After a fairly decent night's sleep, we went down for breakfast in our hotel. It was a good meal during which we had a great conversation with a couple and their teenage son from England. We shared traveling and some politics keeping it in a very pleasant tone. They were amazed with knew about the British TV show, The Detectorists. It was the husband's favorite. His wife was born in Russia and hasn't been back in 15 years.
We then took the long walk of 100 feet to our now favorite coffee shop where we got a really friendly welcome. Apparently, they had seen my blog post with their picture and read my glowing review of their shop on Google Maps. They gave us some good advice on getting a taxi for the souk, or market place, called Jemaa el-Fnaa. It's huge with hundreds of small stores, restaurants, hotels and vendors of all kind located in the medina (old town) of Marrakech.
This is a pretty funny video of Susie getting a little frustrated with me taking a video of the souk HERE And, another short video of the snake charmers HERE
We walked around the souk for quite awhile, even bargaining for a few things. We were told several times before we went, not to accept the first price they give. Reply with half of their first price and then go from there. We did okay. We also saw the famous snake charmers and gave them a contribution for the entertainment.
We grabbed a small local pizza and big bottle of water at a very small cafe on one of the side alleys where we met Ekatarina. She is originally from Macedonia in the Balkans. So that naturally turned into a great conversation about her home country and many places she has traveled as a single, young woman, and our stories about visiting the Balkans a couple of times. She was wonderful to speak with and very inspiring.
We walked around some more, got tired and took a cab back to our hotel where we crashed. We shared the cab with another young woman traveling solo. She just finished getting a masters degree and was taking a few months to travel the world looking for places she might like to work. Very cool.
We have reservations for a food tour this evening. We are meeting the guide at 6pm very close to where we were today and should get back around 10pm. So don't expect any blog about that experience until tomorrow.
