Over the weekend, I ticked off Africa. We (being myself and the Baguette Winner) hopped on a Transavia flight from charming little Orly Airport, straight into the heat of the desert. [Side note: when picking a discount airline, always go for the one that makes you think of vampires.] We didn’t know a lot about Marrakech, so we watched a Jamie Oliver video to get familiar:
It all looked easy enough, but, when we got there, we couldn’t see any little lads running around with their mothers’ bread. Thanks to the lack of little boys to chase, we didn’t have a plan. Luckily, the Moroccans are never short of something to sell, so we spent our time shopping. First, however, I needed to be shorn.
We walked into the first barber we saw, early on the first day. He seemed pleasant, and he kept caged birds (yes, they were singing).
There is little need to provide a play-by-play of the haircut. Where there was once much hair, there was soon less hair. It’s not a complex scenario. At the end of the unhairening, we encountered the first of many bartering techniques we would meet in Marrakech. The friendly and very-hardworking barber simply asked me how much I would like to pay. The trick is to seem very sincere, and to never indicate whether what is offered is a reasonable amount, but rather to repeat that you’ll accept whatever’s offered. We ended up paying 100 dirhams (roughly 10 euros), which seemed fair. That is, until we managed to buy lunch and drinks for two for 80 dirhams. It’s a good technique.
It’s Riadical!
Staying in the Medina (the old town in Jamie’s video) usually means staying in a riad. These are sweet old houses, built around a central courtyard. The courtyards keep them cool, much like when you sit in a rubber ring in a pool and and get a wet bum. In fact, the word riad comes from the Arabic word ryad, which loosely translates to “soggy bottom”. In English, the name Ryan has the same derivation. Both words trace back to the old rubber ring in a pond paradigm. It’s in the Bible or something.
Anyway, our riad was not quite the palace in the photo above, but it was still nice. I do think, however, that the description on their website is a tad misleading:
“Riad Minorisa is a private palace from XVIIIth century with a familial hosting inaugurated in December 2007. Located in the calmness of the medina (old city) declared Universal Human Patrimony by the UNESCO. Situated near of the Jemaâ El Fna square, one of the most famous in the world.
Riad it means garden in arabic language. To be hosted at a riad is the best choice to live Marrakech spirit and beneficed its charms, without renounce vitality’s souks bazaars neither the thousand and one magic nights.
This is a mixture of oriental and occidental decoration that ofers all the comfort, relax, elegance and simplicity.”
That’s a copy-and-paste from their website, and I take issue with a few notes:
- I won’t criticise the use of the word “palace”. If a house can be a castle, I suppose a riad can be a palace. Probably not what you think of when you think “palace”, though.
- “Calmness of the medina”: When I think of calm, I think of peace and quiet, serenity; Bonnie Doon, basically. Inside Riad Minorisa, it was very quiet and calm, so that’s right But the Medina itself is a constant throb of people, motorbikes, donkeys, smaller people (children), cats, some horses, music, yelling and singing. It is always befuddling, and it is never calm.
- I don’t know where they got this “riad means garden” business…
- I really like the last sentence. “This is a mixture of oriental and occidental” is a lovely phrase, and then it all falls apart. Shouldn’t judge though, as it seems that everyone in Morocco speaks dynamite English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic, obviously.
If you are earning French, Morocco is a great place to do so. You see, the trouble with the French is that they speak French like they own the place, messing with the words and making them sound different. Then there’s slang, and speaking all fast, and suddenly it doesn’t sound like the nice Irish man on Coffee Break French says it should. The Morrocans, on the other hand, seem to really have listened to Mark (the nice Irish man) from Coffee Break French, because they say the words the way they are meant to sound. So for us, two intermediate French learners (who come across as novices in Paris), Marrakech was great! In fact, between French and English, we didn’t even need to bother with Arabic. In hindsight, they might have liked us more if we did.
ArabiYum Nights
Moroccan food is good. You probably know this, what with it being trendy to not just eat the same thing all the time. Our predominant eating experiences were of tagines, the cool witches’ hat pot lid things above. Tagine is just the name of the dish it’s cooked in, and it usually comes full of a given meat product, spices, a few potatoes and carrots, and some dried fruit or almonds if you pay a bit more. If you watched all of that Jamie Oliver video above (it’s only “work”, after all), you’ll have heard him say that you can just cook it in whatever you’ve got.
Put simply, the tagines were good and the cous cous was less good. Not bad, but tagines were clearly better. In my brain, I had imagined there would be cous cous in the tagines. This is not how they roll. Tagines are actually fairly sparse in their filling: just a couple of good chunks of meat (think chicken legs, lamb chops, etc), with some token potato, carrot, zuchini, etc. They are great, thanks to the slow-cooking of the meat, and the excellence of the gravy. It’s really all about the gravy. This is very important, because all Moroccan food is served with firm - but not unpleasantly so - bread. You put the bread in the gravy, and therein lies the beauty of the tagine.
Cous cous provides far less opportunity to dip bread in gravy (as there isn’t really any), and this is why we don’t order the cous cous. My advice: let someone else order the cous cous, and you get the tagine. Tagines with dried fruit and/or nuts are usually better. You eat the tagine (dip the bread!), and they will hate you for it. They’ll probably trade you some cous cous for the right to dip some bread in your gravy. And then you have the single most important thing in the history of civilisation: leverage (and gravy).
Jemaa el-Fnaar out!
You know how, when you’re a kid and a (trusted) grown up tickles you, and you wriggle and try to make it stop, but then as soon as it stops you miss the attention, so you go back for more? This is what it’s like being at Jemaa el-Fnaa, the big town square in Marrakech. It’s loud, and people are trying to sell you things, and then there’s a monkey on a chain, and then there’s a live cobra, and all the food stalls want you to eat at them, and someone keep an eye on that cobra, and this guy wants to sell me a live turtle, and here’s a wooden snake, and all the food smells amazing, but some of the food looks awful, and WHICH SNAKES ARE WOODEN, AND WHICH ONES ARE THE FUCKING COBRAS?!
It’s a confusing place, and the second we arrived I was thinking about leaving. But here’s the thing: It’s the only place in the Medina which you actually recognise, and which you actually think you can get back to. So every evening, when we were thinking about where to go, it was “back to the square?” Because it was definitely interesting. The good news is there are restaurants all around the square, where you can sit up on the terrace and watch all the goings-on going on. It also makes for a killer sunset:
Plus, there are a couple of bars there, if you know where to look. [Top tip: If a person says they’ll show you a “happy hour”, you can follow them. They are actually taking you to a happy hour. Besides, how unhappy would the hour have to be for you to regret it?]
I guess it could be worse. So then you leave the restaurant and walk back down through the square, and immediately you remember that you hate it there. But you also want to go back tomorrow. I imagine this is exactly what swimming with sharks feels like.
Moroccanclusion
Marrakech is very nice, if a little lacking in actual ‘things to see’. It’s cheap, tasty, and not as dangerous as it might seem (well, we survived, at least). Also, we didn’t get sick, which apparently is a minor miracle.
I do have the following questions, however:
- Why are they selling live turtles?
- What are people doing with the turtles they buy?
- They know we’re tourists. Are people taking the turtles out of the country?
- How do you get a live turtle on a plane?
- How much is a turtle in, say, London, anyway? Is it worth smuggling?
- They also had iguanas...
