we spent about four days in the amazing desert city of marrakech, in the shadow of the snow-capped high atlas mountain range! we were able to stay in a super-nice hotel in the new city using hotel points compliments of a credit card sign up bonus (get at me if you want to get in on the game!). most cities in morocco have a new city where moroccans generally prefer to live and is more modern, and another ancient, walled, car-free part of the city called the medina, which is where most of the excitement for a tourist is.
marrakech is a great place. there is a huge square in the medina called jmaa al fna, the largest and most exciting urban square in morocco. it is filled with stalls selling amazing and cheap fresh-squeezing orange and pomegranate juice, and snake charmers. at night, there are bands playing traditional music, arabic storyellers, and cross-dressing bellydancers, as well as many food stalls with extremely aggressive salespeople. never a dull moment! a moroccan comfort food in the market in marrakech is snail soup, which you can get a bowl of for under one dollar. there are miles of narrow medina passageways surrounding the square, where one can wander for days. that is exactly what we did and it was excellent.
highlights included two hammam experiences on successive days. the first i went to was at a very traditional male-only one called mouassine hammam which is most frequented by the local men of the city for their regular baths. you enter a large, communal, moist room and bath yourself with buckets of water and black olive soap, perhaps helping an old man wash his back if you can understand what he is trying to ask you. i then hired the staff there to give me a rub down with a glove of steel wool, followed by an amazing, aggressive 30 minute massage characterized by a very large man vigorously and systematically attacked every pressure point in my body, including the groin ones and the ones behind the knees. it was very intense but also very relaxing once it was all over. the next day ann and i went to a luxury underground hammam experience at a riad called medina elisa, which was excellent. it was a lot more private and gentle, but again involved another steel wool scrub down, which i would not recommend two days in a row, as my skin was quite pink by that point. there they had a serene pool which we reclined by and then there was a foot massage which was very luxurious. going to a hammam of some variety is definitely the thing to do in marrakech!
