First day on the Tour - Historic Marrakech

Tuesday - the day after Thanksgiving - and my feet survived a 2nd day of hours of walking in +30C weather...

Up and at it early for our first day of guided tours starting at 8:30 - the first time with the full group.  We come from all over... New York, Minneapolis, Hong Kong, Munich, Manhattan (Upper East Side)' Parsippany (NJ), Danbury (Conn), Kew Gardens and Edmonton!  

Mustafa, our local guide, took us on a forced march to several historical sites all the while trying to keep us within our 3 1/2 hr time limit.  Such an impossible task for Marrakech newbies - herding cats is probably easier!  

First stop was the Koutoubia Minaret, a 300 foot tower that's part of the largest mosque of the Western Muslim world.  This mosques holds 22,000 people at once.  It's filled Fridays at noon during the only day where people are obliged to pray in a mosque.  You can see the minaret across the city and the daily calls to prayer are delivered from here by the imam.  The current mosque replaced the original mosque several centuries ago and the ruins of the original are in the same courtyard.  There are 479 mosques in Marrakech and over 49,000 mosques in Morocco..  

Next stop was the El Badi Palace (means The Marvel), a 16th century palace for entertaining visiting princes and diplomats.  Today it is in ruins, destroyed in the 17th century, by a rival but filled with nesting storks which are considered sacred!  The original courtyard is still intact and contains a central swimming pool (with water for the birds) surrounded by 4 empty smaller ones and 4 sunken orange grooves!  Some of the original tile work in the underground rooms still remains as well.  

Third was the La Bahia Palace, once home to a harem - 4 real wives and 24 harem girls, gifts to the Sultan and usually underaged!  The Sultan lived to be 61 yrs old - old for that time.  Amazing what sex every night can do to extend your life!!  Another interesting, but less so, part of the visit was the intricate carved wood and stonework as well as oh so beautiful symmetrical gardens.  Mustafa spent quite some time talking about the  teachings and principles of Islam as well as the history of the Berbers as leaders of the country and subsequent Arabic takeover in the 7th century, still in place today.  It was a history class in the shade of stone arches - very similar to the old ways of teaching in Marrakech.  Wow!!

Fourth tour stop was the Ali Ben Youssef Medersa, very well preserved 16th century Koranic school, North Africa's largest.  The school housed 900 students from around the world in 130+ rooms while students lived in their own homes.  

Finally, we entered the medina through back alleys and took the zig zag route to the front.  Managed to loose one of our party on the way as well. Thanks goodness we had an agreed upon meeting point in the central square.  Lunch beckoned although the cafe canopy didn't provide much relief from the sweltering heat.  No shopping today.  Napping was the activity of choice - and we missed happy hour!

I think our guide thought we were hungry for North American food so for supper he took us to......wait for it......a Pizza Hut!  The entire group wanted elsewhere so we walked and walked and walked (see the theme - walking) to Charly's Cantina - an interesting blend of Italian pizza/pasta and Moroccan cuisine.  Had a chance to try Flag Special, the local beer.  

Tomorrow we leave Marrakech for Ait Ben Haddou where we'll 'Rock the Kasbah'!