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Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

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Rainy day Marrakesh, Morocco, Wednesday, 31 December 2008 10:26pm

It was raining lightly when we breakfasted this morning, so we decided to do the classic rainy-day thing: go to a museum. In this case, it was the triple attraction of the Ali ben Youssef Medersa, the Koubba Ba'adiyn, and the Museé de Marrakech.

The Medersa was my favorite of the three, with a lot of stunning stucco work and some neat tiling. There were interesting views onto the main courtyard from the old students' cells, and lots of little corners to explore.

The Koubba was interesting because of how plain it was. Most of the historical buildings we've seen are covered with decoration, but the Koubba is mostly just smooth walls in interesting shapes.

We tried to do the walking tour in the Lonely Planet backwards, but ended up getting sidetracked and just wandering a lot. We passed through the carpet souk, and stopped to look at a bunch of carpets, but not to buy.

We ate dinner in the Djemaa el-Fna, which is a large square that fills up with snake charmers, acrobats, storytellers, carnival games, and hundreds of food stalls. We went to stall #1 for dinner, and then went around to an orange juice stand, watched people try to fish rings onto bottles, and had cinnamon and clove tea and really spicy pastries.