Adrienne and me decided we would like to go on one last trip before the end of the year. We wanted to go to a place where the culture was different, the weather was good and the flight wouldn’t be too long. That mixed with a limited number of airplane tickets still available brought us to Marrakech Morocco.

We found a nice hotel in the Medina (the old city center) of Marrakech. The city center is a maze of narrow alleys filled with shops that are almost as small as the bathroom on our RyanAir flight. Each shop packed to the ceiling with colorful goods, smelly herbs, metal lamps, or wooden boxes and viscously overseen by an obtrusive salesman. The street scenes in Marrakech bear an uncanny resemblance to the Fata Morgana in the Efteling, well, apart from the big ugly giant in his underwear.

Marrakech is a great place for taking pictures, the scenes in the streets are incredibly interesting, but unfortunately most of the inhabitants don’t want to be on the pictures. They cover their faces with magazines, scarfs, dishes or anything they can find. It is also not unlikely that they get mad and shout some insults at you. Some harassed me for money after I took their picture. I even saw a person run after a woman demanding that she delete the picture she took of him from her camera. Luckily a small number of people didn’t seem to mind the camera and continued their work.

If you are not bothered too much by aggressive salesmen, if you don’t mind being led astray if you ask for the way and if you drive a hard bargain and are keen on haggling I can very much recommend Marrakech. We had a great time there, and I took some incredible photographs there as well. I hope you enjoy them.

PS a few of the pictures are taken in Essaouira, a place at the coast where we spent one day.