“I Wish You 10,000 Camels”: On Visiting Marrakech |
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May
30
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I’ve been meaning to write this post up for a really long time but, obviously, life just kept getting in the way. So apologies, I know I’ve been promising it for a while!
Back in March, when the weather was still cold and dreary in London, I hopped over to Marrakech for a few days with my “sort-of cousin” Allison who had just turned 21 and was taking a little holiday around Europe to celebrate. I wasn’t supposed to go with her but last minute her friend had to drop out and so I slipped into her place – rather happily, I might add! The trip was lovely, it was wonderful to spend some time with Allison who was heading back to the States shortly (she was only in London to study for a semester) and Marrakech itself was great fun… but three days was enough!
You see, as beautiful as it was, there were times when Allison and I were downright terrified to be two young ladies in a foreign country by ourselves. Allison’s French is non-existent and my French is only at GCSE level and hidden beneath years of Spanish (a language I have always found to be much more intuitive), which meant that we were mostly relying on me to fumble my way through misconjugated verbs and wild gestures. By day three I was managing to communicate – my proudest moment was having a conversation with a stall vendor in the souks about traditional Moroccan sweets and where I could find them – but there were times when we thought we were going to either be run over by the ridiculous traffic or mugged down a dark alleyway by gangs of children.
So here’s my guide to Marrakech – we really only scratched the surface and if I were ever to return I’d probably want to go with a male companion, not ever by myself or with another girl.