Marrakesh and dubious claims

Let's pick up the story in Marrakesh.  I was unwell overnight and still unwell during the day, but I managed.  We hopped on the bus to tour the city, visited the Bahia palace where the royal family sometimes stays, and were taken to what was described by the tour company as "a traditional Moroccan pharmacy" called something like "100,000 Spices", all of which smelled like mendacity.  Traditional pharmacy, my ass.  The star of the show (and it was a hard-sell show) was the argan oil, but the products they were selling could have been Oil of Olay for all the non-traditional ingredients.  Still, our group bought the oils and the perfumes and the "Berber lipstick".  I bought 2 grams of saffron because for the first time I could actually smell something.  Pretty sure hard drugs would have cost less, but it's a treat for myself. 

I kept an eye out for yarn, but the only time I saw it was briefly in a stall or two in Fes, and hanging over shops that sold the herbal ingredients to dye the yarn.  I did occasionally see an old guy in a knit cap, but I don't think there is much call for cold-weather garments there.  Look above the yellow car:

And a few pictures from the Bahia palace.  Lots of bronze and brass and tiles, and a few little birds taking advantage of the nooks and crannies.

If you look closely, there's a sparrow in the bronze.

In theory we had the rest of the afternoon to see the Djemaa el Fna square and shop, but it was late and hot.  In crossing the square to get to the bus we saw, among the people who had set up shop to take your money: monkeys, cobras, fortune tellers, etc.  One of our younger women was grabbed and forceably hennaed, from her account, although it didn't seem unwanted.  

Next day, back on the bus for the last of Morocco.  We stopped in Casablanca to goggle at the Hassan II mosque, which can hold 100,000, and visited a mausoleum in Rabat where again I feasted my eyes on intricately and symmetrically carved marble, mosaics, and a riot of colors and patterns.

And my only selfie outside the mausoleum.

Back on the bus, our final destination Tangier and a hotel that was right out of the French colonial playbook, and was at the top of an absurdly steep hill, which our folks gamely struggled up, dragging our bags.  Our tour payment covered porterage for one bag at each hotel, so we had to schlep everything else ourselves.  There was much confusion over gluten-freeness at dinner, there was a horrible local group of musicians playing loudly and off-key, so I departed for my room, which was like solving an escape room puzzle by the time I found it.  While there I heard a sudden shouting/chanting/singing/ululation from the streets - uprising?  Football victory? Ramadan?  As Ramadan was about to begin, I assumed that was it.  I did not have much time to think about it because our return ferry trip the next day was not noon, but 8 am, meaning we had to get out of the hotel face-slappingly early.

Some random observations about Morocco: our local guide (and apparently most of the population) love the current king "M6" as much as they hated his father, who was a cruel dictator.  It sounds like he is doing his best to bring Morocco into the modern world, although clearly much of it is not.  They think of it as an emerging economy, not third-world.  On the way to Tangier we passed acres and acres of land under plastic sheeting to grow bananas, and prickly pears being farmed for the oil from their seeds, which sells for $3000 per liter after Japanese chemists found some kind of enzyme in it.  We drove along a straight new highway, with dealerships for just about any kind of car, and hopeful traffic circles that had been built just in case a cross-street ever develops there.  We saw lots of housing being built, but to my eye way more than could ever be bought by people who could afford it.  You're not supposed to drink the water.  There is obviously great poverty and nobody has ever heard the words "excuse me", but there were fountains and roses and wildflowers and American television with Arabic subtitles and a million satellite dishes to bring it in.  And there was "halal ham" on hotel menus - apparently the Arabs have discovered how to make corned beef or lamb.

Farewell to Morocco.  Pretty sure I will never make it back there on purpose, but it was an interesting place.