Walking Around Marrakech

We had one full day to explore Marrakech before making our way to the Sahara, so we made the most of it by waking up early to visit a few of the well-known sites.  Our first stop was the Bahia Palace, which had the intention of becoming the greatest palace of all time when it was built in the late 19^th century. 

The entrance area was very small and if you weren’t looking for it, you could easily miss it and not know that a Palace was inside the small gate.  An admission fee of €1 will grant you entrance into both the garden and palace area.

It was smaller than I expected, but the Islamic and Moroccan architectural style buildings were every bit as impression as I had hoped. 

From there, we walked towards the Jewish Quarter.  It was still quite early in the morning so many of the shops were just opening and most of the people around were the vendors.  It was at the Jewish Quarter where we had the most unpleasant experience of the trip.  Some of the vendors were quite aggressive and even if we just walk by, they would continuously call out to us and follow us.  At one point, we had to turn around and walk back the way we came from and when we passed some of the same shop owners again, some of them raised their voices on us and said we had promised to look in their shops.  Needless to say, we decided that this isn’t where we wanted to be and left pretty quickly.

We made our way back towards Jemaa el Fna and walked through many of the shops there, but as it was only around 10:30am-11:00am at this point, many of the shops were still just setting up and opening.  I love markets like this as it’s not something we really have in Canada.  The organized chaos always makes for such a fun shopping experience.  There is an open air area where all of the food stalls line up at night and I heard that it’s a first come first claim system, in which each stall may have a different location every night. 

Jemaa el Fna was much more relaxed than the Jewish Quarter and the vendors were friendly and never aggressive.  There were even a few vendors that went out of their way to show us their crafts and products and happily waved us off when we decided not to purchase anything. Our accommodations were about a 5 minute walk from Jemaa el Fna, which allowed us to see this market in both daylight and at night.  The atmosphere is completely different and I highly recommend visiting during different times of the day.

After lunch, we decided to walk over to the Jardin Marjorelle and although some of the locals advised against it because they thought it would be too far, google maps showed that it would only be about a 20 minute walk so we decided to go for it.  It ended up taking us a bit longer because we did get a bit lost (in the sweltering heat), but it really wasn’t that bad. 

The Jardin Marjorelle is a large botanical garden that is crowded with foreign tourists.  Although it was created by a French artist, the décor is undeniably Moroccan.  I loved the bright and contrasting colours found throughout the garden grounds.

If you have a couple of hours to spare, I do recommend paying the gardens a visit.  Although a bit out of the way, it is a nice way to spend a quiet afternoon and to get away from the hustle and bustle of the main touristy areas.  A cab ride back to the Jemma el Fna area costed us 40 dirhams.   

Although there were many other sites in Marrakech that we couldn’t get to, this first day gave us a taste of what to expect for the rest of the trip.