5th of October - Morocco - hang out in Marrakesh - post expedition blues - we've been to many places, but not enough of them

Many of the WMT group left town already in the morning, heading back to their respective countries and cities, but a handful of us stayed for a while longer. Today we spent our day in the city of Marrakesh doing regular touristy stuff. A few had the time to have breakfast together and chat a bit before some left to go to the airport, the siblings to their Atlas trip and we others prepared for our city tour.

My plan was to check into another hotel today, one that I'd booked months ago, a really nice riad with a pool and lots of space, but I decided to start off with just leaving my things in the room with some of the others, though, and go shopping with them. We headed off toward the center plaza and market with all it's intense shopping hysteria. So much glitter and glam, spice, music, incense, animals, colours, glass, decorations, brass and so on and on. Our goal was the Palais Badia. There were huge stork nests on the walls around the palace, some balancing quite precariously.  The palace was once upon a time the largest building around with large pools of water. It now houses a Minbar, a pulpet where an imam stands for the sermon, from the 12th century. Pics were not allowed though. Under the ruins there were former prison areas with old shackles and chains. In the old times people would get 15 day prison sentences and guilt needed to be proven. If found guilty people were either branded with hot irons or lost limbs.
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On the way back to the market, I visited a synagogue museum. Quite beautiful actually with its deep blue decorations.
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I had set my mind on trying to haggle at the market. I'm reeeally bad at this art and I totally prefer set prices, having grown up in a culture where what you see on the price tag is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Here though, it is expected and if you don't they will tell you to do it. The salesman will actually get disappointed if you don't. I think I did fairly well though. We passed the market three or more times this day. I tried asking for a price, more or less laughing at them, shaking my head, offering my price and they would think it outrageous. We would struggle a bit. I left shaking my head. They'd call me back after a minute and we'd reach an understanding, they made some, I lost some, a win-win/lose-lose situation and both of us more or less happy =)
I got two brass lamps, a brass candle light stand, a seat pouf and a tiny tea pot for Moroccan mint tea (will get the actual tea at home though).

In the afternoon I got my backpack and headed to my other hotel, Riad Viva, a lovely, classical riad with a fountain in the center, beautiful decorations and a little pool on the roof terrace. On arrival I was offered mint tea (surprise), had a wonderful shower and hopped into the pool.
Later I rejoined the others. Two more in the group were leaving in the evening, Sophie and Ben. We had time to go for drinks at the bar we had been to the day before. Jemma and I decided to try some gray wine. We had never heard of it before so we wanted to find out just what the name entailed. Unfortunately we found out why we never have heard of it. I don't think anyone would buy such a thing back home. It tasted .... well it didn't taste, but it had an aftertaste of yeast, as in sake, but without the niceties of the Japanese beverage. The whole thing turned into a joke and somewhere in between poetry got involved. Our wine became a haiku:

"Grey wine, beautiful.
The bottle, the colour, good.
The taste, not so much."
Jemma.

Quotes and poetry became a theme this evening and as we waited to receive the rest of the drinks and mused about the wine bottle Hillary popped the descriptive:

"bottle neck of the bar"
Hillary

Later came:
"We've been to many places, but not enough of them." as we talked about traveling and post expedition blues.

When Ben and Sophie departed, we headed to a restaurant that Jemma had found in her tourist book. A very nice place with lots of decorations and live music. We had a three course meal - the last real one in genuine Moroccan style with small tajine pots for different veggies, large tajines for the hot food and fruit for dessert. We had the worst background music, however. Some 90:ies melted butter pop music.

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As we left the restaurant we bought even more things from the last open shops. We walked through the nightly chaos on the plaza filled with music, blinking lights, incense and people and the group decided to walk me home. They all received farewell hugs and goodnights.

While I uploaded some pictures in the night I decided to follow my adventure guts and googled activities for  the next day. After having talked to Chris earlier I realized I would regret it if I didn't.