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Published: November 27th 2017
I woke up this morning a bit sad that the tour had now ended but I'm glad I stayed another night before flying out to Paris. Prior to coming on this trip, the plan was to use this extra day to take a day trip over to Ait Benhaddou. However, I made such good friends with some of the people on this tour that I instead chose to spend the day hanging out with them. Looking out the window this morning, the weather did not look good. The skies were looking quite ominous and appeared ready to drench Marrakesh at any moment. Troy and Melanie were not staying at the hotel tonight but were instead transferring to a riad in the middle of the medina. The plan for the morning was for them to drop off their bags in my room while the 3 of us took a taxi out to the Sidi Ghanem district. Melanie had found a listing in her Lonely Planet guide indicating that Sidi Ghanem was the place to go for designer houseware prodcuts. We hailed a taxi who took us to an industrial area of town that was definitely not on the tourist circuit. We were
having such a hard time trying to explain to our taxi driver what our intentions were. We just wanted to walk around for about an hour while he waited for us to check out a few of the shops. However, the driver spoke such limited English and despite my best attempts with French, it seemed as if we were never really on the same page. I could not for the life of me remember what the french word was for "walk". I was trying to tell him we were going to walk for an hour while he waited. I ended up having to act out a walking motion before he finally understood. We walked around and the area seemed a little sketchy. We weren't quite sure of exactly where we were going. Eventually we found a few furniture and fabric shops and started looking around their selection of items. After an hour, Melanie just purchased a few tablecloths and pillows and we made our way back to the taxi for the ride back to the hotel. The plan for the day was to meet up with those we dubbed "the cool kids" at 1:00 in front of the Koutobia Mosque.
However, before that we had to get Melanie and Troy to their riad in the middle of the medina. A ride was arranged for them by the riad's owner and picked them up at my hotel. I accompanied them to their riad so that we could meet up later with the rest of the gang. The driver took us through what I think was the eastern entrance to the medina. It was definitely a section of the medina with very few tourists. The driver drove his vehicle through some very narrow streets and was literally within inches of hitting people walking on either side of the vehicle. Then the unthinkable happened. A young girl about 14 years old screamed and fell to the ground while her friends were yelling for our driver to back up his car. I immediately thought that he had just run over the girl's leg. The driver got out of the vehicle to check if the girl was okay. Meanwhile a huge crowd was forming around the car and I could hear yelling going on amongst the crowd. For Troy, Melanie, and I, it was such a stressful situation. We had no idea what was going
on as everyone was speaking Arabic and it was starting to feel like a near riot may break out. I locked the doors of the vehicle in case anyone had thoughts of entering the vehicle. Eventually, the driver came back inside the car and continued on. Apparently, he didn't run over the girl's leg but slightly hit her with the vehicle and she and her friends just overreacted. That was the driver's version of the story but who knows what really happened. Eventually, we made it to their riad and I was starting to think how the heck are Melanie and Troy going to find this place. We had to go through a myriad of alleyways and small streets just to find it. Their riad was absolutely gorgeous with a beautiful and calm inner courtyard and a great view from the terrace of the surrounding medina. It's a bit hard to believe that just outside the front door was the hectic and chaotic medina. After they settled in, we made our way through the souk and into Djemaa El Fna in order to walk to the Koutoubia Mosque to meet up with the rest of the gang. By now, the
skies had opened up and Marrakesh was being drenched in a strong downpour. We were unprepared for the rain but luckily the entrepreneurial spirit of the Moroccans came through. Right then somebody appeared and was selling umbrellas for the equivalent of $5. Needless to say, Melanie and I both shelled out $5 each without any hesitation. Unfortunately for Melanie, when a strong gust of wind came through, her umbrella practically collapsed on her. It was such a funny sight to see her holding up this collapsed umbrella in a downpour. It wasn't too long before we found the rest of the gang and headed over to a nearby restaurant, Le Salama to rideout the downpour. When the rains let up a bit, we decided it was time to venture back out into the souks. We wandered around but as opposed to other times, this time I had intentions of making a few purchases. As it was my last day here in Morocco, I had a few gifts for family and friends back home that I had put off buying for too long. After going in and out of a few shops, all the souvenirs all started to look the same.
Lunch in Marrakesh
Riding out a rainstorm at Le Salama Restaurant in MarrakeshI just bit the bullet and pretty much stopped looking around and just purchased everything I needed at one shop without too much effort at haggling. I definitely paid more than I should have but at least all the gifts for friends and family were now out of the way. At around 5:00, Liz, Sophie, and I headed back to our hotel. Since Liz and Sophie were continuing on the Southern Morocco portion of the trip, they had a group meeting that they had to attend. We agreed that they would skip out of the meeting as quickly as they could and we would meet up for dinner back in Djemaa El Fna at around 7:30. We met up with everyone again at our agreed upon location and set out into the medina to locate a restaurant that someone had recommended to Winston. After a bit of a walk and not being able to find the restaurant, we settled on a small place that we just happened to walk by. Dinner was great but more importantly it was about great company tonight. We all knew that this was probably the last time that we would all be hanging out together
so it was a bit of a somber mood. After dinner, we walked around the famous night food stalls in the Djemaa El Fna. We had just finished dinner so none of us were really interested in trying anything and some of us were a bit leery of getting some kind of food poisoning. The touts were very persistent trying to get us to visit their stall but we were all content with just wandering and soaking in the entire atmosphere. I was a bit disapointed that we didn't see any storytellers or snake charmers in the square. Perhaps it was the cold weather that kept them away but I feel like I didn't get to experience the full Marrakesh without all the acrobats, storytellers, and the snake charmers. Eventually we all got a bit tired and decided to call it a night. We all gave each other hugs with promises that if we ever visited each others hometowns, we would meet up. Thankfully, in the age of Facebook, it is a lot easier to keep in touch with people. I said goodbye to Melanie and Troy who I had become really close with on this trip but we would
meet up again in 2 days in Paris. Sophie, Liz, and I watched them head back to their riads in the medina and we eventually caught a cab back to our hotel. As we sat in our taxi headed back to our hotel, the streets of Marrakesh were filled with life as everyone seemed to be enjoying the cool Saturday night. All the crowds out tonight made me realize that we never did go out to a Moroccan nightclub like we had talked about the past few nights. So this is how my time in Morocco ended. It was a great trip, with great food, and most importantly great travel companions. Back at the hotel, I said my goodbyes and gave hugs to Sophie and Liz and well all retreated back to our rooms.
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