It was our first day in Marrakech. Continuing with our walk in the Place Jemaa-el-Fna after dark. Catch Part 1 here if you missed it. Feel free to browse earlier posts about other places and more photos. Use the tags or the archives feature at the bottom of the page.
To accompany this post, there is another track of Gnaoua found on Spotify.
spotify:track:449a4Fbj7MwXAQvkEHfK3E
The square is not really a square but a huge polygon where multiple streets and alleys converge. More people came to the square than in the afternoon.
There were numerous fruit juices carts (orange is abundant in Morocco); and dried fruit and nuts stalls – dates, many different kinds (medjool, sukkari, etc), walnuts, dried apricots and figs.
Along one side of the square is an entrance to the souk, a traditional market catering to the common daily needs of the locals, and tourists. We went in there later with a guide. If you are visiting for the first time, direction challenged, nervous and/or inexperienced traveler, please, please get a local guide before venturing into a souk. It’s a crazy maze in there.
A few stalls sell handcrafted lamps – metal with stained glass seemed popular.
Argan oil products are ubiquitous – for consumption (by locals mostly) and cosmetic uses – it became very popular in the 2010s around the world – and we encountered many shops and co-operatives selling it for all kinds of aliments and beauty treatments. It is the quintessential modern day snake oil. The oil is not without its merits but it has been over-marketed.
Who cares? We’re tourists! It’s our job to buy needless, useless things when vacationing. So we happily bought some (and lotsa other stuff that we now just look at and think, hmm…what do we do with this one? Why did we get it? What’s it for?).
These stools were placed there by henna artists with photos of their body art designs – mostly hands.
Henna is a temporary plant-based dye applied to the body as one goes through major life events, such as a wedding. Men also wear it.
It was after our dinner, we walked and looked around for a short while, some of us were jet lagged (and some of us didn’t sleep well the night before so was sleep walking at this point) so we decided we can all go for some dessert and/or coffee/tea. We see this brightly lit building and thought hey, look! Looks like a nice cafe, let’s go there.
The cafe was on the 2nd floor. We walked in and there it was: a metal detector. It’s a cafe not a jewelry store. Also, the metal detector was situated so that one can sorta go around it if you didn’t want to go through it. There was no guard or personnel to tell customers that everyone needs to go through the metal detector. So WTH? Chris did a quick research after we got home and found out that while Morocco is one of the safest, moderate Islamic countries, a suspected bomb blast killed 17 people in 2011 in Café Argana, the brightly lit building in the back of the picture. The same brightly lit building that housed the cafe that we went to to have some dessert. But that was 9 years ago: the metal detector was not even on when we went in that evening.
There was never any sense of danger – not even a checkpoint – while we were in the country. I(Chris) went to Jordan, another very safe country in the middle east, and Morocco appeared even more relaxed. In comparison, the metro stations in the center of Beijing and Moscow deployed metal detector for passengers and x-ray machines for bags.
Yeah, that was Chris. This is me (Sue): OMG, danger, danger! I have never seen so many motorcycles in one place in my life. China had bicycles; Marrakesh has motorcycles. They were everywhere; big streets, small streets, narrow alleys, if it’s wide enough to fit a motorcycle, it will be there. And the fumes from them motors !!! Just thinking about it is making my eyes water and lungs quiver in fear.
Anyway, after our dessert, we were walking back towards our riad and came across this really pretty store (left, photo below). First, the ground right in front of the store was decorated with flower petals (very colorful and pretty) and there was incense smouldering so the area smelled really nice. So you’re led with sight and smell to this store that sold spices, soaps (the famous savon noir) and fragrance stuff. In the picture below, you see the colorful cones? They are spices. In powder form. How is that shape maintained? We stared at that for a while (and tried not to breathe too heavily in case we messed up that cone shape).
It’s our first night in a new city none of us have ever been to, so we were all very excited and roaring to spend tourist money. We spent a lot of time here. We learned during our stay in Morocco that when you enter a shop, you are usually greeted by the shopkeepers with mint tea. So we had our tea (different kinds, including eucalyptus – feeling tired? smell the eucalyptus crystals, it’ll clear your nose and open your eyes) and bought stuff.
After our shopping spree, we headed down rue des Banques (entrance flanked by Le Marrakchi and Cafe de France) to return to our riad.
A truly unique place.
If you like night markets, check out our posts on Hong Kong’s Chinese new year flower market (here and here) and the night market just outside Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia (here and here).
#morocco #marrakesh #maroc #maghreb #argan