Catching Up: Friday, January 23

We slept in a bit (a welcome change from the running around – while it had only been a week since the trip started, with all the sites it felt like three weeks!) and started the morning by heading down the street to the hamam. The traditional bathhouses, they are still a very important component of Moroccan culture. While Tim said most (but not all) people now have indoor plumbing at their homes, many people still use the hamams, especially on Fridays before attending mosque.

The hamam we went to was a public, local one, which looked as though it dated back hundreds of years. Entry was 10 dirham each (just over $1.00), and rental of the supplies (buckets, etc.) was 10 dirham more. There were a fair amount of people at the hamam, but we were definitely the only non-locals. A part of the hamam process involves ritualistic scrubbing and a massage, and as neither Tim and I are versed in hamam use, we were able to hire someone to complete the experience.

It all starts with a trip to the hottest room, where you lie on the floor for a while. Not a delicate process, we were doused in water that was just shy of scalding (it’s incredible, but they seem to know the exact right temperature), rubbed down vigorously with a glove made of something akin to steel wool and contorted in all directions by pulling. At one point, while I was lying face down on the ground, the man grabbed my left arm and right leg, stepped on my back to hold me down, and pulled up as hard as possible. After we had gone through the first process, complete with soap that was the consistency of caramel, we went to the second room, leaving behind about ten layers of skin from the intense scrub-down (maybe TMI, but literally, there was a lot of dead skin that came off in the process, which is kind of the point – they say it’s really good to your skin to do this every so often).

The second room was slightly cooler than the first, and we hung out there for a while, with a similar experience from the first room repeated. After a while, we went to the third room, the cool room, where we sat for a while (being doused in hot water from the first room once) before being done with the process. While it is not something I would have done by myself, Tim had done it a few times, and I am glad to have had the experience.

We headed back down the street to our ryad and regrouped before heading to the Museum of Marrakech. Located in an old palace (shocker, I know), it had the typical beautiful walls, ceilings and courtyards as well as a nice assortment of artifacts.

Just down the street was the Maddrasa Ben Youssef, an old Muslim school. We wandered around inside, through an incredible courtyard and among the more than 160 rooms. The wood carvings were all over the building were absolutely stunning.

From the Maddrasa, we again headed down the street, passing by the Almoravid Qoubba, an old water works and mosque, and the last surviving vestige of the Almoravid dynasty from just after the first millennium. We also passed by Ben Youssef Mosque before stopping for lunch. Since it was Friday, we opted for the traditional Friday meal of couscous. Served in a tajine (a traditional terracotta cooker with conical lid), it was covered in kaftae (just like the meatballs, kofta, we had in Istanbul) and lots of vegetables. It was way more food than I could eat, but it was delicious and went quite well with the banana juice I ordered.

Following lunch, we headed to the Saddian Tombs. The Saddians, another one of the dynasties of Morocco, had built gorgeous tombs which were luckily not destroyed by the following dynasty (who removed all vestiges of their rule, but was a bit paranoid about touching resting places). Instead, the tombs from the late 1500s were sealed off for centuries before being rediscovered by a British general with a penchant for Moroccan history in 1917. Now restored, the courtyard and tombs were beautiful.

We then walked through the Kasbah, the old fortress for the city, on our way out of the medina to visit the Agdal Gardens. The gardens, located south of the medina, proved to be a lot harder to find than you would expect of a 1,000 acre park. The problem was twofold, in that (1) the garden is walled with very few entrances and (2) the King and Côte d’Ivoire contingent were still in town, and the garden complex abuts the Royal Palace.

The trip to the gardens turned into a roughly five mile walk around the wall of the gardens, more than a few uncomfortable interactions with armed royal guards and ultimately us not seeing all that much that resembled gardens. It was an entertaining experience, and we didn’t cause any international diplomatic issues, so I suppose it all worked out.

Tired from our escapades (in addition to the five mile trek around the gardens, we have likely been averaging between 6 and 10 miles of walking every day), we headed back to the ryad to rest for a bit. Around 8:30, we headed out to the souk for a bit of shopping and grabbed a quick dinner on the street. Not wanting to miss out on any of the food, I ended up eating two dinners. The first was a sandwich that I can best describe as akin to sloppy joe. On the delicious, ubiquitous bread, the concoction was being cooked on a large skillet and seemed to be meat and a tomato based sauce. Whatever it was, it was very, very delicious, and I quickly devoured it as we walked to the next meal. Second dinner for the evening was milwi, basically thick, fluffy oil-soaked (like seemingly everything here) pancakes, cooked on a griddle and then filled with cheese and onions. All I can say is, we were two for two on dinner items, and I was quite happy to wrap up the night on that note.