Les Grandes Arbres

One of the rather ancient trees still growing in the corners of the Place des Ferbantiers(the metal workers square that mostly makes decorative tin lanterns nowadays).

Medersa Ben Youssef

Luckily for us, this is one of the only holy Muslim(well it's probably been de-consecrated or something) sites that non-believers are allowed to visit. Unlike Syria or Egypt, the mosques here are off-limits to visitors.

Medersa Ben Youssef

Most of the ceilings are made up of very ornate cedar wood carvings.

Medersa Ben Youssef

The central courtyard of the college.

Medersa Ben Youssef

The Old Theological College

These are some of the pictures from the old theological college that was in use from the earl y 1400's to the late 1960's. It was the largest of it's sort in Africa and housed up to 900 students at a time in the tiny 132 honeycomb style rooms...

Melon Market

A few of the wares at one of the many markets. Some of the watermelons were the biggest I've ever seen. Most weighed in at about 10 kg.

The Plaster Carver

Plaster carving is everywhere and is rather pretty especially when it's painted. Here's one of the men who makes it happen in the tiny closet stall by the Medersa. Zoom in for a good look at the details.

Both the legions of moped riders as well as the donkey carts feel well entitled to zoom along the rather narrow and very winding cobblestones of the souks. You do need to watch your ankles.

The Soap Shop

One of the souks had hidden away this very lovely soap shop. The owner makes and hand presses them all using rosemary, musk, verbana, and the argan but oil as scent. Argan trees are quite rare, protected by UNESCO, adn grow only in Morocco. The oil is very good for the skin but non-greasy (plus it smells nice :). This guy does good gift wrap too.

Marrakech Alley Housing

Down some of the lesser used labyrinth alleys you can see some ruined houses, completely abandoned but good for pictures and resting donkeys.

Hides

They had beautiful leather goods from very smelly tanneries(urine is a key tanning ingredients). These were some of the dyed ones that were put out in the hot sun to cure. I think they might have future lives as pouffs and babouche slippers.

Yum, our cat

We briefly adopted one of the un-official most likely flea ridden hotel cats which chilled out in the wardrobe for a time, whom we called Yum.

Moroccan breakfast

We opted for traditional breakfast on our first morning consisting of very sweet mint tea (chai na-na) hot flatbreads and besara, which is a soupy paste of fava beans with paprika and olive oil. I'll just say that Moroccan besara tastes firmly of Mauritania. Israeli besara is a lot more interesting.

More Mimosa

The hotel owner had a tiny black and white blind kitten called Stevie who munched our toes while we ate watermelon and drank Coca. The two men teased us about watermelon being the Moroccan alternative to Viagra. A weird but wonderful old trick they showed us was to cut up a warm melon and put it out in the hot sun for 30 minutes, and magically it becomes cool. Give it a try, it does work. Didn't manage a pictures of Stevie.

The Mimosa

The Mimosa is just off the Jemaa El Fna, on rue des Banques, and is about 10$ for a double with breakfast. It's a courtyard hotel spread over 4 floors(the fourth being a rooftop terrace). All the rooms are built around the sides with a fountain on the ground floor and painted tiles covering every surface. Our room on the 2nd floor was 3/4 tile up the wall, then gave way to intricate plaster carving on the ceiling.