Extraordinary Adventure 2018 Day 7: Time Share Tour
Not every tour is going to be a winner. That's just a fact of life. Today, we went on a pretty rough tour. But we won't start there, because the day started really quite nicely. We woke up leisurely a little after 7 AM and went to have our included breakfast at the hotel a little after 8 AM. The Four Seasons has a really nice spread of normal breakfast items (eggs, bread, omelet station, etc.) and so we enjoyed it quite a bit. I started with a cappuccino and had an omelet with some cheese, meats, and some other Moroccan dishes. Jenn had eggs, sausage, potatoes, and pancakes.
At 9 AM we went to the lobby and met our tour guide Abdililah who picked us up with a driver in a Mercedes van for our Marrakech city tour. Getting around the city isn't as simple as jumping on the subway so we thought it would be better to have a guide show us around town, give us some history (which we know nothing of) and places to visit. The tour started off well, we went to the Menara gardens where water is brought in from the nearby Atlas mountains to water the crazy amount of olive trees in the garden.
From there we jumped back in the van and made our way to the Marrakech Medina where the center of Marrakech is located. Before going to the massive market we stopped at Koutoubia a beautiful Mosque. It was incredibly interesting to learn more about the religion, its practices, that half of Morocco are not fully practicing Muslims, and what life's like in a Muslim country. After a history lesson and a tour of the grounds, we were on our way.
After Koutoubia we made our way back in the van to one of the most beautiful places we've seen on the trip, Bahia Palace. It was built in the 1800's and was for the Sultan, his wives, and concubines. The palace was stunning, and recent restoration really showed what it would have looked like when in use. We spent at least thirty minutes walking all around the palace before exiting and going on our way.
We went from the beautiful palace to a recently discovered graveyard called the Saadian Tombs. the date back to the 1500's but were discovered in the early 1900's after being covered with ruble for hundreds of years. Of course not knowing a ton of the Saadian dynasty we didn't spend a ton of time there but instead began to walk to the other big attraction of the tour, the Jemaa el-Fnaa a giant marketplace. Before we could get there though we had a stop at an oil store where we were given a demonstration of the various healing effects of Moroccon oil. We've done enough tours in our life to know that these are more sale stops then demonstrations and we're very good about making sure the people know up front we aren't going to buy anything. We left quickly and went on our way.
From there we spent a good amount of time touring the Jemaa el-Fnaa. It is a sight to be seen. It reminded us a lot of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. But the craziest part is walking into the square before you enter the main market There you see people selling photos with monkeys, snakes, and all sorts of other bizarre things. We spent a good amount of time there walking around, seeing some of the historical landmarks along the way. We also, unfortunately, were dragged to two more "demonstrations" one for carpets and another for clothing. We're used to one, maybe two sales pitches on tours but three to us was unfortunate. Luckily we're seasoned veterans with this stuff and made it in and out of these within minutes and were back exploring the fascinating and bustling marketplace.
After at least an hour in the market, we made our way back to the van and were told we'd be going to one last stop, in the newer area of Marrakech. There we stopped at a furniture gallery where we were literally told to "treat ourselves, we deserve it." Jenn almost blew a gasket but we spent maybe 45-seconds looking around before getting back in the van and coming back to our hotel. By the end of the tour we felt like we had half a tour where we were learning a lot about Morocco and visiting some beautiful places, and the other half we were being sold what felt like a time share seminar.
Luckily we arrived back at the Four Seasons and all of the frustration with the tour washed right away. We sat down at their pool restaurant for a nice lunch in what turned out to be a perfect day of Moroccan weather. Jenn had the chicken tikka masala and I had a caesar salad. They were both light and were exactly what we were looking for. Once we wrapped up lunch we got back to our hotel room, changed into our bathing suits and left to go out to the pool. We decided to go to the big pool and are glad we did. There we were given a bunch of towels, a cooler with a few bottles of water, and we split one of their mint cocktails.
After a couple of hours at the pool, we came back to our hotel room and watched a couple of episodes of Queer Eye on Netflix before going back out for dinner. Instead of leaving the hotel we decided to stay in and have a low key evening, enjoying one of the hotel's restaurants, Quattro. We had a beautiful table overlooking the amazing fountain. We started off with a calamari/shrimp appetizer that was delightful. For our main entree, Jenn went with a shrimp pasta and I had the pork belly. Both turned into great choices.
After taking a walk around the complex, we came back to our room early to get ready for a very early morning tomorrow. Although the tour today wasn't one of our best outings, we did get to see a lot of amazing sights here in Marrakech that quite frankly would have been difficult to do on our own, so for that, we're happy we were able to see so much of this beautiful city.
