Monday, July 21, 2014

Riad l'Orangeraie


I think if I had thought about it longer and harder, visiting Morocco would have freaked me out a little more than it did. I actually thought on the plane ride to Marrakech that this was way too adventurous for me and that I should have stuck with the United States and western Europe as my vacation stomping grounds. But by then, of course, it was way too late and there was no turning back. If there was one thing that gave me comfort on the trip south from Spain about how comfortable my time in Morocco would be, it was my choice of hotels. I knew I'd picked the right place to stay and that somehow it would provide essential insight to maximizing my experience in Morocco by helping me bridge the gap between the west and a country where everything seemed decidedly non-western to me. Turns out I was right.

Now when picking a place to stay on vacation, I'm usually a big hotel kind of guy; I tend to book rooms at large chain hotels, with a preference for American brands. I love the fact that I can be an anonymous face in a multi-story building in a big city and make the most of my experience on my own without anyone bothering me. I like figuring out my own way without any pressure and I think staying at a chain hotel lets me do that. It's sort of like my philosophy on my choice of schools: when deciding where to go to college, I deliberately picked large universities with a lot of students and tons of resources that wouldn't make me find my own way until I was ready to do it. That sort of choice doesn't work for everyone which I suppose is why bed and breakfasts exist in the hotel world. For the record, I have never stayed at a bed and breakfast.

But my three nights in Morocco turned out to be different. When researching where to stay in Marrakech, everything I read pointed towards staying in a riad as the most authentic Marrakech hotel experience. Riads are traditional inwardly focused courtyard residences which allowed privacy from the hustle and bustle of the center city. There are a ton of these riads within Marrakech's medina or old city which have been converted to hotels and the word was I had to stay in one or else risk missing a part of Marrakech. Once I was convinced that this form of hotel was the way to go, the hard part was choosing one. There are no Hilton or Holiday Inn operated riads; I would need to find a place on my own that I thought would be right for me. Scary. These kinds of decisions go well about half the time for me.

To make a selection go as smoothly as possible, I turned to Lonely Planet, which I consider the absolute best resource for travel advice when traveling outside of the United States; I never really consider buying any other sort of guidebook. Pages 74 through 78 of my Lonely Planet Morocco guide contained descriptions of a number of different places to stay, including about two dozen or more raids. But in reading through that book, one place stood out above all the rest: Riad l'Orangeraie, a riad pretty much right in the center of the medina on what looked like two major streets. The LP description of the place drew me in and my initial hunch about the place was confirmed by checking out their website and the websites of several other riads listed in Lonely Planet. I booked and hoped for the best.

The gate to the alley to Riad l'Orangeraie.
One of the major draws to Riad l'Orangeraie for me was that if you wanted them to, they took care of everything, starting with a ride from the airport. When you arrive in a foreign country for the first time, you literally have no context of what anything costs so the exercise of getting a cab from the airport to your hotel is a pretty open ended proposition. You have no idea whether a ride will cost 50 dirhams (about $6) or 2,000 dirhams (about $250) and in a country where there are few meters in taxis and everything is negotiable, the open ended cost of getting into a cab gets worse. So we arranged for a car to pick us up, which cost 20 Euros (about $28) which I am sure was way more than we would have paid on our own, but our money got us not only a ride but an escorted walk down the alley to our hotel (the major street I had seen on a map was anything but that) by Aziz, our primary contact at the riad, who would serve as a source of a lot of information in the next three days.

When we finally arrived at the front door and crossed the threshold from the madness of the medina to inside the quiet of the riad's walls, we were greeted with mint tea and cookies and given the lay of the land, including a detailed map of the city, a tour of the riad and a cell phone for our use while we were in town along with instructions on how to call for help if we ever needed it. Riad l'Orangeraie is actually a double riad, two courtyard homes combined into a single property; it boasts seven guest rooms; a shared den; a rooftop terrace for relaxing and spying on the rest of the city from afar; and of course two courtyards, one of which featured a plunge pool for when the heat of the desert got to be too much. We never needed the cell phone, even when we got hopelessly lost in the nearby souks, but the reassurance that the device provided was worth it. It's a great touch.

The entrance courtyard...
…and the plunge pool courtyard from above.
The property itself is gorgeous. The walls of the riad do just what they are supposed to do and provide a safe haven from the city and the nearby souks. Outside the walls of the riad, there is the constant noise of voices shouting, motorcycles and donkeys; inside the walls there is nothing. Just silence. Until you get to the roof level and lean over the outside walls that is. Our room was tight but comfortable but the two courtyards and rooftop were so inviting that we spent most of our time in the riad in one of those two locations. It's honestly like having a little oasis where you are taken care of in this confusing but totally fascinating city. The room had air conditioning but we never used it, preferring the natural air coming in off the second courtyard of the property.

The rooftop terrace. The Ben Youssef Mosque is visible in the distance.
More than anything, Riad l'Orangeraie offered what I had hoped: an authentic Marrakech experience. It is honestly right in the middle of everything and you can see the two most important mosques in Marrakech from the rooftop. We took a trip over the nearby Atlas Mountains (also arranged by the staff at the Riad) the second day we were in Marrakech and on the way out of town, we passed these huge hotels with finely manicured golf courses. If there's one thing I did not go to Morocco for, it's to play golf on sprinklered greens in a country with a perpetual water shortage. Notwithstanding the fact that I've never been anywhere to play golf, it's just not reality. You may as well go to Orlando or wherever else you can play golf. Doing it in Morocco is just not worth it. 

In Morocco, I was visiting a place that was wonderful and strange and I wanted to experience all of it. For me that meant staying somewhere traditional and drinking in everything the city had to offer in the short time I was there, including being able to hear the azhan (call to prayer) from the various muezzins around the city. And believe me, you will hear it at Riad l'Orangeraie, especially the first at 3:45 am (not a typo). The first azhan is extra long because it includes a bonus line about prayer being better than sleep. At that time of the morning, I'm not buying it.

The staff at the Riad took care of us from the moment they met us at the car from the airport to the moment they put us back in a similar car. They allowed us to maximize our Moroccan experience. The service they offered was impeccable, from the laundry service to drinks and food on request to advice about where to go and what to do. The meal we had there on our first night was the best meal we had on our trip with the exception of one tapas experience in Madrid; the eggplant that their chef Nadia cooked was the best tasting eggplant I have ever had. The breakfasts that are included with the room were also the best breakfasts I have had maybe in my life. I never knew plain yogurt could taste so good.

Best breakfast ever!!!!
If I ever go back to Marrakech, I'm staying at Riad l'Orangeraie without question. I can't imagine any place taking better care of me or having a better location. They really have created a unique and genuine (such as I understand it) experience in Morocco. No doubt there are probably cheaper places to stay but considering the price point (140 Euros or about $200 per night) I wouldn't consider trying somewhere else to save a couple of bucks. There's no way Morocco would have been the same staying somewhere else.

No place is perfect and I wouldn't be offering an honest assessment without a couple of words of caution. The bed in our room was not the most comfortable I have slept in. This wouldn't change my choice of hotels. Nor would the shower instructions (below), which encourage you to conserve water since it's so precious in the desert climate. It's the first time I've ever turned the shower on then off, lathered up with soap, and then rinsed off. I sort of felt better about myself for doing this and the orange scented glycerine soap makes up for the lack of a traditional shower experience. I know I've used this word several times but this place offers an authentic experience that I can't imagine can be beat. Go to Marrakech and stay here!

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Berber Whiskey


Before I travel somewhere new, I generally like to research the history, culture, sights and customs of wherever I happen to be heading. I say generally because despite making 15 trips to Las Vegas in the last 14 years, I still don't understand the history of that place; just never looked into it.

Vegas is my mulligan, if you will. 

So when I decided to spend three days in Marrakech this past spring, I turned to my trusty Lonely Planet guide and the whole entire internet to make sure I was prepared. Well prepared. Visiting Morocco, in all honesty, could have kind of freaked me out so I made doubly sure before I left Madrid to fly south to Marrakech that I had swotted up properly on the place so there would be absolutely no missteps.

Of all the Moroccan customs I was dreading, one of the scariest for me was drinking mint tea. Not the language, not getting lost in the souks, not being in the ethnic and religious minority or the lack of available sanitary public toilet facilities. Mint tea. Call me crazy here and you'd be completely and totally within your rights because there's nothing especially scary about it at all. It doesn't have mysterious hallucinogens or some other sort of drug like super powerful caffeine in it. It's just tea brewed with mint in it. Like a whole ton of mint.

Don't get it yet? I'm not surprised. Let me explain. Every guide book I read, be it on the internet or in good old fashioned paper form, described mint tea as the symbol of Moroccan hospitality. I guess it's sort of like pineapple in the United States, although I rarely get offered actual pineapples when visiting someone, which is regrettable. I was afraid I would encounter this stuff everywhere and that I just wouldn't like it and I would be faced with the choice between offending a host in a country which I didn't fully understand and drinking a liquid that I didn't particularly care for.

What's wrong with mint tea, you ask? Well as it turned out, nothing. But if there are two things that don't exist in my life, it's mint and hot drinks. Crazy, right? I know. But almost every drink I take in life is cold. I'm usually naturally hot (think insulating layer of blubber here) and I just never drink heated beverages. I make an exception sometimes for Irish coffee (hot) and red wine and bourbon (room temperature) but come on, all those drinks have alcohol in them, something I was confident I wasn't getting in my mint tea in muslim Morocco. I just can't stand mint and Americans seem to be obsessed with the stuff. For me, mint is good for dental products and gum. That's it. Nothing else.

So it's about an hour after I arrive in country and I'm faced with my first glass of mint tea (shown above) and I'm not looking forward to it. The tea is definitely hot and the teapot is jam packed full of mint leaves (believe me, I checked). The cookies look great (they were) but the tea, maybe not so much. The manager of our hotel, Ishmael, described the tea as "Berber whiskey" and poured the drink in what seems to be the traditional style, raising the pot as the glass is filled, causing an herb-y head on the tea. OK, so that's pretty cool. I can get behind a drink cheekily referred to as whiskey which has a beer like head on it served in what looks like an oversized shot glass.

And as it turned out, the tea was pretty darned good. I actually had it for breakfast every morning in our hotel by request. Mint tea, thankfully, is really not that minty or tea-y. It's sort of nicely in the middle of the two. It doesn't taste like gum or dental products and with a lot (and I do mean a lot) of sugar, it's nicely palatable. And to my relief, I guess, I didn't get offered it everywhere I went. I didn't find too much beer (best drink ever!) in Morocco but I'd still rather be offered water than tea if a cold brew isn't available. 

I will forever after refer to mint tea as Berber whiskey. I'll never get that phrase out of my head. And I like that, much like I'll every so often refer to donkeys as "Berber taxis". Mint tea was part of my Moroccan experience. If you ever go, have a glass of Berber whiskey for me.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

The Souks

The souks and Jemma El Fna looking north and west from Cafe de France.
By far the thing I was looking forward to most of all in Marrakech was exploring the souks. The souks are a series of open air shops just north of Jemma El Fna, the main square in Marrakech's medina or old city. They have existed in that part of Marrakech since the Berbers established the city late in the 11th century. They have survived hundreds of years of change and progress and I expect they operate today much as they did decades or centuries ago. These types of markets are not necessarily unique to Marrakech; they can be found throughout northern Africa and on other continents; they may just not be known by quite the same word. In the middle east, the souks would be known as a bazaar, if that gives you any better context.

The souks are located in the center of Marrakech's old city. They stretch about 1/3 of a mile north to south and are about half as wide across in the east to west direction. Not very big. But within that extremely small area is packed a super dense maze of commerce generally separated by merchant type: produce and meat is in one location, silver work in another; rugs are separate from leather; there are entire stores devoted to scarves or perfume or spices. Scattered in between all the tiny shops that make up the souks are restaurants, hotels and back alleys that seem to go nowhere and which invite no sort of exploration whatsoever.

And at night, the souks seem to extend south into the Jemma El Fna itself through fruit and juice stalls to street entertainment to restaurant stalls set up just for the night. While not technically part of the souks, the square for me was as fascinating at night (if not more so) than the souks were during the day and night combined so I'll beg for a little bit of poetic license and consider the square (which is really nothing of the sort - it's not even a parallelogram) as an extension of the souks for the purposes of this post. For me it's worth treating them as one. The same sort of chaos exists in both.
Jemma El Fna at night.
Every book and on line article I read before arriving in Marrakech pretty much guaranteed you would get lost in the souks. I didn't believe it. Not even close. I possess a pretty good sense of direction and thought with a good map of the area that I'd be more than OK and in an hour or two would have the place mapped in my head. I also thought having our hotel just on the west edge of the souks on what looked to me like a pretty sizable street would be a huge advantage.

I should have recognized the first warning sign when our driver dropped us off from the airport and we were greeted by our hotel staff who loaded our bags into a cart and escorted us down a dirt alley that varied between ten and 12 feet wide at its widest point. While I didn't know it yet, the alley we were walking down was the "pretty sizable street" that I had pinpointed on our travel guide book as being a huge advantage in re-setting my whereabouts when I got a little lost in the souks. This place was way smaller than I read on the map, which meant the smaller streets in the souks would now be tiny. I still didn't believe I would have a problem navigating the shops and my confidence was bolstered when we received a very detailed souk map upon check-in. I thought I was truly ready.

My first excursion into the souks was a quick walk to Jemma El Fna, through the square and west of the post office to get some lunch. The walk to the square involved taking a single road south for about 400 yards and then taking a slight right. I got lost. The first right I took was, of course, the wrong right. The distance, which I thought would be easy to judge, was just about impossible. The street that led me south to the square was unpaved, narrow, covered and complete pandemonium. It was impossible to concentrate on where or how far you were walking with merchants asking you what you were looking for; donkeys pulling carts forcing you to step aside; and bicycles, motorcycles and scooters (minimum two passengers per motorcycle or scooter) whizzing by passing so close to you and each other that it was a wonder I never saw anyone crash in my three days in Marrakech.
A typical scene in the souks: motorcycle passing bicycle.
I realized almost immediately that my first right was incorrect and reversed myself and headed south again until I got to a small clearing that I struggled to imagine was Jemma El Fna (it wasn't) before finding the right I thought I took before and making my way into the square and finally to find some food. I honestly still at this point didn't think it was that bad. After all I'd only taken one wrong turn, right?

It was only after lunch that first day that I understood there was no way I was becoming master of the souks on this trip. We headed back to our hotel, walked past it on purpose and then decided to venture a little further to see what we could find. With no firm destination in mind, we got hopelessly lost. The afternoon excursion was really just a heat check to see if we really could navigate around these things. It didn't go well. Every souk on first pass looks pretty much about the same; there are no landmarks to speak of; and what seems like hard rights or lefts become soft lefts and rights when backtracking. After 15 minutes or so, we ended up yelling at each other and had to pull out the map to see if we could find out where we were.

Yep, that's right, we pulled out the map. Big mistake. It's like sharks smelling blood in the water. Literally everyone notices and about half the people around you will offer "help". "Where are you going?" "Do you want to go to the square?" "I can take you where you need to go." I even think I could have gotten a ride on the back of a motorcycle and would have ended up who knows where (probably a relative's carpet shop). Naturally, since I'm a man, I refused all help. I had to figure this out for myself.
 
Follow the little blue signs to Jemma El Fna. It works! Trust me!
It was then I noticed little blue signs on the walls or hanging from whatever overhead cover there happened to be pointing the way to Jemma El Fna. We just had to follow these and we'd get back to the square, right? And from there back to the hotel pretty easily (note the confidence in this last statement). But the signs didn't seem to be taking us back to the square. What seemed like endless rights and a few lefts took us seemingly deeper into the maze. And just when it seemed like the blue signs were a cruel joke designed to mess with tourists' minds, we spotted the alley with our hotel. Home. But day one in the souks was definitely a mess for me.

After the first day, the souks got a lot less scary, but admittedly my explorations got a lot less bold. By the end of our second day in Marrakech (a day we spent mostly out of town), I could find my way to Jemma El Fna and back fairly easily without even thinking of pulling out my map. I could recognize the subtle changes in direction of the Rue Moussaine enough to not veer off to the right too soon and I also knew the first time I saw daylight when walking south didn't mean I was at the square. That required walking a couple of hundred feet more to the south.

That second day was the first time we made it to the square at night. We had walked through the square mid-afternoon the day we arrived and couldn't see what the fuss was all about (Jemma El Fna is a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The first walk through the square saw us passing orange juice stalls, dried fruit stalls, palm readers and henna tattoo artists in addition to the ubiquitous donkeys pulling carts and the occasional car. We got a sense of the persistence of the square's merchants when we declined the services of a henna tattoo artist when she asked maybe later and we replied "yes, later." If only I knew later to her meant about 20 steps further. But at nighttime, almost everything in the square was different.

Snake charmers. Monkeys on leashes. Belly dancing. Impromptu boxing matches. Walking on hot coals. Anything and everything that existed in northern Africa for entertainment before the turn of the 20th century. Jemma El Fna is completely unlike anywhere else I had been. The sole purpose of all these entertainments of course is to get you to fork over some money. The boxing matches we watched took so long to get started after a hapless looking spectator had been picked from the crowd to participate that we left two of them; the collecting of coins just took too long.

Snake charmers! Not much else to say here. How awesome is this?
Any watching, any picture taking, anything at all will get you hit up for money. I took a picture of some snake charmers and one of them was all over me immediately for some cash (complete with snake). But once you pay, you can seemingly do anything you want. After pulling out a couple of dirhams (literally twenty-five cents), the snake charmers let me take more pictures, encouraged me to touch the snakes (I did, once) and even take more pictures with the snakes around your neck (I passed). The best benefit of my quarter that I paid the first night is that it allowed me to not get bothered the second night we were in the square. When approached the last night we were in Marrakech, I simply said we paid last night and all the pressure went away; they knew I wouldn't pay again. Act like you know what you are doing and it works sometimes.

Besides the entertainment, the other industry that pops up at night in Jemma El Fna is the food industry. At about 7 pm or so, food stalls fill all the available space in the square, setting up portable kitchens and (I suppose) refrigerators (although this may be incorrect) along with tables for diners. Each place then deploys a series of runners (I guess they are maitre d's?) to bring folks in to eat. Each place promises the same and when you start talking to one maitre d, others pile around you to let you know how preposterous the claims of the first are and how their food is better. All of it's probably nonsense; there's no gourmet food to be had here. We passed by the first couple of runners (including the one who asked me to high five him - I did - and claimed his food was finger licking good) but couldn't pass by the guy at stall no. 25 (also known as Chez El Mahdi Chraibi) with the fake English accent who promised no diarrhea for two years. How could we pass that up?

Stall no. 25. Not sure what I ate, but it stayed down!
I think the best thing about the meal at Jemma El Fna stall no. 25 was that we didn't get diarrhea. It hasn't been two years yet but I was just thankful that there was no diarrhea in the next couple of days; I likely won't fault them for anything that happens from this point on. We ordered the mixed skewers (lamb, beef and chicken) and the vegetable skewers and settled for those along with the bread provided for every diner and the olives appetizers at the table. I ate at least four skewers and I have to say I have no idea which was beef, which was lamb and which was chicken (they could have been cat for all I know) but they went down ok with incredibly salty chile sauce that was delivered table side and I'm glad we stopped here. While we were eating we were treated to a view of a cart of desserts rolled by from other vendors with tons and tons of flies all over the food. We passed on the desserts.

I spent a couple of hours my third day in Marrakech exploring the souks one final time. We found the olive souks we had passed on the first day before we got hopelessly lost and picked up a huge container of olives for 10 dirhams ($1.25). I also made sure we found a spice souk and got some turmeric, ginger, sweet paprika and cumin to take back home (already used to make Moroccan dishes twice) at a fraction of the cost I could have got them in the United States. We also explored a little part of the way we got lost on the first day. I felt pretty confident by the end of day three that I could find my way around about 15 to 20 percent of the souks without a map and without getting lost. Sounds like not much of an accomplishment but I actually feel pretty proud of myself.

Two of my favorite souks: olives…
...and spices.
Finally, I also made sure we did some haggling, although admittedly at a total JV level. About everything that's sold in the souks is open to price negotiation. Not being sure about the olives and spices, I paid what was asked for those but I wanted to pick up a Morocco t-shirt before I left and so made my way to a stall we had picked out earlier just as it appeared they were packing up. The books I had read told me not to express interest in anything just to haggle and that you had better be prepared to buy whatever you discussed. I definitely wanted a red Morocco shirt (which later turned a lot of my whites pink in the wash) and so confidently offered 100 dirhams for a 120 dirham list price with the promise that I would buy a second at that same price. Most guides say to start at half the price (I told you it was a JV attempt) and with that it mind, I knew my 83% offer of full price would be accepted, which it was immediately. At least I feel better that I didn't get taken for full price. What a bargain (if it wasn't for the pink socks I now have…).

The souks and Jemma El Fna definitely lived up to my hope that these would be the best part of my Morocco trip. They were without question the best memories I have of my three days in Marrakech. If there's a next time, I'm mastering these things, even if it takes a week. I already know I'm a few steps ahead of the curve from last time. My advice to travelers: keep your eyes front and center when walking through the souks (doing otherwise will invite pleas to buy from merchants); don't start talking to anyone unless you are really interested in what they have to sell (be firm no matter how polite you think you want to be); haggle, even if it's a feeble attempt (it's super easy to knock a few dirhams off); follow the blue signs to the square when lost; and never never never pull out your map, although I suppose you really will be OK even if you have to pay someone to get you home.