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We decided not to go straight home after the corporate jolly event. After all, we’d been there from Friday night to Sunday morning and there’d been all of 3 waking hours that weren’t occupied with some form of activity, and during this three hours we were knackered so we did nothing.
So we decided we’d stay over an extra couple of days, but as the corporate jolly was over we had to move hotels from the Palmeraie Golf Resort to the Royal Mirage Deluxe down in the city centre.
It was really quite nice there.
After chilling at the hotel for a while we decided to go for a walk around.
First up we went for a walk to the rather impressive Koutoubia Mosque, which was just up the road from the hotel on the way to the Jemaa El Fnaa. It’s the largest mosque in the city and it’s really very photogenic. During the French occupation of Morocco a whole network of roads was developed around the city with the mosque as the focal point.
From the mosque we plodded our way through the city heading for the Bahia Palace.
The Bahia Palace itself is a rather impressive construction with beautiful gardens that was built in the late 19th century. The overriding effect of the place in daylight in the middle of May is rather bright and white, There were lots of white walls and brightly coloured ceramics, and it was hard work not squinting.
In the evening we got ourselves cleaned up and went out for another go. We headed up to the Djemaa el-Fnaa for a bit of Tommy tourist activity, one part of which involved some very sternly worded pigeon-French trying to tell a henna artist that Kas most definitely did not want one, nor, indeed, did she want a small “tester” (which would no doubt result in some kind of money being owed). I’d read that this is a common practice locally, so thought it best to be up front from the offset. No henna, no money, no thankyou.