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Monday 8 September, walking through the Medina
Marrakech - part II
Elisabeth & Teije2006-07-19 18:51:23
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Breakfast is until 10, so we can sleep late and we feel much better than last night. The first thing we do is contact the airport and we are relieved to hear that our luggage has arrived. But we are not in a hurry and we eat our breakfast on the patio of the hotel, next to the small swimming pool. This patio lies all day in the shade, but we can feel it will be a hot day.
Then we take a cab to the airport and Elisabeth still doesn't like the traffic here. We have to wait quite some time before anyone shows up at the lost luggage office, no matter what we do (asking people, telephoning). But eventually we get our bag and that feels quite good, to have our own things with us.
Our hotel is located in Gueliz, a modern neighbourhood of Marrakech and near the main street of Marrakech, Boulevard Mohammed V. We start walking along this road in the direction of the old centre. Most buildings are fairly modern, but we are quite surprised to see an American fastfood restaurant, although the building has been adapted to the style of the country.
There are mosques everywhere with their accompanying minarets and we also see a lot of carriages (called caleches) to drive tourists through the city. It strikes me that the coachmen are much less obtrusive than 13 years ago, when I lived and worked in Morocco for half a year. Tourists were bothered in an aggressive way, but new policies from the police and the city council have changed that.
At Bab Nkob, one of the 20 gates in the almost 17 kilometers long city wall, we enter the Medina, the old centre. On the streets we see all kinds of transportation: bicycles, handcarts, donkey carts, carriages, taxi's, scooters, cars and tourist coaches, all in a jumble. This morning we walk since Elisabeth still has to recover from the taxi drives last night and this morning.
There are many parks in the city and a lot of trees, especially palmtrees which Elisabeth is so fond of. Marrakech
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See photographs from:
Morocco Gallery
