Miss Chief in Marrakech

Miss Chief in Marrakech

Madrid, Mumbai, now Marrakech...travel by alliteration it seems.

A trip to Morocco dovetails quite nicely after India. After having honed my pedestrian and bargaining skills between rickshaws and stalls in India, I slipped into the pace of life in the medina with relative ease.

Sun-soaked days filled with smoke, smells of simmering spices and swirling dust...there may be no finer place on earth to lose one's self than the medina in Marrakech.

Literally.

You will get lost. I promise.

Miss Chief's top three medina tips:

1 CARRY CHANGE

Once you get dirhams, change a few so that you have a pocket brimming with 1 dirham coins. Trust me, these will come in veeery handy whenever you need to pull out a map and are immediately swarmed by 12 children dying to show you the way. Change is also helpful in larger quantities for convincing vendors to allow you to take photos if you're not planning on buying anything from them.

2 LEARN FRENCH

Hone your bartering skills in French. English will only get you as low as an 80% markup, I'm quite convinced.

3 TAKE TURNS

As sketchy as it may seem, definitely take that turn. Yes, down that narrow passageway. Yes, past those men whose eyes are hungry for your tourist dollars. More likely than not you'll stumble into an entirely new market or square...but at the very least you'll come across a lovely lost little corner ripe for photos.

Jemaa al Fnaa

















Upon arrival we dropped everything and followed our Riad host's map to the Jemaa al Fnaa, the major square in the medina. Very quickly we came to understand that his straight line was actually rather conceptual in nature as it turned out to include several sharp turns, leaving us only slightly convinced that we were on the right path. We ducked through darkened passageways with people closing up shop for the night, peered into dimly lit rooms teeming with ceramics and antiques and food, and slowly began to wrap our head around our new labyrinthine surroundings.

The Jemaa al Fnaa really is a fantastic place to start. Surrounded by stalls selling fresh orange juice and snail stew, men peddling holistic medicines and aphrodisiacs, and women pleading to give you a henna tattoo, the center is a massive scene to take in at once. Line after line of brightly lit dining establishments with open kitchens billowing smoke and strong wafts of fish, kebabs and lamb form a nerve center of activity. Off to the north is a square of barely visible but very animated performers, acrobats and storytellers, each surrounded by hundreds of rapt spectators.

















Snake charmers, trained monkeys, fortune tellers, and mopeds zigzagging through self-prescribed routes bombarded whatever was left of my sensory intake as I wandered around, constantly refocusing my perspective from the larger spectacle to small rituals and exchanges, then pulling back and taking it all in again.

Needless to say, I slept quite well that evening.