Day 6 Marrakech

What a day. Breakfast was interesting because the mystery of the older Italian man and younger woman was solved. We had breakfast together at the same table. She is his daughter, so that's all right then. They are from Milan and he is retired from being some sort of engineer or designer in the field of polypropylene bags. She is in advertising and wants to visit Argentina, so we filled her in. He's a very likable and charming man.

Or main goal for the morning was to find out what happened to the Wizard Mastercard account. The previous night's brainstorm of using an ATM to get a balance did not work out - transaction rejected, saying the card was inactive or similar, and it seemed to swallow the card! PANIC STATIONS. However it turned out that it allowed a large withdrawal to proceed unhindered. Bizarre. We then went to a phone shop and called the overseas service number. The dirhans were clicking by at a frightening pace as I navigated the interminable menus. Net result is that it appeared to be okay in that the deposit had indeed arrived in the account. However, it appeared to be depleting at a faster than anticipated rate. 

Much relieved, we had a celebratory tea and then did a tour of the souks around Jemma el Fna, then had lunch of pizza (not bad but couldn't actually see the promised ham) at the Alhambra on the square and repaired back to the riad.

At the riad we got instructions for getting to our appointed meeting place with the taxi driver but there was no sign of him. After 15 minutes we tried to call and got the assistance of a young local who ascertained the location of the taxi and walked us there. He was not however satisfied with my token of gratitude which amounted to almost $5. Reunited with my hat we proceeded by taxi to the Palais Bahia, by what seemed the obligatory long way around to justify a higher fare. I was generous to a fault. 

The palace was very much worth a visit with some good stonework and very extensive beautiful painted wooden ceilings. We kept going around in circles as we couldn't find our way out. Eventually made it and wanted to visit the Mellah (jewish quarter) but had a refreshing orange juice first, while admiring and photographing the storks on their nests atop the medina wall. There were quite a few of them. One had even built a nest on top of a mobile phone tower. Some genetic modifications pending there I think.

We didn't find the Mellah but walked along some interesting back streets anyway before heading for home. Lots of colours from all the wares on offer in the many, many hole-in-the-wall shops. I'd love to photograph more to capture the flavour of the place, but I'm afraid of causing offense to the locals. We looked at some jewellery but didn't buy. Likewise spices.

The tourist maps are absolutely dreadful, maybe even worse than useless. I'm sure I was on a street pointing us toward our taxi meeting place (north) but instead wound up at the top end of Jemma el Fna. Grrrr.

After our refreshing and cleansing shower we headed back to a cheap (by square standards) restaurant just a hundred metres from the square.