Marrakesh Part 3 (Last One I Swear)

Location: Marrakesh, Morocco

This will be my last post on Marrakesh; a long time coming considering all that's left is a couple sites and some funny stories.

First up is a discussion on the food. I came in with no real expectations (I'm not even sure if I'd ever eaten Moroccan food before). I was pleasantly surprised by the assortment of rices, vegetables, and meats in almost every dish. I normally shied away from the fruits because they were uncooked and contained only god-knows-what pesticides on them.

We took a restaurant recommendation from my friend's guidebook for lunch. I ordered the most typical Moroccan dish called Tangine. It consists of a lower and upper base with the lower being a slow-cooked stew with meat and spices, and the upper with propped-up potatoes and other vegetables. The price was phenomenally cheap as well; I don't remember exactly but the dish below along with bread couldn't have cost more than a few dollars.
We enjoyed the food and service so much that we came back for lunch our other two days in town. Here's a picture of another day's lunch.

Now energized with full stomachs, our first stop of the day was the El Badi Palace. Originally built in the late 1500s, nowadays it's unfortunately ruins after being raided to build other palaces. But much of the overall structure survives and includes a main square with large sunken gardens, as well as underground dungeons. Plus one can wander uninhibited inside and it's a fun place to explore.

Here's a shot from one of the raised ramparts looking into the main square. Similar to the Roman Coliseum, one can tell this would have been quite a site in its heyday while adorned with imported Italian marble.
And a look down one of the underground dungeons. Would have been a fun place to play hide and seek. Unfortunately there were no children to scare either.

Our other stop was the Majorelle Gardens - a 12 acre botanical garden created in the 1920s now owned by a fashion designer named Yves Saint Laurent (admittedly I've never heard of them but that doesn't surprise me).

Visiting here was a really weird experience. It's located in a run-down part of town but once you enter the high walls and front gates it's really nice and even a little chic (probably due to its owner). And I'm certain this contained more green than I saw for the entire rest of the country combined, so to me this doesn't really "feel" like Morocco.

One fun thing we did before leaving is take pictures with some of the various wildlife in the main square (called the Djemaa el Fna from my first post). Of course I went right for the snake charmers - men enchanting cobras with their flute playing skills. One guy would play while the other took pictures with your camera in front of the snake. Pretty cool stuff to see up close.
While I had a blast with the snakes, it turns out my friend had a serious fear of them and could in no way be enticed to get anywhere near them. But he was a lot more excited about the monkey handlers, so we walked over to one. Basically a trainer has a monkey on a leash and it does tricks (somersaults, flips, etc) and then jumps over so the payer can handle him.

This particular one had apparently been trained for some more dubious activities, for it had barely landed in my friend's arms when it started to pull at his watch. Fortunately it was a cheap one securely held by a velcro strap, but the two of us watching this monkey exhaustively pull at it with both its hands was pretty funny.

After it gave up on the watch it climbed his head, where it proceeded to pull his sunglasses right off his face and toss them to his master. I actually managed to get a picture of our not-so-subtle thief in action, which is one of my favorites from the trip. Hilarious stuff.

Later that night, we returned back to the main square to have dinner in the tents set up nightly by the food vendors. The smell of slowly cooked beefs of all kinds filled the air, and it was intoxicating. We finally found a place with a reasonably priced menu and a cook who didn't look entirely shady and dug in. Again, big portions and great food.

But the food wasn't the interesting part of the story. Towards the end of our meal our waiter dropped of a plate of plain looking sugar cookies, which we turned down. He repeated several times "free, free" and left them on the table. Despite my hesitation and warnings, my friend wound up eating a couple of them.

When the bill came, our amount was far more (something like double) than what we'd ordered. So I asked the greeter who seemed to be in charge to come over, and he explained the extra amount was for the cookies we ate for dessert. I explained that the waiter told us multiple times they were free, and there was no way a couple cheap cookies were worth the same as both our entrees. He replied "not free, you pay" several times and our waiter was suddenly nowhere to be seen.

This is likely one of the maddest times I've been in my life, both for feeling cheated and walking into it while suspecting it beforehand. It escalated until I was shouting at him, then at the owner who walked over after hearing the commotion. Tensions were high.

I made it clear I had no intention of getting ripped off, accused them of being thieves, and threatened to call for a policeman if they tried to stop us from leaving. My friend, likely having more sense than I did, decided this risky outcome was not worth a few dollars and paid the full amount while I was arguing. Probably a wise choice in hindsight, but man was I pissed at the time.

And on that happy note, that's the end of the Marrakesh travels. Next stop, the Sahara desert!