Photo Friday: Jardin Majorelle, Marrakech, Morocco

I was expecting a lot of desert in Morocco. Well, I wasn't entirely wrong - there is a lot of desert, but there is a lot of green, too. Especially so here in the Majorelle Garden, named after the French artist Jacques Majorelle, who designed and landscaped this 12-acre piece of lush, green land.

I went to Jardin Majorelle with a few new friends I'd made at the hostel that day - because I was travelling alone, I didn't have any set plans really so I decided to hang out with Sarah, Sandra and Sanjana!

Jardin Majorelle is in the new town of Marrakech, so it's a ride in a petit taxi away from the medina - which also meant my first experience bargaining for taxi rides. Taxis in Marrakech are comparatively cheap, with a ride from the medina to the Garden at only 20DH, or €2 a person - but I found that it wasn't always as easy as I thought it would be to keep myself from being overcharged!



After months in cold Northern Europe, it was such a relief to be able to take out my summer clothes and bask in the glorious warm sun, wearing sunglasses and summer accessories and all that jazz. As much as I love winter, I don't think I'm ever going to stop being a summer girl - I did grow up on the equator, after all!

This vibrant shade of blue in the pottery and tiles is trademarked 'Majorelle Blue' and it's a colour that keeps recurring around the entire garden.



Interestingly, there's also a memorial to Yves Saint-Laurent in these gardens - Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé jointly bought over these gardens in 1980, and after Yves Saint-Laurent died in 2008 his ashes were scattered in this very garden!

The memorial didn't actually seem like anything interesting (I didn't even bother taking pictures of it, or maybe it was just that my untrained eyes couldn't understand it) but it was pretty cool to know that such an iconic designer had such a strong link to these gardens.







Although predictably touristy, Jardin Majorelle is a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle of Marrakech medina life. In between this lush greenness and the warm of the sun beating down on us, I can't think of a better way to spend a lazy afternoon!