_Palace

We weren’t sure if the place was going to be open or not as the guidebooks had conflicting information as being Friday was a holy day. We decided to go anyway and take a chance and luckily for us it was business as usual.

We paid our 10Dhr (about 75p!) entrance fee and went for a look around. The place was mainly in ruins but gave you a good idea of the scale and impressiveness of what the place would have looked like in its heyday.













I have to mention that here, as in many places, the toilets are mixed sex rather than separate ladies and mens and are attended by ladies and were clean enough to eat food off! Absolutely spotlessly clean, really impressive.

Our next stop was meant to be the Bahia Palace which was nearby. I set the HERE app and off we went but only to be confounded by mosque turning out after prayers. We were trying to swim against a tide of humanity not really knowing if we were heading in the right direction or not.

A local chap approached us and asked if he could help us find our way so we started to follow him down the nearby back alleyways. It just didn’t feel right to me somehow and I thought that we were just going to end up in yet another bloody carpet shop. I pulled up sharp and thought “I’m not falling for that old chestnut again” so thanked the guy and re-traced our steps.

We decided to call it quits and head back home whilst being drawn back to the market at Jemmaa el Fna for some lunch.

We pulled into a very small café (Yamy’s) right on the square for a drink and 2 Panini’s and chips, followed by nutella crepes - how the other half live eh?



Service was good and very cheap price, especially for being right on the market square. We ate and drank and watched the world go by only interrupted by the occasional street sellers wandering in but not hassling any further than offering up their goods.



Afterwards we pulled into a nearby tourist shop and bought a couple of very small items like fridge magnets and key rings as small mementos of our trip.

We returned back to our room to relax for a bit but only to find a large Italian family had arrived and the peace and quiet of the previous afternoon was shattered. Not that they were being especially noisy it was just that the previous day was noticeably quieter.

All nicely relaxed from our morning we decided to have Thai tonight and walked out to the Hivernage district to the Mai Thai restaurant.

tripadvisor/Restaur...uz_Region.html

This district has a very different look and feel with a lot of high end hotels and extremely quiet. It looks like a few restaurants were opening up to cash in on the well healed residents of the local hotels.

We entered the restaurant and were asked if we had a reservation to which we said no. The maître di looked at the reservation book and ushered us in. We had the restaurant to ourselves!



We ordered up a Mai Thai cocktail each whilst we looked over the menu, obviously no spirit measures used here!

We ordered and ate our food which was absolutely delicious!
We started with chicken satay and crab cakes





Then moved on to a spicy beef dish whose name escapes me


And green thai chicken curry



Both served with jasmine rice and absolutely delicious!

Total cost 780 Dhs (about £44)
We left the restaurant after finishing our meal and the evening temperature was lovely and strolled back to the hotel Les Jardins de La Koutoubia. We felt quite at home on this, our second visit, and ordered a couple of drinks and waited for some people to finish playing pool so that we could take over.





Another lovely day. We had really started to relax now - the first day or so was a big culture shock, but now we had adjusted a bit we were really enjoying ourselves!

[Dissie]

Great report. Marrakech looks amazing.

[Astrid]

Your meal looks delicious - yum!