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.

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Getting pampered in Marrakech, Morocco

It is a truth universally acknowledged that there is nothing - nothing - better than a good massage.

Armed with this truth, I was looking forward to my first ever experience in a Moroccan hammam. A Moroccan hammam is roughly the equivalent of the Turkish bath, which is in itself a type of sauna. While a sauna in Moroccan heat doesn't seem like the most expected combination, it is a spa and relaxation after all - why not?



Medina Spa is tucked away in a back alley, a couple of turns away from the main square in Marrakech. It takes me a while to find it - you have to keep your eye out looking for the sign that points toward the spa, but it's actually surprisingly near the square.

Upon entering, I am greeted with a haven that is welcome respite from the rest of Morocco. Although I am enjoying the grit of the Marrakech old-town medina with its donkey carts and marketplaces, a part of me has been longing for clean, white tiled floors and just-enough decorating rather than the excessive fabric swathes that I've seen everywhere here.

The atmosphere in the spa is welcoming and calm, and couldn't be more different from the hustle and bustle of city life just outside its walls.



After changing out of my clothes and into a bathrobe and slippers, I am first led to receive a manicure and pedicure from a lady named Habi. She files my nails to perfection, trims my cuticles and applies an argan oil-based cream to moisturise my nails.

I like talking to people when getting massages and treatments, but I'm finding that talking to Habi is really testing my knowledge of French from one class two years ago. She doesn't speak any English, and I speak very limited French, so conversation isn't the easiest. Still, I find out that she's been doing mani-pedis for two years and massages for eight, so I'm in pretty good hands.

I don't usually do anything at all to my fingernails, preferring to keep them short and unvarnished - a habit from when I played piano as a kid - so getting my finger-cuticles cut for the first time does feel a tad painful. Still, I appreciate the attention to detail that Habi's giving; she even goes away for a while to switch her cuticle clippers for a smaller pair because my fingernails are too small for her usual pair!

Afterwards, I'm led to the hammam. The first thing I'm hit by is the wave of heat. It's hot and humid, and every bit as you might expect a sauna to be - except that the Moroccan hammam places an emphasis on water rather than ambient steam.

My attendant helps me out of my bathrobe, and although I'd always thought of myself as a pretty confident woman I'm still a little bit embarrassed going completely in the nude. I wish I'd known this before going in, but when visiting hammams you're supposed to bring a pair of dark underwear for wearing inside the hammam and a pair of dry underwear for changing into afterwards!

Imagine the embarrassment when I found out afterwards that unlike in Finnish saunas where you go in the buff, you're supposed to keep your underwear on in Moroccan hammams. Eep! Still, the attendants are good about it and, if they're at all uncomfortable about my being entirely nude, don't show it.

I was led to stand under a torrential shower of hot water, scalding and almost too hot to stand under. I lie face-down on a mattress and relax for a while while my attendant leaves to let me get used to the heat and humidity. There are moments of confusion when I don't know what's going on, though - I was the only person in the room just then and was left wondering what was supposed to happen.

After a while, the attendent comes back and starts applying a body mask. While waiting for the mask to work its magic, I wondered if I should try to start up a conversation - but with only very limited French, decided against it.

The last part of the hammam experience involved an all-over wash with Moroccan black soap and a scrub glove. My attendant showed me little bits of dead skin that collected on the glove as she scrubbed it over my arms - a little disturbing to think that much grime had been on my body in the first place, but oddly satisfying to see that it had now left my skin! After a shampoo, it was on to the massage.

As I stepped out of the hammam, the air felt almost air-conditioned after all that heat inside!



While I'm in the massage room, Hadi comes back and, as I'm lying on the massage table, applies a coat of deep red varnish on my nails ("Nails painted after the hammam," she'd said earlier. "Or the colour will run when you're bathing.")

Afterwards, she moves on to my massage - "En force," I tell her, because I like my massages almost painful (yes, I know I'm a masochist with massages, ha ha!). In between the soft sounds of meditation music and Hadi's oil massage, it's easy to drift off into a peaceful state. In no time at all, I've fallen asleep, enjoying the massage and music.

It's too soon when Hadi wakes me up and tells me that it's time to go - really, is there ever such a thing as 'enough' when it comes to massages? - and she leads me out for some mint tea. It's a nice end to a good few hours at the spa, a part of traditional Moroccan hospitality, and it's become a rule of mine by now - never turn down mint tea.

Changing back into my own clothes feels unfortunate after I've been washed and massaged to shiny new perfection. After the spa's calm and tranquility, I almost don't want to step outside back to the hustle of the Marrakech marketplace.

Medina Spa, www.medina-spa-marrakech.com
Lalla Care
Quartier Kennaria, derb zaari N°27
E-mail: contact@medina-spa-marrakech.com
Phone: +212 (0) 5 24 38 50 59

Disclaimer: This treatment was provided by Medina Spa. All thoughts are my own and I received no compensation for this review. Medina Spa did not ask that I go completely nude in the hammam. Oops.

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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!

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