The old city in Marrakesh is so different from the one in Fez. There are wide streets and big open squares and parks everywhere, totally without the narrow, closed in, mazelike feeling of Fez's medina. It's cold here too at night and in the morning, but the sunlight is so direct it warms everything up all through the middle of the day. It's so bright that it hurts my eyes even wearing sunglasses and washes all the color out of everything, making all my photos look almost black and white.
This is apparently by far the coldest as well as the rainiest Moroccan winter ever, which probably has something to do with the fact that it's pretty much the lowest of the low season here now. We are staying in a room in a beautiful riad which we booked for dirt cheap because there are no tourists - we are literally the only guests there.
In the center of the medina are the souks, so colorful and covered in these slat roofs which let all these tiny beams of light in, very beautiful.
The wool hanging around is in the dyer's area, they string it up like that to dry.
The color of Marrakesh is orangey-pink - the houses, the dirt, the wastebaskets, even the city buses are this color, and the sky is so blue...
The smell of Marrakesh is exhaust - the air is so polluted and the cars and mopeds give off such a stink. There are donkeys here everywhere too, like in Fez, with long dirty fur and pulling carts that look much too big for them.
If you go up to the third floor anywhere here you can see the snow-capped mountains around the city.
The trip here from Fez went fine, but was made significantly more uncomfortable by the fact that I had developed a fever the night before we left in addition to the sniffly cold that's been annoying me since Lisbon. So I was popping ibuprofen but still achy, headachy, and miserable throughout the 7 hour train ride in a small compartment packed with people talking to and often yelling at each other very loudly in Arabic. I mean they all seemed perfectly friendly (though very yelly) but it was the last place on earth I wanted to be. Which reminds me of another thing I will never get used to about Morocco: every man I pass on the street talks to me. If he has a shop he tries to get me to buy something, if he doesn't he wants me to pay him to guide me somewhere or else just hit on or harrass me. I can't STAND it. I HATE it when strangers talk to me on the street (except when people say hi in a neighborly way, that's fine.) Even if they mean well it makes me feel awful and when they're obnoxious and pushy I just want to scream. God I miss the midwest sometimes, where people who don't know you have the decency to leave you the fuck alone...
OK, enough complaining. On a side note, I keep getting emails from people who are like, "Are you REALLY going to Israel?" Yes, I am still going unless something catastrophic happens between now and Sunday. But seriously, don't worry, I'm not planning a day trip to Gaza, as if anyone would let me do that anyway.
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