Indulgence

OK, so I confess, I’ve indulged a bit here in Marrakech. I started by sleeping in the last 2 mornings. Not late, just no alarm, no rush to get out of bed. Nice. I’ve got the entire weekend w/no specific plans. I get to just take my sweet time and do whatever I feel like.

I wanted to see the Ville Nouvelle and get out of the medina area. I’ve never been anywhere so tourist-mobbed. The locals treat you accordingly-everyone trying to get your money-even pulling on your arm to try to get you in their shop. The taxi drivers are the worst. It takes 3-4 petit taxis to get one who will use their meter, and even then I’ve had 2 drive the wrong way and try to get me to pay for it. So it’s time to head a different direction, away from the madness.

I mapped out where I wanted to go, some galleries I wanted to browse in, and started off on foot. I needed the exercise. Beautiful weather to walk for miles. And Ville Nouvelle didn’t disappoint. Galleries, restaurants, shops. Bought an International Herald Tribune (only English newspaper you can get in large cities in Morocco) to read over a leisurely lunch at a sweet sidewalk cafe, paid equiv. to $10 for a Vanity Fair magazine (have discovered that magazines in English are a real treat), bought some nice chocolates for after dinner and a new bag to carry my stuff in. Bought a couple tops from a Women’s Coop for winter, even found Clinique lipstick. Such indulgence! I really felt like I had treated myself. It also felt great to be out and about and on my feet after doing so much sitting the last week.

I still have 2 days here to fill. Spent this morning doing a leisurely tour of some of Marrrakech’s sites-Bahia Palace and a very cool small museum around the corner from the Palace. Walked a bit of the medina to check out more Cooperative shops and ran into one of the design students who helped with the product development consultations at Marche Maroc in Fes.She’s heading to Rabat and is interested in contemporary weavings, so I gave her a map to a very cool carpet store near the Rabat Ville train station to check out. It is a small world!

So now I’m using the cyber high speed connection to do some downloading (the dial up speed at my home link is painfully slow), will head back to the hotel and study a bit of my Arabic and think I’ll head back to Earth Café for dinner. Yum.