Bentleys & Sides of Beef

 Bentleys & Sides of Beef

Readers,

For our last full day in Morocco, we decided to actually make something of our  conclusion to our time in Marrakesh by taking ourselves out on the town. Make no mistake, the day started just as late into the afternoon as the day prior. But, we departed from the hotel with the tickets we had booked 30 minutes prior to investigate the botanical gardens in Marrakesh championed by in Paris fashion icon Yves Saint Laurent. The gardens can be described most fully through the culmination of the two following words, overpriced, and underwhelming. For the pretty penny of $90 for the six of us, we were able to entertained for hardly an hour. Although the garden can be largely reflected on as a waste of time by the six of us, the frogs and turtles speckled within the lily pond were something nice to look at as we grew tired of the succulents and palm trees. 

From there we set off to meander our way through the medina in order to get back to the central square where we had been a couple days before. Now when we were waiting for our entry into the gardens, I counted a few Range Rovers and two two-tone Bentleys driving by, and a designer boutique nestled within the garden itself. Walking into the Medina, those symbols of great wealth were quickly replaced with people serving street food out of carts with wooden wheels and sides of beef hanging in the street. So it was quite the contrast from where we started to where we ended on a fifteen minute walk. There’s something especially culturally immersive about the scenes inside an ancient Medina when you walk through them without a guide. You take a turn and you’ve branched from a section with shops offering souvenirs to a outcrop where tradesman stack raw leathers by the meter. Eventually we were able to catch on to parts of the market that we had walked through a couple days prior which helped us to navigate our way back to square with its monkeys and snake charmers. We cozied up in a cafe porch that overlooked the main square of Marrakesh and relaxed for an hour of people watching. 

The day winded down from that point as we made our way back down towards our hotel before stopping at a small French cafe to tuck into some crepes for dinner before ultimately heading back to the hotel for a couple hours of quiet time before bed. The day was a good culmination of our time in Morocco, as it represented the cultural flavor of the country that we had come to recognize over the last two weeks. The African, Arabic, and European styles we had seen throughout all of Morocco were ever present throughout our time in the country did not waiver as we wandered through Marrakesh and Morocco for the last time on this journey. 

Until next time,

Alastair