Our first adventure of the day was a visit to the famous Jardin Majorelle. It took French painter Jacques Majorelle about four years of passion and dedication to create this enchanting garden in the heart of the “ Ochre City”. Yes Saint Kaurent and his friend Pierre Berge discovered the gardens in 1966, during their first visit to Marrakech. The garden at that time was in declining state and the designer decided to buy it  to avoid its sale to real estate project to become a hotel complex. The sale was legalized in 1980 and restoration of the gardens began.

Today it is a picturesque part of Marrakech that is visited  by hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world each year. We were among those lucky ones who has had that privilege to touch the art of legendary artists. 

Next was the much anticipated camel ride in Marrakech which turned out to be an amazing activity that not only gave most of us a once in a lifetime experience, but connected us to a local family as well. When we arrived at the palms for our ride, the guides gave us Kaftan and Chafiya garments to wear and then helped us each get on the Camel. We went on the camel ride for about 30 minutes, and then the guide took us to his house which was in the middle of the palms in a hut and his wife and mother-in-law served us with the traditional flatbread along with honey. They also served us

the traditional mint tea. The guide had 4 daughters who were so adorable and we took pictures of them. After we were done with the snacks, we sat on camels and they took us back to where we came from. After the camel ride, we were dropped off to our Riad and we decided to eat at Taj’in Darna and enjoyed the Moroccan cuisine for about an hour.

 

 

This being our last evening in the Medina, we headed back to the heart of Marrakech, the thriving and buzzing market of Jemaa El-Fna. We all had an agenda, our mission was to find those perfect gifts, and something special for ourselves as well. The center of the market was packed with food vendors filling the air with fragrant aromas of Moroccan spices. We passed by snake charmers, Berber musicians, henna artists and incessant pleas for our attention. We entered the souks that radiated off the central square where we found wandering dark and mysterious alleyways  that were like a labyrinth designed to bewilder its visitors. Every once in a while, a few of the late evening sun rays would seep through the slats in the roof, illuminating the dust particles softly drifting in the uncomfortably hot air. We found our treasures as we worked our way through the thick maze of people. We bought jewelry, dresses, pottery and souvenirs and headed back to our riad, quite happy with our purchases. The experience in the market created quite the sensory overload for all of us and we were all happy to relax with the soothing Moroccan mint tea we have all been accustomed to drinking.

-Irina, Tracy, Manal