Bahia Palace

One of the cool things about spending so much time in Marrakech is that there is an endless supply of fascinating and beautiful things to see. Every so often, Brahim will come up to me and say, "Do you want to go to (fill in the blank with any number of fascinating and fabulous sites in the city)?" That's how we ended up at the Bahia Palace.

My Lonely Planet Morocco book says that the Palace was originally owned by two grand viziers. To be honest, I didn't really pay much attention to any of the historical details while I was at the palace. I was too busy looking at the stunning details. Like the magnificent ceilings.

And the plaster carvings.

Everything inside was dimly lit by overhead lights. It kind of gave the whole place an intriguing ambience.

This is possibly the world's most weak sauce photo, but it illustrates that there were several courtyards in the palace. Each courtyard was surrounded by a series of rooms.

This courtyard had a fountain!!!

Brahim wanted his picture taken with the fountain. I'm not sure if this is what he was expecting...

Bahia Palace, another one of the beautiful places brought to you by Marrakech.

Loubna in Marrakech

Brahim's classes are over by 11:00am on Saturdays, and we don't teach on Sundays. So, we generally leave Tahnaoute on Saturday afternoon and spend some time in Marrakech for the weekend.

On our most recent trip, Loubna came with us! Highlights:


-Loubna helping me find and select a skirt for one of my sisters (Hey Sena! I think you're going to like it!)

-Walking down the streets of Marrakech desperately looking for a store that sells ice cream (apparently it's winter or something).

-Going to a flea market to buy shoes for Loubna. Digging through piles of random shoes in hopes of finding something suitable.

-Wandering around a gigantic grocery store looking for ingredients for me to make fajitas for the family. (How do you explain shortening to somebody who doesn't have any idea what it is?)

-Sleeping in the same room and talking as we fell asleep. Neither of us woke up until 10:00 am the next morning. Teasing Loubna because she usually wakes up much earlier, and hearing her say, "Oh no! I don't want to be a lazy girl!" (That was kind of a jab at me. I typically get up later than the rest of the family. In my defense, when I don't eat dinner until after 10:00 pm, it throws my whole biological clock off.)

-Looking for an Internet cafe so that we could check our e-mail, watch YouTube videos, etc. Every cafe we came to was either closed or full. It was devastating. We finally found one tucked away several blocks from the house.

It's nice to have sisters, even in Morocco.

The Badia Palace

This is the Badia Palace. Well, part of it. I don't have a lens wide enough to show you the whole thing at once, so you'll have to be satisfied with pieces.

The palace was built under the direction of Ahmed Al Mansour Ad-dahbi of the Saadien dynasty during the sixteenth century.

Apparently, it used to be pretty spectacular. The walls were covered in marble, and the courtyard was full of pools. Moulay Ismail had the marble removed to decorate his palace in Meknes during the seventeenth century. The pools are now filled with orange trees. (Brahim dared me to crawl down and get one of the oranges. I declined for the following reasons: I wasn't sure it was legal, and I wasn't sure I could climb back out of the pool/orange orchard.)

The palace had a prison, and part of it was open to visitors like us! (Again, I have no idea what the green spots are. I tried to remove them using Photoshop, but it was too tedious, so I gave up caring. It happens.)

The creepiest part of the prison is that it was underground. The only light (before they installed the tourist-friendly light bulbs) came in from grated holes in the ceiling. Definitely not a place I would want to spend any significant time.

The palace is currently home to storks. Lots of them.

I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I spent most of my time looking for opportunities to take pictures of these birds.

Carrie and I also tried to explain the legend of storks delivering babies. Turns out, it sounds pretty stupid when you try to explain it to grown men who have never before heard it...

I was dying for this bird to turn around and face me! I even switched lenses for her (him?). I stood underneath the nest for an embarrassingly long time before deciding that the stork hated me.

I like this stork picture because the stork is roosting on top of a minaret. A minaret is a mosque tower. The speaker you see near the bottom of the picture is used to call Muslims to prayer five times a day.

There! This may not have been exactly the shot I was waiting for, but it's one that made my time at the Badia Palace worthwhile.

Jardin Majorelle

Jardin Majorelle is in Marrakech. It's a beautiful garden. It's very quiet and serene. It was fun to wander around with my camera taking lame pictures.

Most of the plants in the garden were cacti.

Since I spent some of my formative years living in Las Vegas, I was prepared not to be impressed. Until I saw these babies. Can you tell that they look fuzzy? Has anybody ever seen fluffy cacti before? I hadn't. I was duly impressed. Two thumbs up.

Jardin Majorelle was also home to significant quantities of aloe plants. I thought about breaking a leaf (is that what they're called?) open, but I wasn't sure what the Moroccan legal policy was on aloe breakage. I'd hate to go to an African prison for the sake of satisfying a curious whim.

The garden also had colorful flowers.

Good thing I spent $900 on a macro lens so that I could get shots like this, huh Steve?

This was my favorite flower shot. I'm kind of a sucker for purple.

This, however, was my favorite shot of the day. Turtles! I heart turtles! They were so outrageously cute stretching their tiny necks that I couldn't resist taking a pictures. Despite my 105mm lens, this was as close as I could get (they were kind of far away).

Fun fact: people in Morocco (probably tourists) carve their names into stalks of bamboo. It never would have occurred to me to carve my initials (or Steve's) into a stalk of bamboo. I guess my love doesn't run as deep as Ronald's (or did Ronald just exhibit a healthy sense of self worth by carving his full name? I really can't tell).

As a bonus, I got this great shot of Brahim's brother Ahmed. This the person with whom I have spent hours walking through the streets of Marrakesh. Two thumbs up.

Jardin Menara

Ahmed took me to Jardin Menara. Jardin means garden.

It was built in the 12th century by the Alhomad Dynasty. (Hey Lonely Planet! Thanks for publishing your "Morocco" book to remind me of the date and name of the dynasty!)

It was very tranquil. There were only a few tourists there. Ahmed said it is more popular at night.

The very nice pool is home to a bunch of fish. You know the ones. They make the sound, "Thlllllggghhhhh, thllllggghhhhh, thlllggghhhhh" while sucking up anything thrown in their general direction. These fish were devouring bread. The bread was sold by Moroccan men who are masters at preying on tourists who enjoying seeing African fish do exotic things like slurp bread.

After we walked around the pool, we stopped at a little cafe nearby where I participated in the age-old tourist tradition of paying 15 dirhams for a can of Fanta.

Note to readers: 15 dirhams equals about two dollars.

Marvelous Marrakech

After I woke from my ages long nap the night of October 30th, Achmed took me walking around the medina of Marrakech. The medina is the old center of the city, often considered the heart of the city.

I was definitely dealing with major sensory overload. There were so many things to see, hear, smell, and admire. I could never capture them in one post. However, there should be many more visits to Marrakech's medina that will allow me capture more details and information.

Right now I will provide only one...






This is Koutoubia (koo-too-bye). It is the minaret (tower) of a mosque in the center of Marrakesh. It was built by the Sultan Yakoub el Mansour. Koutoubia's twin minaret is in Seville, Spain.

It was beautiful all lit up at night.