Day 6 16th April 2026. Marrakesh

 Well today is the first day of the conference, our reason for being here in Marrakesh of course.


It was a bit of tardy start, late breakky , dropped off the washing at the mans and then jumped in a taxi to the Palais de Congress.

All registered and time to have a look around the equipment displays before jumping into lectures. 

To be honest, looking around the equipment displays for someone making barista made coffee. no luck.

And it was Philippa that went to the lecture.


After a suitable time frame, we decided to head back to our side of town and this time on foot. It was about a 30 minute walk and probably not super smart as it’s midday and pretty hot but it was great just walking through the suburbs before arriving back into the craziness of the Medina. We are not buying a rug… absolutely not!!!

 whoops we have a killim( rug) But he was such a nice man, i didn’t want to disappoint him.


We have no real plans but after a nice cool drink back in the Souks we decided to visit Ben Youssef Medersa.

A Medersa is a theological college and this one was built in 1565 and could accommodate about 800 students in dorms in the different levels around the main courtyard.

Having walked around in there i cannot for the life of me see where 800 students could be.

For us it provided a welcome respite from the heat of the day.


Feeling weary after a few busy days, we retired to our room for a quiet afternoon before heading out to the square for something to eat.


It is a bit of mad place at this time of night.

All the food stalls are now set up and numbered and the competition to get you in is fierce.

Once they have you it’s clapping and singing. It’s busy so there is a lot of clapping and singing.

Food was great, just simple Moroccan food.

Great atmosphere but it’s time for home and picking up the washing on the way.


Another big adventure tomorrow, stay tuned….


























Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The adventurous lead up 10th April 2026

Image
This was to be called "not the Stans IYKYK" but we reconsidered this as a bit obscure.  It has certainly been quite the adventure, and we haven't left yet!  First, We found out the United Kingdom of great Britain and Ireland has changed the rules. If you are a citizen you MUST enter using a UK passport. In broad terms if your father was born in UK (like Stuart) you must use a UK passport or Relinquish your citizenship or obtain an enduring certificate of entry  these last two can take many months to process. so multiple original documents, including Australian passport was sent off to UK to obtain said passport...and it has arrived 10 days before departure. the Australian passport to arrive a couple of days later. talk about stressful! Secondly this trip, apart from the essential education component (conference in Marrakesh), was to visit the "Stans";  Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan & Kazakhstan. we thought we might give Pakistan  and...
Read more

Official Day 1 10 th April 2026 Travelling into the 11th April

Image
 Now it might seem a little strange that get to the UK this time, we are flying to across the guts of Australia to Perth.  It was another brilliant idea we had,  to test drive the 17 hour Perth to London flight. Our boys have both done and remarked that it wasn’t too bad, so we thought we would give it a go. As our luck would have it, the event in the Middle East changed all that and QF 9 doesn’t exist for the time being. It’s a Perth to Singapore ( for a 2 hour refueling stop) and then onto London. I think a total of about 29 hours. We have a flight to catch after our London arrival to get to Marrakesh, our seat of learning and education. That was all fine before we were heading to Singapore. We originally were arriving at Heathrow at 5am which gave us plenty of time to get to Gatwick for our 2pm flight to Marrakesh. Now we will be arriving at 10am with a very quick dash to the other side of London to get that flight. It seems there has been a definite tone set for this...
Read more

Day 3 ourika valley monday 13 april 2026

Image
  Today we are going on an adventure out the Ourika Valley, one of many in the Atlas mountains. Fairly low in the mountain but high enough to host a pretty waterfall. We meet our bus at 9am about a 5 minute walk away and get comfy for a trip of about an hour out of Marrakesh. The traffic out of Marrakesh is crazy but we finally emerge. Its nice being on this little bus ( with a bunch of very noisy French people) The views ahead are of the beautiful snow capped mountain range with Morocco just coming out of winter. Very pretty but hard to capture. First stop was the very busy car park beside the river with these little mini tourist buses going everywhere. I guess we wont be the only ones here today… Our mission before we have lunch by the river is to complete a 1 and half hour hike up to Sti Fadma or the top of the waterfall that we can get to by foot. Not a patch on our Purlingbrook but pretty all the same. The hike was a little unexpected, being very steep and narrow in places. Es...
Read more