lahsen came to get us in the late morning for the 3-hour drive to marrakech - we had a hankering for a bottle of wine for our last night in morocco and actually had bought another bottle before the desert - but when we asked lahsen if he had found it in the car, he was mystified - it turned out that it had dropped out into the sand at the desert camp and the staff had put it in the fridge, but forgot to give it to us when we left - at this point we told them just to pass it on to another lucky guest, but they were quite upset that they had 'failed us' - in any case lahsen was now on a mission to get us some wine - we stopped at another westernized store, but although they had every kind of chocolate bar known to man (so we felt forced to pick up a few for the road) there was 'pas du vin' - we wound up going into the european part of marrakech called queliz - so different from where we had been staying in the old part of town! (but as we had been told, not very interesting - unless you're looking for alcohol) we stopped at a very western type of grocery store and scored our wine then got delivered to the bab k'sour gate, which by now felt like returning home, made even more so when we got to riad snan 13 to a semi-rapturous welcome from the kitchen staff (but very very sad to say goodbye to lahsen after sharing our fantastic moroccan adventures for so long) - my friend A who had lived in morocco for years, and was responsible for us taking our rustic itinerary, had asked us to visit his friend mehdi - but it's one thing getting directions before you get to a place, and then quite another matching those directions to reality! i of course had not imagined the hugeness of the jamaa el fna square or the multiplicity of gates in and out of the square - in any case we valiantly tried several of the gate,s but none of them matched our directions - when i see A soon i will have to find out where we went wrong! (and visiting mehdi will have to be on my list for my next visit to marrakech) - sad to leave morocco tomorrow morning but feeling good that at least we had taken care of paying for our 4 checked bags (insert evil laugh here)...
to sum up - morocco was fabulous - and our tour could not have been better - journey beyond travel had put us in some beautiful places and had connected us with lahsen, which made all the difference - he was kind funny knowledgeable and truly wanted us to have the best time in his country as possible
the food is delicious and the people are extremely friendly and welcoming (i had heard that they don't like americans, but we never saw anything like that anywhere)
marrakech didn't really do it for me - it may have been because it was SO hot most of the time (and having the luggage hassles on our mind much of the time there did not help) - maybe we missed the good times here back in the 60's and now it's simply too crowded? the narrow alleys are interesting, but in the main lined with tourist shops and noisy motorbikes are constantly buzzing right up behind you - our riad was fantastic and of course we did not see much of the city besides the neighborhood around the jamaa - there are definitely some charming aspects to marrakech, like people (women, girls and young men) bringing bread to the communal oven, and of course the beautiful robes worn by both men and women - but in my opinion the real morocco was in the desert and places like the ourika valley and taroudant - that's where i would go back in a heartbeat!
