Explore Morocco: Day Two in Marrakech

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Day Two in Marrakech

On our second day in Marrakech, Ryan and I toured the Jardin Majorelle. This is Marrakech’s number one tourist attraction. I hadn’t heard of it before, which isn’t surprising since it only opened in 2011, after Yves St Laurent died in 2008 (and we visited in 2001). We walked through the medina and arrived around 1:30 pm, to see an enormous line! Not wanting to have made the trip out for nothing, we resolved to wait in line. After an hour, we were in!

The gardens are obviously green, but they were also so cool and calm. There was a large bamboo grove, ponds, several cactus gardens, and the studio, now housing the Berber Museum, painted in Majorelle Blue. We went to the museum and saw Berber clothes, instruments, and jewellery. To rest our feet, we sat in the shade of the gardens, relaxing and watching. Even though there was such a big line to get in, the gardens themselves weren’t too busy. Jardin Majorelle housed a cafe (which we skipped; I didn’t want to pay tourist prices), a bookstore that tempted me with a beautiful cookbook, and a boutique (which we also skipped). By now it was around 4:30 pm, so we left in search of food.

 

Once back in the medina, we found a little restaurant where I ate couscous with vegetables and beef. The vegetables were what we had seen in the market outside our AirBnB, namely carrots, eggplant, marrow, and turnip. Ryan had the lamb tagine with prunes. Both were deliciously tasty, and so affordable!

After a brief rest, we wandered through the souks to Bob’s Music, where Ryan spent an hour tapping drums, blowing into Moroccan flutes, and twanging basses made out of animal hide. In the end, I helped him bargain for a drum made of fish leather.

We got some eggs from the market outside our AirBnB for our breakfast the next day.

Afterwards, we made our way to the Place Jemaa el Fna again. It was around 6 pm and the food stalls had set up in earnest. The vendors were quite persistent, telling us “It’s all the same, but we guarantee no diarrhea!” Stalls cooked up giant pots of snail soup, sheep heads, fried fish, and barbecue skewers. I was grabbed by a pregnant woman who started drawing henna on my right hand. She kept drawing, writing both Ryan and my names as well. She of course said the price was, “Pay what you want” but then kept demanding more. The henna design wasn’t that good, but I guess that’s why she ambushed me. However, now that my name was written on my hand in Arabic, all the other vendors started calling my name too!

Ryan and I decided not to eat anything, and headed back into the souks, where the vendors were less pushy. I found and bargained for a “honey-coloured” lamb leather tote bag for work. I say “honey-coloured” because it’s a rich, warm reddish-brown colour, which so happens to be the colour of the Moroccan honey. We then slowly wandered back towards our AirBnB, stopping for dinner on an outdoor terrace by a mosque. Ryan had the amazing pigeon bastilla, and I had the mild Berber tagine with lamb. Thinking about breakfast the next day, we bought some food from the little bodegas on the walk home, including flatbread, cheese, yogurt, milk, and cooking oil. We also purchased some oranges and bananas from a man using an old-fashioned balance scale and a set of weights.