Marrakech: Day 7
by Vincent | March 16, 2015
Our last day was fairly leisurely, meandering through the souks and just enjoying the last sights and smells of Marrakech.
Café des Épices
On the second day we ate on the rooftop at Café Rahba Kedima which is where the above photo was taken. On the right you can see Café des Épices and that’s where we ate lunch.
We had sandwiches and they were pretty good but to be honest it was not as good as Café Rahba Kedima, especially for the amount of food we had. Still, sandwiches are probably not the pinnacle of Moroccan cuisine, so there still might be hope.
You’re better off skipping both and just going to Kasbah Café or the Souk Café, which we described in earlier posts. Those both were highlights of our culinary experience in Marrakech. We sat on the second floor since the rooftop was full and sipped on drinks while we ate.
Ice Legend (again)
Café des Épices was out of ice cream (glace) so of course we headed back through the souks to the ice cream vendor we went to earlier in the week.
The Quest for Prayer Beads
Céleste was hell bent for prayer beads so as we made our way back from Café des Épices we stopped at a few vendors selling beads. All of them wanted ridiculous amounts, typically 450 dirhams ($45). We were having none of it, however, and we decided we’d lowball all of them and ask for 10 dirhams. Nobody went low enough to haggle though, claiming the beads were “real stones.” Here, see, I light them on fire, one exclaimed, pulling out a lighter and proceeded to show us that these beads couldn’t possibly be plastic — see, no burn marks! That might be the case, friendo, but we’re still not paying over 50 dirhams for a necklace we could make ourselves for less. This particular merchant then proceeded to call us crazy and wouldn’t go any lower than 250 dirhams — $25 which was crazy. No way that necklace, even with real stones, was worth that much.
So we took our leave of that no-good con artist and went back to a previous vendor across the square who had offered 20 dirhams for prayer beads. This was fine, as we knew that 10 dirhams might just be too low and really we would’ve paid up to 50 for a good set. Beads in hand, Céleste and Emilie decided to stick it to that guy who called us crazy, so they ran back across the square and told the other merchant what a deal we got, “We got this for twenty dirhams, twenty!” — it’s probably a faux pas but honestly, we were tired of people trying to nickle and dime us, and we needed to have a little fun before we left. Since I stayed back, I was told when they returned that the scam merchant had waved his hand dismissively at them, muttering angrily. That showed him.
Wi-Fi
Feeling pretty good about getting a good deal and sticking it to that dude, we stopped off at a cafe on the main avenue called Marrakech au Chocolat. We just ordered some mint tea and hopped onto the Wi-Fi. Emilie was in need of the Internet for some personal issues, so most of the day was spent just hopping from place to place attempting to use Wi-Fi.
Once we made our way back to the apartment, we discovered the data plan on our cell phone hotspot was depleted. We sent a message to our Airbnb host and he promised to have it fixed in the evening. This was fine but we needed Wi-Fi yet again, so we headed down the street to a hotel cafe where we ordered some drinks and got connected.
Once Emilie felt better about her situation, we decided on a place for dinner.
Kechmara
We decided on Kechmara, a hip restaurant in the Gueliz district near us. We had an indulgent dinner and ordered some American food. I got a bacon cheese burger (it was delicious). We also had some mojitos. The food was excellent and we’d recommend stopping by if you’re in the area once you’ve tried all the tagines Morocco has to offer. It was a great end to the day and we were ready to head home back to Aix!
