morocco!

we spent about 4 days in the amazing desert city of marrakech, in the shadow of the snow-capped high atlas mountain range! we were able to stay in a super-nice hotel in the new city using hotel points compliments of a credit card sign up bonus (get at me if you want to get in on the game!). most cities in morocco have a new city where moroccans generally prefer to live and is more modern, and another ancient, walled, car-free part of the city called the medina, where most of the excitement for a tourist is. marrakech is a great place. there is a huge square in the medina called jmaa al fna, the largest and most exciting in morocco. it is filled with stalls selling amazing and cheap fresh-squeezing orange and pomegranate juice, and snake charmers. at night, there are bands playing traditional music, arabic storyellers, and cross-dressing bellydancers, as well as many food stalls with extremely aggressive salespeople. never a dull moment! a moroccan comfort food in the market in marrakech is snail soup, which you can get a bowl of for under one dollar. there are miles of narrow medina passageways surrounding the square, where one can wander for days. that is exactly what we did and it was excellent. highlights included two hammam experiences on successive days. the first i went to was at a very traditional male-only one called mouassine hammam which is most frequented by the local men of the city for their regular baths. you enter a large, communal, moist room and bath yourself with buckets of water and black olive soap, perhaps helping an old man wash his back if you can understand what he is trying to ask you. i then hired the staff there to give me a rub down with a glove of steel wool, and amazing, aggressive 30 minute massage during which a very large man vigorously and systematically attacked every pressure point in my body, including the groin ones and the ones behind the knees. it was very intense but also very relaxing once it was all over. the next day ann and i went to a luxury underground hammam experience at a riad called medina elisa, which was excellent. it was a lot more private and gentle, but again involved another steel wool scrub down, which i would not recommend 2 days in a row, as my skin was quite pink by that point. there they had a serene pool which we reclined by and then there was a foot massage which was very luxurious. going to a hammam of some variety is definitely the thing to do in marrakech!

we then drove out the 7 hours or so out to the edge of the sahara desert! first, we had to cross the atlas mountain range, which are snow covered year round! there is even a ski resort near marrakech. over the atlas range, we stopped at a famous deserted town called ait ben haddou, which has been abandoned by locals for over a century but has recently been a movie set for many films including the jesus movie and gladiator. it is composed of mud-built houses built on a hill, and is a very fun place to explore for an hour or so.

our destination on the edge of the sahara was a small town called merzouga, which sits beside an area of massive sand dunes. contrary to what i had thought, much of the sahara desert, at least the northwest part of it, is more rocks and mountains than sand, but there are areas of sand that develop where the wind blows right. we stayed at a desert hotel called ksar bicha, which while being rustic was actually really nice and great value. after one night there, we headed out into the dunes on camels for a night in the desert! definitely the highlight of the trip. it was about an hour-long camel ride to a desert camp they had set up, and we had a berber guide and were with one other couple from germany. once we got to the camp, we hiked up the largest dune (which took about 45 minutes), and watched the sunset. amazing. then the guide made us dinner and played some traditional berber songs on the drums while i danced, and the rest of the group watched, lol! it was fun. we then played some cards games which didn't require any verbal communication before sleeping in some little tents and riding the camels back to the hotel in the morning. an amazing experience in the sahara!

our last stop in morocco was a few days in fes, which is another walled, ancient city in the northern part of the country. here we splashed out for a room in a really nice riad (called lune el soliel) - riads are the traditional living spaces in the medinas - a large home with many rooms surrounding a central courtyard. there we got amazing breakfasts on the roof overlooking the medina. the medina in fes is the largest car-free urban area in the world, and takes days to fully explore! fes is famous for its traditional tanneries, where the animal skins are cured and colored in different pools of liquid, all of which can be seen from elevated viewpoints over the area. one of the days in fes i drove out to another nearby but notably less touristed walled city called meknes, where there is a massive city gate of historical importance, some underground storage reserviors, and another medina to explore. nearby, i stopped at an ancient roman ruin called voluvulis, which is a remarkably well-preserved city which was one of the largest in the roman empire in its day.

overall it was really a wonderful 12 days or so in morocco! we thought of it as our honeymoon, and it didn't disappoint!