We be djammin

Wow.

Winston Churchill used to refer to Marrakech as the Paris of Africa.  He was right.  What a beautful, gracious, and interesting city!

Coming into town on the train, one notices immediately the garden quality of the city.  There are extensive gardens everywhere.  Horse drawn carriages are a common conveyance.  Our minivan-cab took us to a parking lot near the hotel. From there we had to walk three blocks, as the hotel is located inside the medina and the roads are too small for cars.

The Medina, built in the 12th century, is a maze of cobblestone pathways that are shared by pedestrians, carts, scooters, playing shildren, and lots of cats.  There is no grid system here, there are lots of dead ends, and everything is in Arabic.  Google maps does not have the pathways, you must find your way out to the main street in order to navigate.

And we did just that, with the help of several children that wanted the Coke I was carrying.  Cheaper than a GPS.

We wandered down to the Djemma al Fna, the largest public square in Africa.  Here you can find musicians, jugglers, vendors, snake charmers, acrobats, and dozens if not hundreds of food stalls.  The barbeque smoke fills the air with fragrance and fog.  There are 10,000 people here if there are two.  The whole thing is somewhat overwhelming, but alive and real.  While there are tourists here, mainly Europeans, most of the people are native.  This is a real place.

Enough for this evening, I'll grab another Coke in case I need directions back to the Riad.