Villa Lotus Eva Marrakech

... vous séduira par son atmosphère reposante.


20 chambres vous accueillent dans un univers de confort propre aux charmes de l'Orient. Soucieux de votre bien-être, l'ensemble du personnel mettra tout en oeuvre pour vous garantie un séjour inoubliable.

... late the first day. A painstakingly long delay
before we even got to the Taxi, enormous Immigration and Customs queues, as
well as Nick exacerbating the delay by stopping every 5 metres to take photos.
The taxi driver patiently waited for us, and I impatiently paced to and fro.

We finally
arrived in the Medina, and were met by a local guy and his cart. He took our bags
before I even had a chance to say no, and we were following him through the
maze to ...

From the fun flats of Marrakech...we made our way to the High Atlas mountains for well...mountains of magnificent hiking and views.

Jebel Toubkal stands at 4200m above sea level and at that is the highest most point in northern Africa and also a bit of a mission! We made it up the mighty mountain in a few days and did some sleeping, sun burning and Scrabble in there as well. An absolutely incredible adventure!

Back down and all set to embark on a road trip to Fez!

XXX

... reminds me of India and all the experiences i had there that live on in my mind but it is an odd amalgamation of the western and traditional. The main square is a magical place where all is alive by night and oh so chilled and interesting in the day.

We did a couple of days exploration of all it had to offer and then onwards AND upwards...

XXX

... and mind to incredible things like snake charmers, henna tattooing (very common on women here), fruits, handicrafts, chained monkeys, acrobats, fortune tellers, “teeth extractors”, you name it. I’ll take pictures (discreetly because you are supposed to pay if you take a photo) because words will not do tonight’s sights justice, I know already.

It’s why we came to this place.

July 26 ...

... in our travels.  And Skippy won the award for attracting the most attention today, he had several folks stop him and ask if he was from Japan.  We walked back to the train station - which is gorgeous, btw.  And rode the train back to Casablanca. Once we arrived in Casablanca, we walked to our hotel.  General feeling is that Casablanca is like a dirty version of NYC.  We checked into the Ibis Moussafir City Centre  (Heather it brings ...

Marrakech is an incredible city. It has a huge walled city centre, the walls are 16 km long and still intact, and if you enter through one of the gates, the world is not like it used to be. People come dressed like in those movies about when Jesus was born, so I think it is a very adequate place to spend the week before Christmas. I wonder anyway how snow and Santa on a sledge came into the picture when the whole story ...

... para o deserto...horas em cima do dromedário é um
calvário....nem é pelo calor, nem pelo vento, nem pela areia e somente
mesmo pelo nosso coccix....MEU DEUS!!!
Quando desci da besta nem consegui segurar as pernas, tremiam pareciam varas verdes.
Chegamos
a umas das maiores dunas do Erg Chebbi 250 mt de areia....podem pensar
o Monte Crasto tem 125 mt, mas é granito, areia 250 mt são 5 km...dois
passos para frente um passo para trás, é muito ...

... as minerals and fossils. Personally, we can recommend buying fruit and other food (like all kinds of bread-like things). The oranges here are just great! In any case, Morocco is really THE country to buy nice things;) Another interesing thing to notice in the streets are beggars. In Arabian world, they're treated not so bad, since they get alms from local people as well (Koran rulez). Moreover, there is no space for cars in the streets, so everything is transported using donkeys, horses ...

... warned by Mohammad that the local vendors here are particularly sticky (i.e., they grab on and won't let go until you buy something). He also warns of sticky fingers of pickpockets, and to leave all valuables on the bus. True enough, I make the mistake of saying one small word to a peddler as I am walking at the rear of our group, and he latches himself firmly to my side from that moment onwards. He points out good photo opportunities, and clears the way if a native ...