TRAVEL AND LIFESTYLE DIARIES

On my way to Normandy I had a lunch stopover in Amiens. The city is the capital of the Picardie region in the department of Somme about 115 kilometres north of Paris. I have been on the road for more than 4 hours already. The standard safety advice for motorists driving long distance is to pull over every 2 hours. To my knowledge, not everyone does this really but those massive truckers I believe they go by the rules as they are checked regularly. There are four items I wanted to see and do in Amiens: 1) Check out the Saturday market 2) Have lunch 3) Walk around town 4) Visit the Notre Dame Cathedral Parking was relatively easy and cheap. If only parking is as cheap as in the Netherlands! So after finding parking, I strolled a bit, just to gather my bearings. Because the city centre is small it was easy peasy to find my way around. I right away spotted the square with cosy cafes terraces and I already found the café I want to have lunch in but first I need to check out the ...

So we decided to take a tour guide for the walking tour in Ouarzazate Medina. We have been left without a choice anyway since the medina, and well, the whole Ouarzazate town really does not look like its a place where tourists just walk around. There are just not many visitors here and it is definitely not a place for a non-local to be walking around on their own. Other than it is extremely hot, there are really not many places to hang out to pass time. I need of course a souvenir picture in the medina derbs (means alleyways). So we began the walking tour with a little history lesson. Back in the old days, Ouarzazate was the crossing point of merchants. It is an important trading point for Africans crossing over to Europe from the sub-Saharan continent. Our amiable middle-aged tour guide told us that UNESCO built the streets in the medina so visitors can enjoy and partake in the Ouarzazate experience. Before this, the pathways were not fit for walking. It was all muddy. The...

After our traditional Moroccan lunch, the group headed to Kasbah Taorirt. It is the former residence of Pacha Glaoui, the ruler of Marrakesh and the south of Morocco. Many thanks and special mention to UNESCO for funding the renovation of this Kasbah and for paving the streets in the medina. Entrance to the Kasbah is 20 DH per person and this is exclusive of the tour guide. So the group arranged a tour guide for the Kasbah who will act as our guide, as well as later for the medina walking tour. I forgot the name of our friendly and very professional guide. He was a bit older and had a lot of knowledge about the town and the kasbah. He was quite good. With a smirk on his face, he narrated the history of Kasbah Taorirt including the love affairs of the Pacha who had four official wives and several concubines. I guess this is pretty normal here in Morocco, in the Muslim culture, even up to this day, that if you have the power and money, especially the latter, then you indeed have...

I’ve previously written on this blog about our hellish drive on the steep zigzagged Col du Tichka Pass in the High Atlas mountains with our looney ADHD Moroccan driver. Well, you just don’t know the massive relief we felt when we have finally reached our destination for the day—Ouarzazate (pronounced as Oo-war-za-zet). *sigh* I cannot stress enough what a relief it was! A traditional shop in clay selling carpets outside the medina. Ouarzazate, as many Moroccans tell us is the ‘Doors to the desert’. Many African traders from the sub-Saharan continent cross here on their journey to Europe, and like many other important Arabic city, Ouarzazate has its own gorgeous spread of carpets as well. Ouarzazate bears another nickname as well, ‘The Hollywood of Morocco’. The biggest film studio in the country is located here. We did a quick visit to the Atlas Studio but didn’t go inside. The film studio has a hotel and there were memorabilia and posters of the movies shot in Ouarzazate. ...

Going to Ait Ben Haddhou was another drama we didn’t totally expect. Having read about this UNESCO World Heritage place, I swore to myself -- I MUST VISIT HER. We were speechless when we saw Ksar Ait Benhaddou for the very first time. Persuasion powers needed We first went to Ouarzazate which I will write about in a separate entry later. Had lunch there and spent a couple of hours checking out the kasbah and the medina. The next plan on the agenda was to quickly visit the Film Studio and then we will be on the road to Ait Benhaddou which is about half an hour away. But ADHD driver said we can only visit 1 site as we don’t have enough time left and we must return back to Marrakech before dusk to avoid being caught driving in the dark on the zigzagged Tichka cliffs. Since we are near to a film studio, much to my dismay, we all somewhat agreed to go there. Fine. When we arrived at the film studio, we were told that we have to wait for half an hour for the tour guide to arrive. Now...