Sardines on the beach and ninja's in Marrakesh

11 - 14 august 2018

The beach in Rabat - quite an adventure 😎

Apparently going to the beach in Rabat is tricky because ... there's just not so much space to fit on there!

We were advised to take a taxi to the private beach of Shkirat. For 200 dirhams (20€) you find a taxi from the marina to the doorsteps of the l'Amphirite Palace hotel. Don’t try to hassle for less as they will not take the toll route, you're trip will be extended by at least 1,5 hours AND you will have to change cars in a shady car park without warning. Later we learned that the colourful “petit taxi’s” cannot cross city borders so it's easier to take a “grand taxi” for great distances.

Arriving on the beach was so impressive that even the private beach (blue umbrella's in the picture above) didn't really tempt us 😐 So the first few hours were spent at the pool.

As the tide decreased we managed to find ourselves some space on the beach to go swimming in those great waves. The water was superb! The ambiance was wonderful as everybody was waiting to body ride the perfect wave.

At the end of the day we felt happy with a sour aftertaste since the entrance fee was 400 dirhams (40€) per person, the food wasn’t great and the place was loaded with people. Exactly what we were trying to avoid and not great for long-time world travellers that have no income and live off a budget 😏
Hello Marrakesh, here we come ! 😜

The connection between the marina and the centre of Rabat is perfect! The tram is clean and cheap.

Don’t attempt to take the bus, it looks like they all barely survived WWI … We took the train to Marrakesh the 12th (6 hour ride) and crossed a beautiful country.

It's not so green as along the coast, but nice rough mountain ranges hide a few oasis here and there.

Passing through cities we noticed lots of garbage (and even a whole cow) was thrown over the walls along the train tracks… It’s a bit of a shock in comparison to Rabat. Out of sight out of ...
Nice villages getting cleaned up mixed with old houses and sheds where people live on the floor surrounded by piles of garbage, I guess you see it in so many places, but I just can't get used to it...

 Already in the middle of the trip, the temperature was about 5°C higher, when we arrived in Marrakesh we were melting! We were grateful to have a private car from the Riad pick us up. Long love airconditioning 😊.



They explained us we wouldn't have found the Riad in the Medina (the old city centre of Marrakesh) and they were right!!!

 

Arrival at the Riad Karmela (http://www.riadkarmela.com/):

We received the Riad with the pool all to ourselves so we could swim (and not bother the other guests) whenever we wanted. And we really swam a lot! 4 times a day we went to cool down. What an idea to visit Marrakesh on the hottest time of the year!

The downside of writing blogs is that you don't notice what's going on in the pool 😬 but neither did the photographer until he looked more closely at the pictures 😏

Another great attraction were the turtles. They put one at our Riad and the children baptised him "Rudy". So Rudy was very playful. He followed us everywhere and just loved to bite our toes! 

A shame we didn't film the time he got hold of Louise's toe as it was quite funny! A big and quite painful yell and Rudy was shaken of in a swirl a few metres away. He instantly got put in the corner as he was "a bad turtle" 😂

The first evening, we passed just a small part of the souks and went to the Jamaa Lafna Square. We quickly lost about 15€ on some henna on our hands and the woman was furious because it wasn’t even enough ! The difference with Rabat is huge. 
Very important was to be able to backtrack our route to find the Riad back 🙉.




Marrakesh is pretty, extraordinary for its history, buildings, for the way people live together, how they try to keep it clean, but… at some places (not all!) you are hustled all the time…

We decided to try the food at the hotel that night which was nice, but we advise you to dine out.

The next day we visited the Marrakesh museum and got lost a few more hours in the souks.

You should visit all artisanal corners of the souks. These streets are nice and relatively calm. The vendors are funny and intrigued by the 3 blonde children and our smallest boy with his nice little monkey. 

An advantage of the souks with children is that everything is at their height also ;-) Even though you have to walk through busy small streets, watch out for bikes and motorcycles (and the occasional horse or tractor), they had so much to see with many products being laid out on the floor. 

After a small stop at the pool we visited the gardens of Majorelle (Yves Saint Laurent), apparently a must…

 

We found it overpriced and minuscule and not really worth the taxi ride… (even though we got some nice pictures 😎) In return, the ice cream and Ginger/lemon ice tea were very nice.

While walking through the souks longer and longer, you notice many more great restaurants and Riads. You can also see them at night, overlooking the roof tops as there the only ones lit up.

One of the restaurants that caught my eye during these walks was the Bigua cafe (http://biguacafe.restaurant/) I promised Mohammed we would come by later and he was very surprised we actually did ;-) I guess everybody says “yes, yes maybe later”, all the time ;-) We can really recommend it. This new place was only open for 20 days and very charming. The food is delicious and the view over the vegetable souk just perfect.

Before going to bed, some refreshment in the pool ...

We could spend easily a week or more in Lisbon, however two days in Marrakesh was sufficient. We took the train back to Rabat…

Rabat ... what a great city. We feel so at ease here.