Monday 08 September, walking through Marrakech
Breakfast is until 10, so we can sleep late and we feel much better than last night. The first thing we do is contact the airport and we are relieved to hear that our luggage has arrived. But we are not in a hurry and we eat our breakfast on the patio of the hotel, next to the small swimming pool. This patio lies all day in the shade, but we can feel it will be a hot day.
Then we take a cab to the airport and Elisabeth still doesn't like the traffic here. We have to wait quite some time before anyone shows up at the lost luggage office, no matter what we do (asking people, telephoning). But eventually we get our bag and that feels quite good, to have our own things with us.

Our hotel is located in Gueliz, a modern neighbourhood of Marrakech and near the main street of Marrakech, Boulevard Mohammed V. We start walking along this road in the direction of the old centre. Most buildings are fairly modern, but we are quite surprised to see an American fastfood restaurant, although the building has been adapted to the style of the country.

There are mosques everywhere with their accompanying minarets and we also see a lot of carriages (called caleches) to drive tourists through the city. It strikes me that the coachmen are much less obtrusive than 13 years ago, when I lived and worked in Morocco for half a year. Tourists were bothered in an aggressive way, but new policies from the police and the city council have changed that.

At Bab Nkob, one of the 20 gates in the almost 17 kilometers long city wall, we enter the Medina, the old centre. On the streets we see all kinds of transportation: bicycles, handcarts, donkey carts, carriages, taxi's, scooters, cars and tourist coaches, all in a jumble. This morning we walk since Elisabeth still has to recover from the taxi drives last night and this morning.

There are many parks in the city and a lot of trees, especially palmtrees which Elisabeth is so fond of. Marrakech is one big oasis, on a plain situated between the Middle and the High Atlas. In this park we have to take a rest in the shadow since it is extremely hot, between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius. This palmtree is huge and has multiple trunks.

From afar one can see this tower, from all directions; it is the minaret of the Koutoubia mosque, the 'Eiffeltower' of Marrakech, also called the guardian of the desert. The 67.5-meter high minaret has been restored beautifully and was first build in the 12th century. In Morocco non-muslems are not allowed into mosques, so we have no pictures of the interior.

In vain we look for cool places, but it is hot everywhere and even the fountains are dry. So we start looking for the nearest bar. There are many of them, although at most places there are no alcoholic drinks. But we are quite happy with coffee, tea and soft drinks.
After this first break we walk on to the nearby Djemaa el Fna, the Assembly of the Dead. This is the famous heart of Marrakech where executions used to take place. Now it is a merry place with lots of entertainment, especially for the tourists, but at night there are also many locals. The Unesco has proclaimed the place an 'oral heritage of humanity'

The first entertainers we see are the snake charmers. I know how keen they are to swindle tourists out of money, so I try to zoom in on the cobras from a distance. But we have been noticed already...

Before we can hold them off we have snakes around our necks and what can we do but make a picture. Even during the process of taking pictures I am negotiating with them about the price: they want to have € 5 for two pictures! It is customary to pay something, since this is what they live from, but 5 Euro is a ridiculous amount, so they get 1. They are not happy with it, but then did we ask for them?
Snake charming is not realy what these men do: the snakes are heavily drugged (and their poison teeth have been removed) and they even have to hit the snakes to get them moving a bit. The music is only there for the tourists since snakes are deaf. They have bad eye-sight but can move a bit with the flute. But it has its charm, although the animal protection societies wouldn't like it.
We sit here for hours and enjoy the vivd scenery but then we want to see more and we enter the souks, small alleys where flamboyant colours prevail. In earlier times trades and crafts were housed together in their own area, but since tourism has grown so big there are more and more souvenir shops in all streets Still, one can recognize the crafts that used to dominate certain districts. Everywhere we see gold and silver, colourful carpets and coloured pottery.