Impressions of Morocco

I spent 10 days in Morocco (Marrakech and Fes) over Christmas and New Year’s. Some of my impressions:

• Quite a beautiful country, physically. The old towns of Marrakech and Fes — the endless alleyways and crevices, and of course the souks — are quite something to take in. You feel transported back in time as you walk the streets and interact with shop keepers whose families have owned the little candy store or butcher or scarf outlet for more decades than you can count. Outside the cities, the red desert landscape is punctuated by the Atlas mountain range.
• Food tours continue to be a highlight of my trips. The Marrakech city food tour brought us to hole-in-the-wall couscous restaurants that would have been impossible to find otherwise, and brought us face to face with the (whole) cooked head of a sheep. The eyeballs are a delicacy. I can only speak to the taste of the cheek meat…
• Rug negotiations. Morocco is known for their carpets. Rug makers spend years in the mountains hand weaving gorgeous rugs that eventually find their way into the dozens (hundreds?) of rug shops in the cities. Then, the rugs are hawked aggressively to the large numbers of French and Spanish tourists wandering the alleyways. “You want rug? Low price. Only the best price.” That sort of thing. Once inside the shop, the game of salesmanship and negotiation is fun to watch. They’ve been selling rugs for so long that you can bet that every word and expression offered during the display of rugs and discussion of colors, etc. is a refined technique with the aim of moving product.
• Morocco is a Muslim country, so there’s no alcohol served in most restaurants and you don’t see people drinking. (It makes New Year’s Eve a rather sober affair in Morocco.) That said, Moroccan wine is produced and consumed in huge quantities in the country…
• Men rule. During the day, the cafes are occupied almost exclusively by men. The stores are manned almost exclusively by men. “The women are at home,” our driver told us.
• Beautiful chandeliers and wall designs. Even in the most podunk restaurant in a non-hip restaurant, the light fixture will be some crazy ornate work of art. The Moroccan aesthetic is very popular in the U.S. — as a luxury good. In Morocco, the Moroccan aesthetic is…everywhere.
• All hail the king. The King of Morocco, who’s usually stationed in Rabat, came through Marrakech when we were there. News spread and soon thousands of people had lined up along the street to see him. Hours and hours and hours passed. Shops closed. Streets were blocked off. We were stranded — unable to cross a street back to our riad given the road closure. Finally the king’s motorcade whizzed by, the people on the street waved, and two seconds later it was all over. When we asked a guide about the scene later, he said shutting down the economic heartbeat of a city for a full day just so people can catch a glimpse of the king is nuts. “It’s why the government likes its people illiterate and uneducated. They’ll blindly be entranced by the king,” he said.
• Morocco’s riads (hotels inside the medina) all offer hamams; getting your body scrubbed down feels great. It’s crazy how much dead skin comes off. Hamam and regular Swedish massage are dirt cheap in Morocco so you can help yourself to multiple servings of each.

Marrakech is a three hour flight from London. It’s well worth a visit. Read the memoir  “Dreams of Trespass” on the flight over.

Happy 2017. I hope it’s a fun and peaceful year for you, wherever you are…