A week of vacation - Marrakesh and the Riad Ambre et Epices

The most beautiful place we stayed. This riad is down twisty empty alleys - we were sure we were being taken somewhere to be shot and never seen again. What a gem!

The people who work here are, as usual, incredibly friendly. There's nice music playing in our courtyard in the mornings and afternoons, and we have breakfast on the roof terrace.

It's so soothing to just rest here. I had a lovely hammam and am laying on the bed in peace and quiet, getting ready to go out to dinner. We're going to a restaurant called Azar- it's a Moroccan inspired Lebanese restaurant. It's right next to another restaurant that, despite the name, we decided not to go to:

A week of vacation - here's how to keep bees out of your mint tea in Morocco

After a hike in Chefchaouen, we wanted some refreshing mint tea. We stopped at a beautiful little cafe on a hillside and asked for tea and water. The waiter and the owner tried to dissuade us from ordering tea - they said the bees would attack us. But we thought we'd be clever and cover our glasses with napkins and drink from straws.
The waiter told us when he arrived with our tea that the straws would melt. He had brought a huge bottle of water with just one glass, and two tall glasses of tea with saucers to cover them. It would be up to us to figure out how to drink from the glasses.  Here's what we ended up doing!

The end of work, the beginning of vacation

Where did the time go? We had just gotten to know one another on the team and then suddenly, four weeks have passed, the work has finished, Warren is here with me, and we are on vacation! How did that happen?

Our final presentation with our client was met with applause and incredibly generous gifts - they really appreciated the work we did. We are proud of what we accomplished and I hope to see some results in a few years. After we were finished, they gave us each a carpet and a wood desk set, and for the women, a jewelry box. They are so kind!!!
Warren arrived and met the team. We stayed up way too late on Friday night and by Saturday, he started getting a cold. Darn. Saturday we walked around Casa a bit and said individual goodbyes to our teammates as they left hour by hour for home or for their own separate vacations.

Later Saturday, Warren and I drove to Fes, where we spent a wonderful night in a very nice riad called Dar Fes Medina. It's a tiny home just inside the medina, owned by a special family. We were served tea upon arrival and talked a while before settling into our room.

 This courtyard was beautiful - where breakfast is served.

We walked around a bit of the medina and had dinner outside the medina in probably the best restaurant so far (with the exception of the JMSuites hotel of course.) It was called Medina Cafe - just outside the blue gate and up the hill from where you can take a photo with two minarets in the background. The proprietors are a husband and wife - there's a roof terrace that's very nicely, simply kept with plants and vines. I had the preserved lemon chicken and it was the best so far of all in Morocco. Warren's vegetable soup was simple and nice. We had mint tea to soothe Warren's sore throat and we felt like we left the buzz of Fes behind for a few hours. The bill was tiny compared to other restaurants - 150dh for the two of us (under $20.)

We slept well and long, and on Sunday we went to the antique shop that belongs to the father of the owner of the hotel. What gorgeous things he had! We were served tea of course, and the father - 82 years old and up & down the stairs like a 60-year old - brought out carpet after carpet for us to see. He had a great sense of humor. He wanted to trade a carpet for me, as he wanted another wife. We ended up with two beautiful runners - one for our hallway in our house and another for my quilt room.

We barely scratched the surface in Fes, but we did visit a Koran school, the food market, and of course there were loads of cats everywhere. Here are a few photos:

 The school - the walls in plaster and the ceiling all in wood above.

 Note the chickens in the foreground. If they're sold, they'll make a nice dinner. If not, they'll live another day.

cats
cats
cats

Rick's Cafe American

A night at Rick's cafe complete with craps table,

playing the video, drinking a Casablanca beer,

Beautiful lamps, 

A pretty private dining room,

Even Sam's piano on the right at 3:00.

And waiters in fez hats!

The third weekend: Marrakech is the craziest place I've ever been!

Our 130km drive to Marrakech turned into 2 or 3 hours, of course, with all the traffic, and then it took a while to find the Riad Africa which turned out to be four or five twisty turns on foot through dark alleys with many cats skulking about. All we saw were stone and stucco walls but when we opened the iron door into our Riad, it was an oasis.

Two small refreshing looking pools (one the size of a hot tub) and nicely decorated rooms. Our room I shared with Brittany and Cathy was small but for two days of just sleeping and showering, we thought it would be fine. All good till we actually tried the shower and the drain clogged, and water backed up onto the floor!









 
We went out into the cool evening to a huge square with throngs of people milling about - it was wild. From vendors of fruit juices and street food to snake charmers and horse-driven carriages, it was a scene right from Indiana Jones.





We took pictures of our 'entrance' back into our alley to our Riad so that we wouldn't get lost in the square and not know how to get back. Little did we know that this arch looks like all the others.











 I'm constantly amazed by how the cats just hang out with all the noise, people, scooters, and craziness. They are just used to it.








 A great night's sleep with air conditioning that rocked! It was good to be cold once again. It'd been a while since we felt that.

We woke up Saturday morning to a lovely, slow breakfast on the terrace and then the rest of the group went to tour the palace while I decided to explore the medina.









We would hook up at lunch. I was determined not to buy anything until Prashant was with me, as he is the master bargainer in our group. He actually enjoys the process of haggling. Here is a quick tutorial: ask the vendor for the price of something and he will probably start telling you all about the quality and how the item is made by hand. Interrupt as much as you need to, asking again for the 'opening' price. When he finally gives to a price, no matter what he says, look offended and say "No, way too much. I will find another shop" and walk away.

He will be sure to follow you, "Madame, madame, viens. How much you want to pay?" at this point you take his price and cut it in half, minus 10%. So if the bag you wanted was quoted 800 ($125) to start, offer 350. Now he will be upset and start talking again about the quality. He might even shame you by telling you the work was done by an old blind woman or a child. That's when it really begins. From there you can nickel and dime up and down a bit but don't come too far from your 350, and you'll end up at 400. Maybe 375 at the end. I don't find this fun at all, especially when he looks hurt. So I let my friend, Prashant, do the bargaining for me. He loves doing this.

This is a view of the spice market from where we had lunch. The umbrellas are REALLY needed. It got so hot I couldn't bear it. Around 100 degrees F. I don't know how they can do that day in and out, and it's apparently not even hot yet!

The avocado juice is surprisingly lovely. A bit of lemon and sugar - it's very refreshing. My new favorite. But not all the time. It's quite filling. So maybe instead of lunch, it's good, or if you're really hungry.

Ahhhh, le savon noire. Black soap. This is what's used in the Hammam to soap yourself up and then use a very strong, coarse mitt to literally take off the top few layers of skin. See my first blog about that. This stuff looks gross but smells delicious. I got four pots of different fragrances. I'm hoping to be able to get enough steam going in my sauna at home to show some of my friends how it works. Makes me want to open a Hammam in Boulder. I think it would go over really well there, given how dry it is.

The nuts and dried fruits are amazing, and plentiful. Every morning at our hotel there are dates, raisins, nuts, figs, and something else special - it's beautiful all piled up like this.

These are literally cats on a hot tin roof. These kittens were playing on the roof at the restaurant, crawling up and down the rugs that hung between floors. They were adorable! Of course I fed them the leftovers after our lunch.

At night we went to La Tijane and had drinks before they kicked us out for not ordering dinner. We had eaten at the souk and weren't hungry. Too bad, we'd have probably spent as much money on beers and wine if they'd allowed us to stay. These lamps are everywhere. I love them, but it's one of those things that, if I brought it home, I'd say "what was I thinking?" because it wouldn't match anything in my house.

Evening - 8:30ish - in the main square at Marrakesh.

Beautiful sweets that look better than they taste.

I am not sure what this is - a door to a mosque in the medina or possibly to a school, but it's absolutely gorgeous.

This is the view of the terrace at the top of our Riad. There are places to sit all around the square, and a resident cat who's lovely.

The little kitten below is sleeping in a pile of discarded leather, at a leather shop with an amazing amount of noise all around.

This must be the above cat's sibling - they were all together. S/he's just about to fall asleep.

More shots of the shopping.

More herbs and things to burn, and some spices.

I think this is sandalwood on the right, and musk on the left. Can you smell it just by looking at it?

Note the bodyguard at the bottom left of the doorway to this pretty restaurant or tea room. These cats are everywhere, and at night you see plastic bottles that have been cut off half-way up, one filled with water and one with cat food, all around every street in every city we've been to.

#ibmcsc, #morocco, #ibmcscmorocco5

The second week continues ... clarity!

We're getting more clarity on our data and how we're going to respond to our client, and we're getting to know each other a bit better. It's time to reach out beyond our team of four people and make sure we take advantage of the knowledge of other team members. Tuesday night, Sayoko (from Japan) and Brittany (from Washington DC) and I went back to the Hammam for round two (for me - it was the first time for the other two women.) I can't believe that my skin is even MORE soft now than I've ever known it to be. It's amazing. I do feel a bit soggy and it's getting more hot and humid here, but I can't stop petting my arms. :) After our Hammam, the three of us had dinner at our hotel and really enjoyed the singer who's there every night. It's funny because he mouths (sings) the words of popular American songs but he clearly doesn't know what he's saying and many words don't come out quite right, but he gets the idea.
On Wednesday we visited three different areas during the day - a transportation/logistics trade show for all the training groups (private trainers and our OFPPT client), then we went to the school of textiles, where people learn sewing and maintenance of sewing machines. That was really interesting - made me think of my grandmother's business where she had many seamstresses all sewing on big industrial machines at the same time. There were Pfaffs, Necchis, Singers, and Rimoldi (?) machines. And last, we went to the IT school to learn about their curriculum - Networking, Development, and Telecom, for the most part, but they also get some CISCO and Microsoft certifications from some classes.
Wednesday night we went to a great restaurant right on the water near the lighthouse (pictures to come) called le Cabestan. The women were dressed to the nines in some of the shortest skirts I'd ever seen - I guess they trade in their jelabas and kaftans and come out at night as a new person. The meal was great although it was a long day and a long night. We met Nicole, the wife of our IBM contact here in Morocco (Nabil), who is an American from Seattle, who's settled in Morocco in Environmental Engineering and Environmental Accounting (whatever that is). We also met the IBM Communications contact person, Nadia, who told us about some possibilities for our project. A late night - bed at midnight. Thank goodness we don't have to be up super-early on Thursday.

A weekend in the North of Morocco - Chefchaouen and Tangier

We spent the weekend in the north - Chefchaouen, the Blue City, and then Tangier. We were cursed by fate ... we should never have left on Wednesday night for Fes and then come back to work Friday, only to leave again Friday in the same direction. We should just have taken Friday off from work and made up the time later. Friday afternoon we all tried to leave the office early to get a head start on traffic, but we didn't manage to leave Casa till 5pm. We got up to Rabat by 6:30, had a quick dinner at the mall where we met the team that works on tourism, and we were about to make our way to Chefchaouen (another 3 hours of driving, the last 90 minutes of which is a winding mountain road) when we realized that no one had picked up the suitcases of the Rabat team back at the hotel.  What to do? We called the hotel and for 800 dirhams (about $100) they would send a car up with the three bags. So we sat at the mall and waited nearly three hours. Our poor driver was furious - he was the one who had the hard drive ahead of him. We didn't blame him but what could we do? We arrived in
'Chaouen at 2:30am and had a short, hard sleep.

Saturday we were on our own. It was lovely to wake up at 10, have a leisurely breakfast on the terrace in the cool mountain air, and then look forward to a day of browsing through the relatively small Medina of buildings, most of which are various shades of light blue. The reasons for the blue ranged from stories of honoring the Jews who had settled in this place to the way it kept things cooler, to it keeping flies away. I believe all the stories! I decided to go out alone - it is a small, safe town. I met many lovely cats along the way, and I realized two things: first, that cats are well loved in Morocco. They are outside animals except a few spoiled ones, but they are taken care of. Second, all the female cats I saw were pregnant. So spaying and neutering is not a big thing. Too bad.

After meandering a while I was approached buy a young (30ish) man who wanted to know if I would like to see handmade rugs and tapestries from his cooperative. He spoke to me in very good English and so I began to follow him. Soon we were winding our way through emptier and narrower pathways and I wondered if I were making a mistake, but we ended up going down into almost a cave that opened into a huge 3 or 4 rooms with rugs, carpets, and other woven treasures everywhere. This young man (Baba) and his brother work in the co-op and their father travels to the Berber villages buying. It turned out that the brother studied accounting and business at OFPPT, the vocational school that is our client! He proudly brought out his workbook with the OFPPT logo and showed me!
I was so excited and told him all about the work we are doing and before I knew it, I was sitting having sweet mint tea and bouncing ideas off him. The two brothers called a friend of theirs, an older retired gentleman from the UK who, many years go, had befriended the family and had become like an uncle to them. We exchanged stories, looked at rugs, and two hours later I was promising to come back with my husband in three weeks to buy some rugs.

I was so buoyed by my visit and my adventure that I must have been glowing, because when I stopped in a small square to pet a very pregnant black cat, another man struck up a conversation with me as he saw how content I was, just petting the cat. Our conversation was in French, and he told me of his sister who lives in LA, his mother who died recently, and his brothers who live south. I waited for him to ask me to buy something or see his store, but that never came. He wished me a good afternoon and I was on my way, meandering to and fro until I found a gorgeous stall of the most beautiful fabrics I'd seen.

Oh, the cottons and wools and silks. I had promised myself I would wait to buy anything "big" until I came back with Warren, but I just couldn't help myself. The owner, who was happily watching his soccer game, did not bother getting up and pushing fabrics to me, thankfully, so I could browse and handle the pieces as I liked. I asked (in French) if he took credit cards, as I didn't want to end up as I'd one before, without cash, and he said yes!

Mom and Dad had given me birthday money and told me to "Rock the Kasbah" and since the shop was near the Kasbah (fortress) of Chefchaouen, I decided it was a good omen. After about 30 minutes I had narrowed my choices down to three pieces; each was about 1.5 meters by 2 meters. I pulled out my card and he waved his finger: no cards accepted. I realized then that he really spoke no French except for a few numbers - the prices. So I ended up with just one piece. He told me 250 but I pulled out a 200 bill (about $25) and gave it to him. He wrapped my fabric in a package and I left, feeling like I has successfully bargained to both our satisfaction. The fabric is so gorgeous, I would have paid a lot more, but I remembered reading and being told that one simply must bargain. It's just the way things are done!

After that I ran into half the group and we had lunch one the third floor terrace of a restaurant whose spiral staircase was so tiny and steep it was hard to get up. Another lovely kitty joined us and I gave her all the shrimp off my shrimp pizza. We spent the last hour at the stalls right near the hotel and we were all ready and waiting with our bags when our driver appeared at 4pm. Off to Tangier!  
   
The road to Tangier reminded me so much of Colorado, with beautiful mountains, pine trees, and steep roads. Except it was quite green - and 90 minutes later we arrived in a clean, bustling city that was much more modern than Casa. The hotel Chella was old but spacious, and it had a beach club restaurant (right on the beach, yes) that we went to for a dinner of fish of every kind imaginable. I shared a paella with my roommate, Sue, and we watched the sun go down and people riding horses on the surf. Our group loves to share food so even though people seem to be getting colds from one another - maybe it's inevitable - we all love to taste everything.  Sue, who isn't feeling great, and I walked back to our hotel around 11:30 while the others just got started with the band at midnight and stayed out till after 2.

Sunday morning we met up with Imane, who works for the NGO non-profit group that has arranged all the details of our visit to Morocco. She related stories of the great things the (relatively) new King has done since coming into power, like helping the position and regard of women and freeing prisoners who had been convicted for speaking against the former regime. Apparently this new King is quite progressive and well liked. He certainly has great ideas for the OFPPT.

Tangier is her home town, and while she works these four weeks in Casa, her mom is taking care of her 10-month old son. Imane showed us around her city, including the beautiful beaches on the Atlantic side, and then to her favorite cafe, Hafa, perched steeply on the mountainside above where the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea meet, with a gorgeous view over to the European continent, just 16 miles from the African one. We had arabic coffees and sweet mint tea in glasses for about $1.25 each and could have spent the whole day in that peaceful place. But we walked to the kasbah, then to the souk (marketplace) and picked up some flowers and nougat gifts as we were going to be guests at Imane's home.

Imane's family home is truly a palace by our standards. Outside, it is very much like a new home in Cyprus - walled, three stories, and stucco. But inside, it is decorated with beautiful tile, marble, and cushions of vibrant turquoise and red. We were there for a few moments when Imane and her brother (who, by the way, studied at U of CO, Denver, for two years before moving to Dubai because he was too cold in CO) served us tea, coffee, and a spread of savory and sweet pastries that were better than anything we'd eaten since arriving in Morocco.

We ate and drank and laughed and by 4, we were back on our bus, this time with Imane, on the way back to Casa at a decent hour (hopefully by 8) so we could prepare for our second week with our clients. It turned out to be 9:30pm or 10pm but that was OK. Off to bed!