We tried different tanjines while in Morocco (read the detailed scoop on Moroccan food February 4 post), sat by the hotel swimming pool, and drank lots of mint tea. Watch out for the sugar in mint tea. Arab cultures usually dump lots of sugar into both their tea and coffee and we happen to like ours sugar free. A big gag…when I first unthinkingly slurped some.

Other things to do in Marrakech could be a run or walk around the old ramparts still standing since the 13th century. If you decide to take a lap, be warned, the walls run for 12 miles! Take a caleche ride, get your bearings on the double-decker City Sightseeing bus and visit the stinky tanneries. Tanneries? Either a guide or “someone” will lead you up to a rooftop with big vats of quicklime where animal skins are soaked. They are then softened with chemicals present in pigeon droppings…eew…before being dried in the sun and dyed in more vats of saffron, indigo, kohl and other colors – made into ottomans and other leather objects.

This takes place on roof after roof and the smell ranged from stinky to nauseating…

One last excursion into the Mellah, the old Jewish Quarter of Marrakech. This Quarter was created in the Kasbah area in 1558. The Jewish community enjoyed autonomy even though Jews weren’t allowed to own any property outside the Mellah and controlled the sugar trade.

There are approximately 250 Jews still living in Marrakech, and most live outside the Medina. The Mullah area is now almost completely Muslim. However, there are still several synagogues. Upon request, the guide took us into one of them since it would have been very difficult to find the synagogue on our own. Ask your guide to take you or a child where to find it.

ex-Marine and guide in the Mullah area of Marrakech, Morocco 

inside the Marrakech synogogue, Morocco
Back into the Kasbah, through a few more shops and the fast and cheap to Morocco was finished… while we planned a future return to Casablanca, Fes, and Tangier….one day…