Vacances d'hiver: Marrakech, Day Three

Our last day in Marrakech was absolutely fantastic; it really showed me how wonderful people can be sometimes! We started off the day in the Majorelle Gardens, which are these really beautiful (and famous) gardens designed by Yves Saint Laurent. There is also a Berber museum there, which was pretty cool, so I got to learn a little bit of Berber history. Photos:

 

 

Bamboo!

Cool door =D

Yves Saint Laurent "Love" exhibit!

After the gardens, we walked through a new part of town to the Saadian tombs, which is a mausoleum that contains members from the Saadi Dynasty, including the sultan at the time. The area itself was pretty small, but they were definitely the most beautifully decorated tombs I've ever seen!

Once we saw the tombs, we went to lunch at a hole in the wall that had grilled skewers, and it was deeeelicious. Not only did we get skewers, we also got a dish similar to cassoulet, two huge rounds of bread (the bread in Morocco tends to come in circle shapes), a tomato dip for the bread, and a spicy sauce for the meat. Oh, and olives. It was so freaking good. The guys who owned the place were also really nice and after we finished lunch we took photos with the grill guy, haha.

Yummmm.

SKEWERSSSSS

Having finished a wonderful lunch, we headed back to the medina and did more shopping in the souks. Here's where the fun part comes in. So we stopped in this small shoe shop, and we were looking at the shoes for a while, and tried on a couple pairs, but he didn't have some styles in certain colors or vice versa, so he would run off to fellow vendors to find the right shoes for us, which was so nice and helpful! Then, while we were trying on shoes, he offered us tea. That's right, tea. In a tiny little shoe shop. And it was completely free! We said yes, and he brought us tea, and we sat down and had tea and chatted with him, and it was so nice; he was actually being genuine and it was just amazing! Anyway, we ended up buying a pair of shoes each, for a pretty good price too--we didn't even bargain because he had been so nice. Plus, the price he told us was around what we were willing to pay anyway. We also ended up getting a photo with him and exchanging emails so that we could email him the photo. So nice! So we left the shoe shop, content with some nice company, tea, and new shoes. We went back to Place Jamaa El-Fna and got henna done for 5 dirham (less than $1), then got a glass of orange juice each because there are orange juice vendors EVERYWHERE in Marrakech. Because there are orange trees everywhere, probably. Turns out our OJ vendor was also really nice and when I was trying to take a picture of his cart, he invited me to take a picture with him! So we got photos with the OJ vendor too. =) Haha. After that, we just went back to the hostel until we had to leave for the train station, because that is where our next part of the journey begins!