The Red City, Marrakech, Morocco

Marrakech is known as the Red City.

Even simply flying over, it's not difficult to see why - against the desert sun, the red clay of the city is the first thing that strikes you about it. Almost all the walls are some shade of clay, brick-red. When you look out over the Old City, or the medina, there's not a skyscraper in sight, and the whole unfamiliarity of it all makes you feel almost as though you're in a world from a very long time ago.

Indeed, some of what is in this city is from a very long time ago.

The El Badi Palace was built the 1500s, and although it is a ruin today its name means "The Incomparable Palace." Even today some of the mosaic remains preserved, and with a little use of the imagination you might be able to see how the palace looked back in its glory days.

The Palace is pretty large, and most areas are free to explore. With roofs and ceilings it would have been an absolute labyrinth to get lost in, but now that so little of the building you can literally look into the rooms and see the maze as you would building plans. There are few information boards, which meant that half the time we were wandering around wondering what the function of each room would have been, which was pretty fun in its own way.

In the palace courtyard we saw people planting trees in what must have been swimming pools or gardens back in the day. You can only imagine what the palace must have looked like with swimming pools in the courtyard and richly mosaicked floors - every bit what you might imagine of Arabic-styled lush palaces!

It was surprising how well the red clay kept the heat out of underground rooms. Where the some rooms still had their ceilings, the insides must have been at least 5-8 degrees cooler than outside. Absolutely perfect for the dry desert heat - a very Moroccan style of eco-friendly air conditioning, I'd say!

We also saw a lot of White Storks building their huge nests in what remained of the palace's towers!

We then headed back to Jemaa El-Fna for some pretty henna from one of the multitudes of Moroccan ladies sitting under their umbrellas.

I made a huge mistake when I was looking to get my henna done - not shopping around! It's a very expensive mistake, because in bargaining culture the seller starts at a higher price (extremely high if you're not a local) and the buyer tries to push the price down.

As we were looking through the photos of various henna designs, we asked how much it would cost.

The first lady we went to told us it would cost 300DH, or €30.

€30!!!!!

So we did try bargaining the price down, and she told us that black henna would cost more than the regular brown traditional henna - but that it would stay longer, too. After bargaining we managed to get the price down to 200DH, about €20. We still weren't entirely happy with the price, but we were on holiday and it was something like a 30% discount right?

We said okay, sucked it up and agreed to the price.

Sanjana getting henna'd.

Bonus glitter as a finishing touch!

Henna usually costs around €2-3. We paid €20.

It turns out that by not shopping around we'd paid some 10 times more than we could have paid for the henna.

It was gorgeous henna with all sorts of beautiful intricate designs, but goddamn was it expensive. What was worse was that after I found out that I'd completely overpaid for it, I found myself completely unable to enjoy the henna, because every time I looked down at it all I could think of was that I had let myself be overcharged to ten times of what it should have cost.

The henna overcharging put a real downer on the trip. It shouldn't have been such a big deal, really - money is something that can be earned back, but it was really upsetting. It just seemed wrong to me that people should charge and accept that much.

It would have gone a long way toward helping her and her children - she was 24 and already had three kids, we managed to gather from our combined efforts of stuttering French - but somehow it still seemed unethical to let people pay ten times what it should have cost.

I felt like a real miser for being that upset over money, especially seeing as how I hadn't been quite as upset by how much I'd paid until I found out afterwards.

Lesson learned, folks: SHOP AROUND.

The said expensive henna.

The amazing food in Marrakech did seem to make up for it a little bit though. Food wasn't as cheap as I'd expected it to be - it was still a significant amount of money, at around €5-10 a meal, but it was pretty good food so I was content.

Of course it figures that the very first meal we'd have out would be a right cultural experience - sushi and paninis sound particularly Moroccan to anyone? Ha ha!

Sarah having sushi and Sanjana having a panini and chips.

Okay no seriously though. We did start to get more of a taste for Moroccan cuisine when we watched the sun set over the horizon, bathing everything in swathes of gold over a good mint tea and avocado juice.

And as soon as it got dark, Jemaa el-Fna changed completely - gone were the snake-charmers and ladies painting henna, and out came the street food.

I love street food - it's probably one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, through eating with them. The problem is that Morocco is so clearly touristy - even seated at the tables and ready to order street food, I didn't see any local Moroccan faces, only those of tourists looking for a taste of just-enough-exotic.

I wasn't in a position to judge, clearly, since I was among those tourists. But I found myself wishing that I knew where the locals really hung out - not the stalls with TripAdvisor boards fighting for your attention, trying to get you to buy from them, but the cafes or restaurants in the inner parts of the souk where locals buy bessara for 5DH a bowl.

That being said, although the deep-fried eggplant cost 30DH a plate of five instead of 1DH a piece, the food was very good. Khobz bread comes with pretty much every meal, and the fried calamari was delicious. It wasn't exactly the perfectly-crispy-on-the-outside, not-overcooked-and-dry cuisine from Jamie's Italian, but the whole atmosphere of street food and barbecue smoke made for a great dinner.

So even though it was clear that I was being overcharged for everything just for being non-local, I guess that's just how things work in Morocco. Tourism is Morocco's biggest industry, after all, and poverty is still very much real. I wondered why there were kids on the streets that weren't in school, and it almost seemed okay that they were overcharging me for being a tourist if I had the means to travel and all they wanted to do was to make a living.

It was an odd moment to be thinking about the ethics of travelling. It's still a pretty new topic for me to think about, and I've yet to figure it out. I'm not sure I ever will entirely, and it's still really confusing.

But throw me some good ol' street food and I'll be alright for the most part.