Since I insisted on rushing to the Basilica in Arezzo so early in the morning, by the time we had finished there and checked in to our B&B it was still only mid-morning. We had seen a market setting up on our way to the Basilica, so the first order of business was to wander the streets on a lovely Sunday morning, checking out antiques and bric-a-brac. This was followed by lunch - a rather dry porchetta sandwich for me (the bread in general left something to be desired in Italy), while Jules had the typical Tuscan speciality of lampredotto i.e. tripe sandwich. Dry was definitely not the word here, it was pretty overwhelmingly dripping and mushy with its tripe stew filling. I had a bite but it was a bit much for my stomach. A stringy piece of entrails fell out and even the birds rejected it. Jules soldiered on, but I had to look away in order to finish my sandwich without getting sick!
Perfect present for a child you hate
I think this might be the most Italian photo ever... The alley, the vespa, the sign reading "Johnny Bruschetta"...
After lunch we visited the Casa Vasari, home of one of Arezzo's most famous sons, the painter, architect and writer Giorgio Vasari. While Vasari is most well known now for his Lives, a gossipy history of fellow famous artists of the Renaissance, we had just encountered his work in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where he executed some works and directed the overall decoration. He also began the construction of the Uffizi gallery.
The Casa Vasari is not his childhood home (as with the Raphael house we visited later on in Urbino), but rather a house he bought in his home town at the age of 30, in 1541. He was already active as a painter, working and studying in Florence, Rome and elsewhere, by this time, and it took him until after 1568 to complete its decoration.
It's pretty small, but there are some beautiful works, especially in the main salon:
We stopped in the park next to the Duomo for a rest and a gelato - like most of the towns in this part of Italy, Arezzo is built on a hill and there's a lot of steep climbs up and down to get anywhere. It gets bonus points for having outdoor escalators that took us plus suitcases up from the carpark into the city itself. Then we visited the Duomo itself, which is pretty enough but fairly unremarkable by the high standards of Italian cathedrals.
Our final stop was the Medici fortress, which offers some lovely views although there's nothing really left of the inside. There was a pretty cool art exhibition on while we were there, which definitely fit with the gloomy fortress feel.
Looking across the large city cemetery
After all this, we were too tired for anything other than pizza and Netflix in our hotel room, which is not too bad a way to spend an evening, after all.
I join you from a plane 10667 m up, just off the north-western coast of Australia, on the way between Bangkok and Auckland. I swear everyone else on board is asleep and mocking my perpetual inability to sleep on planes. Especially the guy right next to us, who is indulging himself in some loud, wet, gurgly snores.
I didn't even try to sleep on the first leg, Brussels to Bangkok - we left at 1.15 pm and arrived just before midnight, Brussels time (6 am Bangkok time), so I knew there was no hope of that. I was more optimistic this leg, since we left at 6.45 pm, but 6 hours later, the only sign of sleepiness I've had was while we were waiting for them to take away the dinner trays. As soon as they did, and I could actually theoretically lie back (well, perform a token incline) and relax, I was wide awake again.
Anyway, one night in Bangkok, or 36 hours in Bangkok to be precise. Everything went smoothly with our arrival. I had the bright idea of leaving our large suitcases in the airport left luggage, so we didn't have to bother hauling them back and forth. Less than 10 euros and a few minutes later, we were disencumbered and on our way on the train into the centre. It was all a lot less daunting and confusing than I had anticipated, and we even managed the 10-minute walk from the train station to our hotel with only minor stress and major sweat.
It was so hot in Bangkok. When I saw the forecast was for 33 degrees, I knew it would be hot, particularly coming from 2 degree Brussels, but the humidity was killer. Every time we went three steps out of the hotel, we were absolutely dripping with sweat.
So as you can imagine, first step when getting to the hotel was a shower, and then bed. We had booked for the night before, so we were able to go straight in when we arrived around 7:30. We managed a disciplined 3 1/2 hours sleep or so and dutifully peeled ourselves back out of bed at 12 to try to not get too messed up with jetlag and have some time to see the city.
The plan for day 1 was deliberately low-key, by which I mean a two-hour massage - Thai style, hot oil and with some sort of heated bag thing (?) Whatever it was, it was pretty good. Favourably compares to the last massage I had in Marrakesh, which I realise was over a year ago! We were warned that the massage would be medium intensity, strong at time, and it did have its moments which bordered on painful. Some spots I barely even knew I had muscles, let alone tight muscles, but they do a good job squirrelling out any trouble spots and then elbowing you hard in them.
After the massage, suitably relaxed, other than my general awkwardness over how much and how to tip, and also what to do with the disposable (I hope disposable) G-string I had to wear), we took a taxi to Chinatown (Yaowarat Road) to feast on some street food. (Actually, I forgot, we also ate lunch at a weird canteen-type place down a back alley, which was good if liable to make a health inspector faint.) By the time we crawled there painfully slowly through Bangkok traffic, with me regretting at every moment that I hadn't gone to the loo in the spa, and wondering if the traffic was going slowly enough for me to leap from the cab, find a loo, and come back again before losing Jules in the city, it was around 6 pm and getting dark.
A sample of Bangkok traffic
It wasn't quite as "market-y" as I had been hoping, but Chinatown was a pretty good place to experience the hustle and bustle of the city and get a vibe of the energy in such a huge, crazy metropolis. It was pretty crowded and touristy, but there still felt like there was a certain authenticity in the stalls serving up simple dishes in, again, pretty terrible hygiene conditions. We just went for it and ate everything from meat on a stick, to dumplings, to pork noodles to spring rolls. I'm usually blessed with a pretty cast iron stomach, and thankfully it hasn't let me down (yet). Seeing the meat just sitting out with no refrigeration, and the cooks just chucking in meat, noodles, veg etc. with their hands might trouble the delicate, but we are made of sterner stuff :) I did draw the line at seafood, however, and neither of us was up for the much-advertised shark fins, bird's nest soup or durian. This latter was being hacked up on the street - I can say it did have an unusual overly sweet, verging on rotten, smell, but, at least at a safe distance, it wasn't nearly as fearsome as reputation has it. When we were checking in for our flight this afternoon we did see a "no durian on board the aircraft" notice though, so I do suppose it must be quite something in confined environments.
Street durian
A cook at work
The fruits of another chef's labours
Yay meat lollipop!
Jules navigates Chinatown
Tuktuk eye view
Our lack of sleep caught up with us after a couple of hours, and we finished off the evening with a tuktuk ride back to our hotel. This was pretty hair-raising, and fun. Jules's side was protected by a chicken-wire grille, but I had nothing keeping me from flying out of the tuktuk should we encounter a particularly sharp bend. That made it all the more fun though, I'm glad we tried it!
I'll try to wrap up my last two days in Marrakech this time. On Tuesday our first port of call was the Bahia Palace, built in the late 19th century by one of the Sultan's Grand Viziers and dedicated to one of his wives. As with the Museum of Marrakech, it seems like there's going to be more to see than there actually is. As with all the other buildings we visited, the elaborately-decorated walls and ceilings are beautiful, but there wasn't anything else in there to see.
The courtyard of the Bahia Palace - hard to photograph due to all the greenery
Ceiling in the palace
More ceiling
So again, it was pretty early when we left the palace and set out for the Saadian tombs. First we stopped off in a shop where I wanted to buy a little present for Jules. In another of those trademark magic Marrakech moments we've all come to know and love, Liz and I had a whispered conversation as to whether the shopkeeper was watching porn on his laptop. We couldn't see anything, but some of the noises going on where a little explicit. In the end, we decided it was probably a sex scene in a movie rather than porn, as the background noises changed to something else, but it was still a bit dodgy.
For some reason, we still persisted with the transaction, and here was my chance to bargain. There are no price-tags or anything, so I just fixed an idea in my head of how much I wanted to pay and was surprised when the guy's opening offer came in well below that. I still bartered him down a bit for form's sake, but I didn't bother pushing too hard. It wasn't until after we left the shop and Liz remarked I'd given in easily that I realised it was actually ten times what I thought I was paying. D'oh! You'd think I'd be able to keep in my mind a (rough) exchange rate of 1 euro to 10 dirhams, but apparently not.
We then proceeded to get pretty lost in the Mellah and Kasbah neighbourhoods trying to find the Saadian tombs. One guy was very insistent that we turn left down a certain street, but with the help of a map, we were sure we should go right. Right turned out, as he had said, to lead not only to a dead-end but also a large refuse heap. And then we had to go back past him to get out again, giving him the opportunity to say "I told you so". Ironically, however, he was *still* lying about the way to go - the tombs were actually hidden away back the way we came.
The 12th Century Bab Agnaou gate, near the Kasbah mosque and Saadian tombs
I was a little obsessed with the storks we could see from the roof terrace
View from the roof terrace where we had lunch. The Saadian tombs are back there
And then on to the tombs themselves. Again, smaller and less interesting than you might have thought, but with some pretty decorations. They date to the 16th century but were only rediscovered and restored in 1917. About 60 members of the Saadi Dynasty are buried here, although there certainly aren't 60 tombs on display.
Inside the Saadian tombs
Now home to kitties
The 'room with the twelve columns', the most beautiful of the tombs, houses the grave of the sultan's grandson
Shortly after taking this photo, this turtle totally bailed off the side of the tomb and then tried to style it out by eating grass with his bum sticking up in the air
Full disclosure, this is where it gets mildly embarrassing. Remember how before I said we stumbled across a supermarket selling Galaxy chocolate out near the Jardins Majorelle? Well, we just saw the little bars they keep by the checkout to tempt you with, and for whatever reason, we just grabbed one milk and one caramel bar each. (I don't know what Liz was thinking, I'm pretty sure I just didn't want to grab a hundred bars and look like a massive pig in front of an actual thin person.) But when it came to eating the chocolate back in the hotel, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth that we missed the chance to get more. So it was that we ended up spending a pretty big chunk of the rest of the day trekking back out to the suburbs to go in search of more Galaxy chocolate.
Remember that Simpsons episode where Homer sues the all-you-can-eat seafood place and then Marge breaks down on the stand describing how they drove around looking for somewhere else to eat and finally went fishing? Yeah, it was pretty much like that.
By the way, as well as being stalked by random men, everywhere I went in Marrakech I was also stalked by shoe-shine men. They ignored Liz's trainers of course, but were drawn like catnip to my admittedly slipshod boots. They would clap their brushes together and call out to you, starting out with the innocuous call of "shoe-shine, shoe-shine" but then progressing on to "your shoes are dirty!", "you need to clean your shoes!" which would just crack Liz and me up. It was true, my shoes were dirty, and I'm a disgrace to my family. But I wasn't about to get them shined in Marrakech where the next minute they'd probably end up filthy again. It did have the effect of making me buy some shoe polish for once in my life when I got home though!
Nut seller in the souks
As evening drew in, we grabbed a drink on a terrace with a great view of the square down below. As night falls, it gets ever livelier, with everything from acrobats to amateur boxing going on, and best of all, being up on the terrace means you can watch it all without being accosted or having to cough up money for the privilege.
View of Jemaa el Fna from the roof terrace (roof terraces are big there)
At night you could really see clouds of smoke rising up over the square
A taste of the atmosphere in Jemaa el Fna (sorry, they get pretty blurry when Blogger compresses them, but it's mostly for the general noise and so on):
Acrobats performing in the square:
The amateur boxing match - which lasted about two minutes, as opposed to the hyping of the event which was about twenty. Liz and I had much discussion about whether one of the fighters was a woman. I think yes, on video evidence, right? I'm not sure who won, but the whole thing seemed a lot flailier than a professional bout.
Liz went home early on Wednesday, and as I said, I'd had enough of the hassle by then, so I spent my day getting a massage in the morning (the woman spent a disappointingly large proportion of the time massaging my legs - outside of a sports massage, surely everyone just wants back? - and threw in a bit of gratuitous boob-touching, but otherwise it was okay) and then just sitting in the sun on the terrace at the hotel, reading and drinking wine. Frankly, I needed a bit of R&R (and sunshine!) at this stage.
Action donkey shot from when I ventured out in search of food
A glimpse of the mountains behind the markets on my last full day
Then on Thursday, it was time to wend my way home, not too sorry to see the back of the place, as you will have gathered, but with lots of stories to tell!
When we had finished with the madrasa and museum, we decided to do some more intensive wandering around the souks.
The souks are mainly semi-covered (remember what I said about shade in the last post), so although you're sort of outside, you won't catch a lot of sun spending a day moseying around in them. The souks were historically divided into different specialities, such as the tanners' souks, wool souks, jewellery, spices, lamps, etc. We definitely did notice different concentrations in different areas, but there are also many places, especially nearer to the main Jemaa-el-Fna square, which are just a random mishmash of all sorts of things. Most of the time we were either lost or just wandering around with no real purpose, so although over the course of our time in Marrakech we ended up walking past some of the same places several times, I couldn't really tell you where anything is in relation to anything else.
I mentioned the insistent "guide" trying to get us into one of the tanners' yards in my first post - you can see why I wasn't really too keen to go in to one of these places in sandals (big mistake), especially since the yards are apparently literally full of dung and urine and rotting carcasses and chemicals. For once I was glad that I had a horrific cold, but even so some of the smell got through.
Peeping into a tannery
Looking on TripAdvisor, it seems we actually got off lightly - it's full of review after review of people who say they were bullied into taking a lightening-fast "tour" of the tannery before being pressured into buying overpriced goods or tipping way over the odds for their guide. So yay for the impractical sandals!
Leather drying in the sun
Ironically, we did actually want to at least look at some handbag shops, but they seemed really thin on the ground - it seems they are hidden away inside the tanneries, the better to strong-arm tourists into after they've had their "tour".
A spice shop aka "Berber pharmacy". I didn't want to touch the spice pyramids, obviously, but I think they're just thin layers stuck on to a cardboard cone or something
After we had seen the tannery area, we ended up outside the medina and walked around the city ramparts for a bit trying to get a good view of the distant snow-capped Atlas mountains. I would have liked to take a trip out to them (they are about 60 km away) or at least go somewhere where you could get a proper view of them, but Liz didn't fancy it and, although I had a full day by myself after she went home, I couldn't be bothered joining an all-day group excursion by myself. Still, we did manage to get glimpses of them throughout our trip, with these being the best views. (Unfortunately, my plane home flew first over the mountains to Agadir, with apparently spectacular views out of the other side of the plane from me.)
Once back inside the medina, it was time for lunch. This was probably the only really tasty/memorable meal we had in our entire trip, unfortunately. I'm not sure whether the food really is bland, or they just make bland food for tourists, but you'd think with all the million spice shops they're always trying to drag you into, the food would have a bit of flavour!
Yummy bubbling hot kefte/egg tagine. I bought a kefta spice mix at the spice shop above, so I'll have to see if I can recreate something along these lines. It's apparently called a Kefta Mkaouara.
Fortified by our tasty lunch, we returned to the souks in search of lamps. Actually, I don't know if either of us actually was in search of a lamp, but we both ended up getting one, after an epic negotiation by Liz. Liz is an amazing negotiator, who manages to do it with good humour and a smile. My only job in these situations is to shut my mouth, since we both know I'm the weak link who is liable to crack at any moment and blurt out an offer higher than the asking price. First up was picking the lamps, which took a long time in itself before we settled on two - I wanted one of the big rectangular ones, like I'm sitting next to in the photo below, whereas Liz went for one of the tear-drop shapes. Negotiations started out at 3000 dirhams for the two, about 300€. After a long, long, negotiation, we eventually ended up walking out with two lamps of the same style but a smaller size for 550 dirhams, or about 55€.
I lost patience with it - honestly, I don't know how long the whole process took, but easily an hour - and just said I didn't care, I didn't want a lamp any more, but Liz, bless her, kept going for the two lamps. The guy at one stage offered her lamp at x dirhams and mine at about 3 times the price, since he obviously found my lack of enthusiasm offensive! But we finally got there in the end, and everyone seemed happy with the outcome. The guy approvingly referred to Liz as a "Berber woman" - funnily enough, this wasn't the only time this happened at the end of a negotiation. I guess they have a reputation for being tough operators, unlike your average Western tourist. This was one of the occasions where we were having a laugh and a bit of banter with the guy and it did feel like we were being treated as equals, which admittedly is not exactly a high bar, but just to put that in there that not everyone we met came across was a horrible sexist. Liz then got them to rewire the lamps for us (to put in cables with on/off switches) and test them with lightbulbs to show that they were working. And refused the suggested tip for this service! Definitely a lot more backbone than I have!
Happy the negotiations are over!
It still works!
By the way, on the way back to the hotel there was another little incident I forgot to mention in my first post. This guy physically bumped into me like three times within the space of a few seconds in the crowd in the Jemaa-el-Fna square, which I thought was weird. And then when, a minute later, he somehow circled back around and bumped into me again, I definitely knew something was up. I told Liz what had happened, and we saw him circling around the back of some stalls and walking towards us again, so I pointed and said that's the guy. He saw this and, realising we were on to him, disappeared. The only things of value I had with me were my camera and wallet, zipped in an inside pocket, which I checked on. Liz suggested he might not be after my possessions, which didn't really make me feel better about things. So anyway, another dodgy little memory of Marrakech...
