Day 6 - Marrakech

Having acclimatised to the weather and to our local surroundings, we planned to set out and explore more of Marrakech today. We pinpointed the famous tourist sights and left early in the morning to avoid the afternoon heat.

Our first stop was Jardin Majorelle, made famous by its links to Yves Saint Laurent. It wasn’t as impressive as I thought it may have been, but the shade and mist within the picturesque garden was welcome in the Marrakech heat.

Our next destination was to visit the famous souks in the centre of Marrakech. As we walked through the city, I couldn’t help but notice how men always sit on the same side of the table as each other. No enjoying coffee looking into each other’s eyes here. I suppose it gives them a chance to stare and look at those who pass by. However, it does make you quite uneasy.

Before we knew it, we had found ourselves right in the middle of the souks. These famous streets are lined with food, spices, live animals, clothes or anything else you can thing of. We stumbled into the middle of souk semmarine full of mainly clothing and fabrics. We navigated through the maze of stalls which can get quite confusing and the streets get narrower and the stalls get similar - the wholesaler must have had a field day.

Having followed the mazes of markets, we finally found ourselves at Jemaa el-Fna Square. We had to take a second to make sure it was the same place we visited last night. The hundreds of people and most of the food markets had disappeared. Some remained but everyone was much more civilised today.

We delved back into the narrow market streets to lead us to our second garden of the day, Le Jardin Secret. It was strange how a small garden in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the streets could be so quiet, but it again, it was a welcome break to the busy Medina. We took time in the shade to watch how the garden was pumped with water the whole way from the Atlas Mountains. Quite ingenious actually.

On our walks to the souk, we passed a quaint little restaurant tucked away in an oasis within the streets. Le Jardin restaurant, nothing linked to our last stop, was a lovely place to eat and even had live turtles walking about! Thankfully, there was no turtle soup on the menu.

By late afternoon, we had seen most of the sights and it was time to return back to our Riad. Throughout the day we had been commented on by the locals. Aoife and Anna were called Lady Gaga and The Spice Girls at one point and even I was hit on more than once. Finally though, after a successful day of sightseeing, we returned to our Riad to check out.

It was sad to say goodbye to Riad Amina. The staff were very friendly and we loved our little safe space in Marrakech. I was even given the recipe of the yogurt we had at breakfast as it was so nice. After a quick game of cards, we said our goodbye’s to Aoife as she headed to the airport to go home, snd we headed to the bus station to go to Casablanca.

At this stage, we knew the procedure with Moroccan buses that we were pretty much locals at it. One woman even tried to take our seats and I was having none of it. She returned to the front of the bus with her tail between her legs.

Arriving in Casablanca after our 4hr bus, we were nervous to discover our hotel for the night - it was much cheaper than it should have been so we didn’t know what to expect. After a short walk from the bus station, the hotel bellboy opened our door for us, took our bags and called the lift for us, perhaps we struck gold!

Hotel Les Ambassadeurs tried its best to be a polished hotel and for the price we paid, it was definitely worth it. Following a quick shop in the supermarket opposite for some water, we caught up on our instagram stories, worked our more accommodation plans and sorted our itinerary for Casablanca.

By the time it was ready to go to sleep, we realised that we had no top sheet or duvet. We knew that if we had called down to reception, the young bellboy would have had to find the sheets, come and put them on, as well as all the pleasantries to go with it - we decided to take it on the chin with Anna using her towel as a duvet as we fell asleep to a BBC panorama documentary on the Australian SAS. The wonders of foreign TV.