a long Saturday

It seems a long time ago that we were eating our breakfast at the Gail's on St Pancras Station, and then hauling our cases off the Heathrow: this piece of elderly Tube tiling seemed to offer an appropriate message.  It also reminded me strongly of the 1968 Hogarth Press edition of Mrs Dalloway (which might be a decidedly specialized reminder).

But that also took me obliquely back to Essaouira, and our small hotel, with our room's little shelf of discarded holiday reading, which included a copy of my Penguin edition of The Waves - it was fun to see it out in the wild.

And back in LA ... it was great to overlap briefly with half of our cat sitters, and of course to greet Moth and Gramsci (who seem pleased enough to see us, but have obviously been having the time of their adored lives in our absence) and to check how much the garden's grown, which includes the emergence of some outrageously spectacular mallows.  But, yes, it was long.

 

views from windows while traveling

Today contained contrasts.  The land from Essaouira to Marrakech airport is barren, apart from argan trees and olive groves, although obviously there's enough nourishment, somewhere, for goats a sheep: a couple of flocks being guarded by shepherds who looked positively biblical, in the way that excited Victorian travelers all over the Middle East.  Through a couple of medium sized towns, that looked much like I remembered Greece fifty plus years ago, minus the shops selling cakes covered in artificial cream.  And then, after three and a half hours of an EasyJet flight - irreverent in a way that made SouthWest look sober and staid - back on the train from Gatwick to London,

and a view from our hotel room here.  No pic of us eating dinner at The Delaunay this evening, but it was a great final night's feast.

 

Essaouira, cats and camels

You'll be unsurprised to learn that we didn't go for a camel ride.  We were too busy admiring the town's felines.  Some are cafe proprietors;

some run motorcycle courier companies;

some are (rather terrible) artists;

others are engaged in the ceramics trade;

and notices on doors encourage one to make sure they have water available, and so on.  

Such is the affection shown towards cats here that when we were settling up this evening (we have a horribly early start), Alice asked where the hotel cat was (we haven't actually seen one, so it was a rather abstract question), and the proprietor rushed out of the front door to check, and came back to tell us that, as he should be, he was by the kitchen.

And throwing in a miscellany: our little room, or rooms (the bedroom is up in the tower);

view from our room;

miscellaneous architecture in the old town;

the view from the ramparts;

the Atlantic heading out at low tide;

and possibly the most aesthetic toilet paper shelf ever.

 

Marrakech, Essaouira and their cats

One of our hotel's cats, greeting us this morning, as we made an early visit to the Madrasa Ben Youssef (1564-65), the old Muslim scholarly center, with wonderful elaborate architecture:

Across the Djemaa El Fna one more time, back to the hotel (via the patisserie), and

then across 120 miles of what was curiously similar to the Mojave desert, with no cacti but lots of Argon trees, to Essaouira, a port and holiday town on the Atlantic: hazy and humid, but a good twenty degrees cooler than Marrakech.

Essaouira has its own handsome cats everywhere.

staying in a lovely, warren-like, whitewashed-and-cobalt riyad with extraordinary home cooking (beef - and I don't usually ever eat beef - with peas and artichoke hearts and preserved lemon).

and this is the misty nighttime Atlantic from our room.

 

Marrakech Day 3

Today's main event was the Jardin Majorelle - main, that is, apart from various non-pictured meals: breakfast at the Patisserie des Princes, where the legacy of French colonialism is very tastable in the excellent croissants; and dinner at the absolutely excellent all-women-run Saahbi Saahbi restaurant (but oh, it is so exhausting bargaining in Moroccan-style French for taxis).  At least we managed to snaffle a regular metered one for our trip to the Majorelle, a garen originally created by the Fremch artist Jacques Majorelle, then after his death falling into disrepair, and rescued from development by Yves Saint-Laurent and Pierre Bergé, and designed with lots of cobalt blue and lemon yellow, and plants.

There's a temporary pavilion with lots of information about these succulents and other vegetation, most of which seems to be found in our own garden back in LA, but hardly in the lush profusion here.

Nor do we have pons with koi,

nor little frogs.

And for an extra picture of the well-designed, here's a little niche in our living room.  It'll be hard to leave its creature comforts tomorrow ... the low sandy cloud even lifted for a moment in the early evening and we could see that yes, the Atlas mountains are there.

 

Marrakech, Day 2

We started off the day walking to the tower of the Koutoubia, historically the main mosque, and still being repaired after the 2023 earthquake; and then down to the southern Medina - beautiful old doorways as soon as we went into the old town -

to visit the stunning Saadian Tombs - last resting place of the dynasty who ruled from 1554 to 1669 - I could add a million photos here - and I could see how struck Owen Jones and others must have been by Islamic decoration wherever they encountered it - mosaic tiles to fill a million Victorian churches.

Markets both everyday, 

and touristy.

Cats everywhere.

and then the ruins of the sixteenth century El Badi Palace.

More doors.

In the early afternoon, a huge sirocco storm blew up: it was already 100 degrees, and the strong winds and sultry clouds and dust filled air were truly unpleasant ...

The combination of heat and wind meant that we sheltered in our room for most of the afternoon (and I read Peter Mayne's A Year in Marrakech, pub. in 1953, which is a really vivid picture of the city - still very identifiable).

Even when we made it out to.   the huge market square, in the early evening, the air was still full of tiny little specks of the Sahara.

And yes, these are snakes being charmed, albeit rather lethargically.