Breakfast at Riad Vert consisted of fresh orange juice, bread and jams, and coffee. Mr F-P asked the lady who served us if I could perhaps have some fruit and yoghurt. She looked at me in that same askance manner, and asked me if I wanted banana, orange and apple. I said oui s'il vous plaît, and she said, in French obviously, that it would take about 10 minutes. So I waited and watched Mr F-P enjoying the bread. There was the lovely French-style bread of the previous night, and also what looked like home-made English Muffins, and some little yeasted pancakes. Eventually my fruit arrived - I'd been anticipating a fruit salad with yoghurt. What I got was a plate with an apple, an orange, a banana and a knife on it. No yoghurt ever materialised. Anyway, I ate the fruit, and drank my juice and we battled our way through a great big pot of 'economy' coffee (hot, dark brown water!). Then we set off to 'town'..........
So, said Dominic when we asked him, to get to the main square, the Jmaa el Fna, all we had to do was to go 'droite et droite et droit sur' (right, then right and then straight on). Sounds simple enough, non? We managed the right and then right, but after that there didn't actually appear to be any 'straight on'! We were trapped in the 13th Century and couldn't find our way out. We passed metal workers' yards with little donkeys and carts waiting outside. At one point someone had tipped a truckload of stones onto the 'road' and were patiently shovelling it into buckets and moving it into a yard, while a lot more people who could have helped stood around watching. There were people carrying covered trays of unbaked bread to the communal ovens. Women in hijabs whizzed past on scooters. Car horns honked constantly and we were forever diving out of the way. I'd got flip flops on and after about 10 minutes my feet were FILTHY! Eventually a kindly local took pity on us and offered to show us the way - for a not-insubstantial sum of money of course! Anyway, above is a photo of the Jmaa el Fna from the cafe Argana, where we finally got a decent cup of coffee!
Once at the square it was easy to find ourselves on the map Dominic had given us, and after our coffee, and after Mr F-P had bought some very cheap Converse trainers, we walked to the new town to get some more money. You can't buy Moroccan currency anywhere except in Morocco, so on the advice of some idiot at Thomas Cook's bureau de change, we had taken our spendoes in Euro Travellers Cheques. Don't do this! We could only find one bank in the whole of Marrakech that would change Travellers Cheques, and their bureau de change was closed from 1 to 3 every day! (we didn't discover this pertinent fact until the following day!).
Anyway, in the new town, after a series of incredibly nerve-wracking road-crossing exercises, we settled at a table outside the Grande Cafe du Poste, which is rather swish and seems to be frequented by Moroccan 'yummy-mummies' with designer babies, designer jeans, huge heads on stick bodies, and trout-pouts. We had mint tea, and then coffee (Mr F-P had a cafe Moroccaine, which was a small stripey one in a little glass, and I had iced, which was a massive black one in a big glass with coffee beans on the top). Then we asked for a table inside so we could have some lunch. For lunch I had grilled sardines with tomato marmalade, and Mr F-P had a cheese omelette. There was lovely bread again. They don't even charge for it you know! Then I fell down the stairs! The floor outside the loo - which was upstairs, and was lovely with little flannels to dry your hands on - was being washed when I came out, and I had flip flops on, as I've already said, and the stairs were marble and spiral, and I managed to slip down the last 5 or so, in a skirt, so no doubt flashed my undercarriage to the 10 waiters who just happened to be standing exactly opposite the bottom of those stairs at the exact moment I fell down! What fun!
So after that excitement, and the very small bill, we went off to catch the open-top tourist bus to have a look at a couple of palaces, the Bahia and the Baadi, one a ruin and the other not.
photos here...... http://www.flickr.com/photos/arowan534/
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