In this episode.
So
today we're flying from Paris to Morocco to begin
our adventures in the Red City of Marrakesh.
This is the first time I've been on the African continent
and I was happy to mark Morocco as my first country.
It's been a dream destination of mine for many years.
Now, I've always been so fascinated by the architecture,
intricate mosaics and of course, the cuisine.
I done a little research on what to expect in Morocco.
So I knew there would be a bit of a culture shock, but I wasn't expecting this.
Yep. That's a swarm of angry taxi drivers.
So when Jonathan and I arrived at the airport,
we were quickly ushered into one of the cars.
What we didn't know at the time was that he already had a passenger in the front seat.
So as we were leaving,
there was absolute chaos when all the other taxi drivers
were understandably pissed that he had taken two clients.
As I said, not quite the shock I was expecting,
but we ended up making it safely to Riad
Alecia where we were greeted with traditional Moroccan mint tea and sweets.
Jonathan.
Wow.
Are you already digging
our
honeymoon nuts.
Oh, yeah.
This is our honeymoon, by the way,
which is why they had set up the sweetest surprise for us cut.
This rad is so beautiful and you'll see more of it in the room tour.
In the next episode,
our day ended at
square where you can't film anything without being hassled for a tip.
You're all cut up. Let's get into day one.
We decided to introduce ourselves to the city with a tour.
So my name is Yusuf. I was born and raised up inside the old Medina of Marrakesh
and I'm half, half, half
and half Arab.
As you know, as I said earlier, the Buba are the native inhabitants of Morocco.
While the Arabs are the ones who came from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Syria.
So they cross the Middle East
and the Rich North African. I'm a father of three kids,
two daughters and one son. So today I'm going to show you,
you know the maze of the,
the streets, the alleyways, the dead ends.
It's a very exotic place and we invite you to come to see it
with your eyes. Ok.
Yousef was so kind and knowledgeable.
I would highly recommend booking a tour with him for your next trip to Marrakesh.
His information will be linked in the description box below.
Thanks to his knowledge,
we got to these gardens early and you'll see exactly why that's important later
here in the mall
gardens. Also known as the
gardens.
And these were bought by
Jacques
Mall when he came to visit Marrakesh
and fell absolutely in love with this place.
So he took plants from all over the world, planted them here.
But the problem was it is so expensive to maintain and being a painter,
your art work is often not worth much until you're
dead.
So
what happened is he ran out of money, divorced, his wife, moved back to Paris
and got into a bad accident.
So these gardens fell into complete disrepair because
no one could take care of them.
So I
started negotiating for these gardens in 1966.
It's not until 1980 that they bought this place. Yves,
Saint Laurent
loved these gardens so much actually
that he wanted his ashes to be spread when he died.
And that's exactly what happened in 2008 when Yves,
Saint Laurent's ashes were spread around the garden.
This Electric Blue house is now home to
be
bear,
which showcases over 600 artifacts from Morocco's indigenous people.
The Berbers, the shade of blue that the house is painted in is called Blue Mall
named after
Jacques Mall
himself and has even been patented.
It is made from a precious stone called La la
which can be ground to a powder and used as a pigment.
Tickets haven't got
with
change.
We
cause I'm waiting,
what's wrong baby,
but we have to go to the next place. So
in recent years,
this garden has become incredibly popular and now ranks as one of
Morocco's most visited tourist attractions with around 900,000 visitors a year.
Remember what I said about the early bird catches the worm,
a long line right there.
We arrived a little after nine AM and walked right inside.
But by the time we left around 10 30 this was the line.
So if you don't wanna deal with the crowd or waiting the line,
I highly recommend arriving within the first hour that the garden is open.
Our
next stop is Bahia
Palace which means brilliance in Arabic.
It was built between 18 66 and 18 76 and features over 150 ornately decorated rooms
in every palace.
There are four layers to a room, cedarwood,
then plaster tile and marble on the floor.
The cedarwood ceilings are painted with natural pigments
orange from hena yellow, from saffron green,
from wild mint blue from indigo flowers and purple from
jacaranda flowers.
All of the plaster you see is carved by
hand and typically consists of Arabic phrases or poems.
And by the way, all the noble families during the old time took it as a rule
to keep the whole place and the whole palace very simple from outside,
but very beautiful and very orated from inside.
And this was done on purpose
because
you know, so that the poor would not hold grudge against the rich.
In fact,
the Vizi would only choose naturally blind
musicians to perform at the palace because they
would not be able to reveal the opulence and wealth to the outside world.
This courtyard was the mistresses section.
It's large because the grand vizier loved women so
much that he had four wives and 24 mistresses,
all of their rooms face his grand courtyard.
And on the other side is an entrance to a beautiful garden.
So just imagine how much water do we need to keep those gardens green all the time.
So during the old time,
Morocco used a system of aqueducts
to push the water from the high Atlas mountains to the city,
relying on gravity
to chisel that fountain over there
takes a lot of time and we value anything that is hand made.
And that's why we try to teach
the work of the hands like the work of tiles chiseling the marble cheese,
limp the plaster so that this kind of work would not die out.
Our guide Yusuf was saying that one kg of sugar was treated for one kg of marble.
And as you can see, there's lots of marble on the.
So
I wonder how much sugar is here?
We exported a lot of sugar
to eat late to have marble in return. But we use this sugar
in the Moroccan
tea.
That's what was so addicted
to sugar.
The stained glass windows were one of my favorite parts of the Baja
Palace
when the sun shines through, it leaves rainbows on the walls.
So we were joking with, you said that the owner of this palace had 24 wives.
I
think one is already too much
problem.
One is enough, one is enough. One is enough enough enough.
One of the first things I noticed about Marrakesh
is the contrast between the peace and calm of the inside of the buildings
and the chaos and noise outside.
The second was how friendly and close knit the whole community is.
As we walk through the old Medina,
you'll notice use of our guy greeting everyone as we pass.
See,
the donkeys are equipped with the diapers to catch
the pool and to keep the city clean.
The poop is Cooper.
Our first stop in the old Medina is the community oven.
I
would like to show you here a very, very, you know, beautiful rustic
primitive place where time is so frozen.
So here we have what is called Far.
Far
means the community of
a community or
a
place where
the locals around this place, bring the dough
to be cooked in that fireplace. I want you to squat down
and have a look how big the fireplace is.
It's so big and so huge that the guy has some puddles
on the right to flip the bread or to take the bread out of the fireplace.
This place also is used to roast the peanuts, almonds and what not.
And the afternoon, it can be used like a place to cook the Moroccan pastry.
So when I was a little boy,
one of the chores I did was to take the dough to the community of every day.
So we don't want those places to die out with time.
And that's why, you know, we contribute with what we can
to leave them doing this kind of job. So every single neighborhood has
one mosque,
one
is the best where we wash our bodies. One community often like this
one community, you know
a fountain
and a small market for vegetables and fruit.
So those places you know, make people here very close to each other.
Everybody knows everybody inside the old medina,
everybody talks to everybody inside the old medina and you
cannot imagine how much talking we do every day.
We can spend the whole day long talking. Do you know why
we have a lot of time?
Some people have watches.
Some people have time.
So normally people splash the water on the floor
to settle down the dust because in Marrakech, we have a lot of dust.
The souk is a tornado of smells. At times.
You could easily tell where you were just by the smell
from the leather to the spices, carpets and blacksmith areas.
The pungent smells were always changing.
So the whole sok is divided into section as well.
The spice market, the carpet market,
the blacksmith area.
So the leather market and in some places like the places we saw earlier,
it's all mixed together.
But in other areas,
it's divided into sections like this because the overlapping bricks are red
because they have a lot of steel and iron.
And that's why Marrakech is called the Red City.
We took this time with Yusuf to really familiarize ourselves with
the maze of the souk and how to navigate it.
In a later episode,
Jonathan and I will try to tackle it all on our own and buy some things along the way.
This is,
we use Noga in it, sesame. You know, honey, sugar, flour, salt.
It's very, very tasty and very sweet, very sweet.
Normally, it's very popular during Ramadan time,
we break the fasting with something sweet.
So it's very, very famous.
This is like
the
of the Moroccan pastry. This one,
Josef
has been so kind to share it with us. I'm so happy. We have a local showing us around
and getting us the most interesting prices. Obviously,
what we call the Fatima's hand.
It's used like a token to chase away the evil eye and it brings luck to people.
So you may find that like a knock off a door
like a piece of decoration.
If it is down like this, it brings luck if it is pointing upward,
it words up evil, see very beautiful, full of cutters.
The auction takes place in the middle of this square
after the third time of praying,
you know, like 4 35 you know, when people finish their praying,
they go out and start the auction and carpets here.
So you tell me why a lot of people come here. They come just for this.
This is so magical. So
uh uh uh mind blowing as the Americans say, drop dead gorgeous.
I have to agree. The lantern section of the soup was my favorite.
All the light shining onto the brass was in fact, drop dead gorgeous.
Yes.
The blacksmith area was my second favorite.
I just love seeing the artisans hard at work on their craft.
After saying goodbye to Yusuf. We headed back to the
past
for lunch.
This one was seafood, but my favorite is the chicken one.
It's sweet and savory because it has apples and almonds in it.
Trust me, it sounds weird. But you have to try it.
If you listen closely,
you can hear the call to prayer which rings up
from mosques around the city five times a day.
You don't.
We spent the rest of the afternoon lounging the pool and then enjoyed a nice dinner at
rooftop.
Welcome
in the next episode.