Marrakech: Palace, Spices & Markets

Marrakech is a bustling tourist city, and the fourth largest in Morocco. With its fortress walls and buildings constructed of red sandstone, the city has been given the nickname of the "Red City" or "Ochre City." The walls surround a large market square, with many shop stalls and eateries.

Our first visit of the day was to the Bahia palace. This was not built for royalty, but for a vizier (like prime minister) and his four wives. It was built over 12 years in the late 1880s. With its colorful mosaic tile floors and walls, and decorative painted ceilings, some call it the Alhambra in miniature. At one time carpets would have covered the floors in a pattern woven to match the painted ceiling (or the other way around).

Next, we were told we would visit a spice market. Well, this place called itself an herbal pharmacy and was licensed by the ministry of health. I guess that’s what you want for your cooking ingredients, but it didn’t have the exotic appeal of the spice markets you see in the old movies. Still, we learned a lot and came away with some tagine spices, saffron and other aromatics (coming your way, Ryan and Erin!).

Our last stop of the day was to the garden of French painter Jacques Majorelle, who built a villa and established a kind of experimental garden of cacti and succulent, along with date palms (and we saw a Buddha’s Hand plant in fruit, too!). By the 1950s the site had fallen into disrepair, and in the 1980s, designers Yves-St. Laurent and his business partner took it over and expanded the garden. There is an excellent Berber museum on the site of what used to be the workshop of Yves St. Laurent.

Dinner tonight was at a French restaurant called La Paillote, which means a thatched house in French, and it really did feel like one of the African lodges we’d visited.Read more