Samir from The View From Fez blog has a great list of places to eat and sleep in Marrakech (as well as just about everything else anyone would ever want to know about Morocco). And the best Marrakesh restaurant guide I've ever run across is Footprint Guide's. But I want to stick my two cents in too. Everyone has a favorite spot for eating in Marrakesh. My friend Alisse, who had just gotten back before I left insisted that Yacout was THE place and Alisse is a great cook and knows food. Everyone says it's the most beautiful restaurant in town but the rap is that the food is... uneven, and even unpredictable. The idea of another huge overdone Moroccan feast was too much for me to handle and I never did experience it for myself.

Like I explained a few days ago when I wrote about eating in Fes, when I can I do my best to generally avoid the restaurants specifically catering to tourists. Occasionally one of these palace dining extravaganzas is done right-- and in Marrakesh, they have it down pretty well-- but most of the time these places are grotesquely over-priced and the food extremely bland and uninteresting to appeal to a lowest common denominator, taking elderly tourist bowel quirks more into consideration than authentic culinary excellence. The extreme, of course, is to pick one of the food stalls that cover an acre of in the Jemaa el Fna at night.

In the 35 or so years I've been visiting Marrakesh I think this was probably the first time I actually ate at a Jemaa el Fna food stall. I'm always so overly cautious about what I eat. I mean I don't even drink tap water in L.A. and I try as best I can to only eat organic food and never anything fried, and so on (nor do I eat anything made with sugar or flour or cooked in cheap oils). When I made my 2 year trip across Asia I noticed that my less picky friends, who ate as though they were born in places like Herat and Erzurum and Benares, were always coming down with seriously debilitating and revolting travelers' diseases like the infamous Kabul Runs (think Montezuma's Revenge on steroids). But the steaming bowl of harira Roland was slopping down greedily looked so good that I decided to go for it. There were no ill-effects and the harira was completely delicious (and only cost like 2.5 dirhams, as opposed to between 60 and 80 in the tourist restaurants, thirty times more!).

Anyway, let me share a couple of Marrakesh restaurant experiences with you. The only restaurant in Guéliz (the new city) we went to is the justifiably famous Al Fassia. The 2 unique things about it is that it is entirely run by women and that they revel in the concept of a la carte, never an easy thing for foreigners to find. The food was superb and expensive but not over the moon. And, like many Moroccan eateries, if you give them enough notice, they'll prepare things for you to order. The menu has all the best Moroccan standards and you can pick the ones you want and not have to bother with the ones you don't. It was sold out when we went and they said we'd have to come another time but begging and pleading helped and we were seated in an hour. I don't know if the dining room at the Riyad El Cadi takes non-residents (I don't see why they wouldn't if you asked politely) but the cooking is superb and, basically you tell them what you want in the morning and they serve it for dinner. You won't find better homemade type cooking anywhere. For our big night out the El Cadi's manager suggested we go to the Dar Zellij deep in the heart of the medina. I was intrigued because it isn't in any of the tourist guide books, although it is very much for tourists. We got there considerably before they were ready to serve so we spent some time talking with the very friendly and accommodating owner. The restaurant is simply one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The food, although the typical tourist menu (unless you call in advance and order what you want, which we did), is PERFECTION. Everything was beyond delicious. And the servings were not gargantuan (as is typical in Morocco), although if you're a glutton, have no fear: they're happy to serve seconds on any dish you want more of.

Just a note about all the famous dives made famous by the hippies starting in the 60s that flank the Jemaa El Fna: the food won't kill you but if eating is a joy-- and in Morocco it should be-- these are not worthwhile places to waste a meal time. They basically all serve so-so completely unmemorable basics, neither good nor particularly bad.

Photo © Aaron Vincent Elkaim-All Rights Reserved
On the occasion of Passover, I thought of posting an interesting visual-historical-religious photo essay relating to the long Judeo-Muslim history of Morocco by Aaron Vincent Elkaim.

Jewish history in Morocco dates back to over 2000 years, and Jews have lived in the country as a protected minority. Prior to the arrival of the French in 1912, the currency and flag of Morocco carried the star of David, a recognition that it represented a prophet revered by Jew and Muslim (as Dawood) alike. During the Second World War, the king of Morocco famously declared to the Nazis (who wanted a list of Jews) that there were no Jews in Morocco, only Moroccan citizens.

Following the establishment of Israel, most of the Moroccan Jews have left their country of birth for the USA, France, Canada and Israel itself.

Aaron is an emerging documentary photography who initially studied Film and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Manitoba. His work was awarded on numerous occasions and published in newspapers and magazines across Canada.

His photographs in the mellahs of Marrakesh and Essaouira remind me of my own at the synagogues in these two cities last summer, during the Essaouira Gnawa festival.

When I announced to my friends that I was going to Morocco for a few weeks in December and January, almost all of them were wary. Everyone knows I have a penchant for the kind of exotic travel that leaves most Americanos flat, but to march voluntarily into the maw of the beast??? Well, first off Morocco's pro-Western monarchy is much-loathed by primitivist and fundamentalist backers of groups like Al Qaeda and, indeed, Casablanca suffered a suicide bomb attack in May, 2003. It wasn't as damaging as the ones in New York, Bali, Madrid or London but something like 40 people died and 100 were injured. Over 2,000 people have been arrested. Velvet gloves and smiley faces or not, Morocco is a police state and a dictatorship; you don't want to run afoul of the Man in that country. Is it safe? Is New York? Is London? Is anywhere?

As for the Moroccans, they seem extremely pro-American, at least as far as I could tell. Virtually everyone I met had nothing but disdain for the Bush Regime, of course (I mean name a place that doesn't other than, perhaps, Israel, Utah and the Old Confederacy) but in terms of American culture, American ideals, and, more to the point, American people, the Moroccans are all thumbs up.

Unlike the French, British, Spanish, Portuguese and (almost) the Germans, Morocco never had a colonial problem with the Americans. Morocco was actually the first country in the world to officially recognize U.S. independence and official relations have always been good. There's a natural affinity between Moroccans and Americans. And, a little bonus, of all the Arabs anywhere, the Moroccans seem by far the least hostile towards Jews. (One Moroccan I met on this trip told me, with more pride than accuracy I think, that the first government of independent Israel was comprised mostly of Moroccan Jews.) When we first got there and people would ask where we are from I would always say "California in America." At first Roland would grimace and ask me if I was trying to get us killed-- since there are relatively few Americans traveling in Morocco and people assume when they hear English that you're a Brit-- but after a couple of days worth of huge, sincere smiles at my answer, even Roland admitted that, despite what they feel about Bush, Moroccans like Americans.

A friend of mine in the Bali tourist industry told me last year that an average American on vacation in Bali will spend five times what an average European, Japanese or Australian will spend there! I have no reason to believe the figure is substantially different for Morocco. And that kind of spending makes a lot of friends. The owner of a fancy restaurant in Marrakech told me that Americans were the only consistently good tippers, and this in one of the most esteemed restaurants in the city. (When we ate there it was full of French tourists. When the owner asked me how I liked the salads, I was extremely enthusiastic and before I could readjust myself in my seat, a complete encore of the dozen little plates of salad arrived at the table. I didn't notice that on any of the French-occupied tables around us.)

I'll tell you why I rate Morocco as a relatively safe place for tourists. It's the exponential growth of the middle class there. Morocco is a pretty rich country. Unfortunately all the wealth has been concentrated in a very few hands. Under Hassan II things started loosening up and now under his son Mohammed VI, things have really taken off. A Moroccan friend of mine told me it's because of the relaxation in once prohibitive rules about mortgages and borrowing. But whatever the reason, there appears to be a Moroccan middle class that is a lot bigger and a lot more influential than there was on any of my previous 9 trips to the country.

Marrakech might have once been scary for a typical tourist. Today Marrakech is a pretty cosmopolitan city that is very much part of the "international scene." I heard a report on the BBC about the fastest growing real estate markets in the world. I don't recall them mentioning London or Paris or Los Angeles. It was all about Shanghai and Singapore and... Marrakech! Fes still has a way to go, but even Fes, once the scariest and most forbidding city in the country, is pretty tame. Tangier has been tame far longer, but it seems very much a user-friendly blend of East-Meets-West these days.

I've been to every remote region in the country, from the kif "badlands" up in the Rif Mountains to Sidi Ifni, Ouarzazate, M'hamid and all through the High Atlas. I've always felt pretty secure and an easy-going. Exotic, yes; dangerous, nah.


UPDATE: U.S. BUILDING TORTURE PRISON IN MOROCCO; COULD SPELL BIG TROUBLE

I'll stand by what I've said about the natural affinity between Moroccans and Americans and what a safe environment I've found on my trips to Morocco. However, I found some cause for alarm in today's SUNDAY TIMES (London). "The United States is helping Morocco to build a new interrogation and detention facility for Al-Qaeda suspects near its capital, Rabat, according to western intelligence sources. The sources confirmed last week that building was under way at Ain Aouda, above a wooded gorge south of Rabat’s diplomatic district. The construction of the new compound, run by the Direction de la Securité du Territoire (DST), the Moroccan secret police, adds to a substantial body of evidence that Morocco is one of America’s principal partners in the secret 'rendition' programme in which the CIA flies prisoners to third countries for interrogation."

This isn't good news for Americans thinking about visiting Morocco because it could make tourists into targets in the minds of extremists and radicals. Non-official media in Morocco have accused the government of turning Morocco into "the CIA's dustbin."


UPDATE: APRIL, 2007-- SOME SAY THE THREAT OF TERRORISM IN MOROCCO IS VERY REAL

Morocco is not immune from a general terrorist threat in the Islamic world. And some say intricate political considerations have kept Morocco from effectively protecting itself from the scourge. Sadly, it might be something for you to take into consideration when making travel plans. Today a couple of suicide bombers blew themselves up in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Casablanca. This was hot on the heels of lethal bombings in neighbouring Algeria in which 33 people were killed by a group claiming affiliation to al-Qaeda.

One day after the latest attacks the U.S. government warned of a high risk of violence against U.S. citizens in Casablanca and advised Americans to stay at home. "The potential for violence against American interests and citizens and other Western targets remains high in Morocco," is how the State Department put it. The Khaleej Times warns that "Establishments which are readily identifiable with the United States are potential targets for attacks." Today's L.A. Times seems most concerned about the coordination of attacks in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco with al-Qaeda. On the other hand, my friend Alisse just got back from a week in Fes-- which she loved-- and she didn't pick up on anything that seemed remotely threatening.

I just got a letter from an old friend, Dave, who is visiting Morocco with 2 other mutual friends, Jo and Cindy. It's the first time in Morocco for each of them. He wrote to me from the Riyad El Cadi, the fantastic townhouse in Marrakesh where Roland and I stayed last December. Dave said it was ok to turn his letter into a blog.

I'm writing this to you under the lemon trees in the central courtyard of the riyad el cadi.  As I type, the electrifying moan of the afternoon call to prayer is starting to swell across the medina. We arrived last night after a flight from Amsterdam. I am staying in your room, the Piscine, and Josephine and Cindy are in the Maison Bleu.

Thanks so much for recommending this place. It's absolutely lovely. And they light up when we mention "Howie".

Here's a little excerpt from of my diary. The longer entry spent a lot of time describing our arrival on the edge of the Jamaa El Fna and the walk to the Riyad -- a scene you know well enough, so I'll spare you that bit and cut to early this morning...

As I have for the last week, I slept like an old dog. Me, who's used to three or four hours at a time, sleeping for six and seven. Very odd. What's surprising here is that you're in the middle of this incredibly dense neighborhood that stretches out at least a couple of miles in every direction from you and at night it's just dead silent. I had a crazy dream about being caught up in some very intense religous mystery (along the lines of the Da Vinci Code I think -- although i haven't read it) chasing people through all these little corridors and stairways, being warned to stop asking questions by some people and pulled into dark doorways by others who would confide some mysterious bit of secret information. I woke up quite disoriented to the sound of the morning call to prayer at 5, followed by a really amazing concert of bird calls of every description. Needless to say, it took me a while to feel like i was really awake and really here.

At breakfast this morning a fellow named Hassan from the hotel spent about a half an hour with us talking about what we wanted to see and do, and then marking routes and destinations on the impossibly complicated map of the old city -- the Medina.  A bit later we set out on our way, deciding to go visit an antique-dealing friend of Hassan's who he said was not more than 3 minutes walk up the alley. Within a minute and a half we were totally lost. I can't really describe the scene, and I know that sooner or later you just get used to it and start to get your bearings, but at first it's just sort of mind-blowing,  Turn a corner and you're in the middle of a little vegetable market where a man is selling red onions, a woman has two little piles of apricots, a moped is honking its way through the busy crowd, an old old man is leading a donkey pulling a cart full of animal hides and then another man more or less pulls you into his doorway to show you his blanket factory. Before you know it, he's led you down a dark, dark corridor and into a ramshackle room where ten or twelve men are working on looms, weaving these incredibly vibrant colored yarns into blankets and rugs. And the guy is offering you tea and talking about America and saying "you are welcome here" and about how he'll make a special price for you. It's at once stunningly beautiful, squalid, intimidating, annoying, funny and seemingly so damned authentic that the modern cynic in you can't possibly believe that it could possibly be authentic at all. I think this is the thing that, in my first day here, has suprised me the most. You travel around a bit and you start to believe that every place is more or less the same.  London is not that different from Los Angeles... Amsterdam... Chicago...  even China which in a lot of ways really blew my mind.  What's surprising is how much alike they all seem to be. You begin to expect to be able to feel more or less at home anywhere. Then there's this place which makes you realize that the world is still a lot bigger than you are. Today, wandering through the maze of markets, it made me feel quite naive. And that, in turn, made me feel vulnerable, and for a second, a little uneasy. And then again, everyone is remarkably friendly and funny. A man in a shop asked me if Josephine and Cindy were my two wives. I laughed and he laughed and he told me I must be a Berber and that he'd give me 12,000 dirhams for the pair of them and we both laughed some more.  I guess the Berber are the butt of a lot of jokes here.  A few minutes later, in another stall, Josephine was considering buying some old tins.  She pulled me in to talk to the seller who was asking 400 dirhams and he asked me to tell him my price.  When I said she would pay 200 for them, he looked and me and said I must be Berber. I said, "Berber? Why? Because I'm cheap?" To which he replied, "Cheap!  Yes." And laughed.

Yesterday I had to abandon the girls and retreat to the Riyad after I couldn't absorb any more shopping.  A couple of hours later they returned with a tale of Josephine nearly getting into it with a passive agressive t-shirt seller who, after apparently some time spent chatting, offering tea and showing the goods, felt that her price was insulting.  He said something along the lines of "Are you a little crazy in the head?" and at some point put the shirts in a bag and threw them at her telling her, "Fine! Just take them American. Just take them for nothing."  I sort of wish I'd seen it and then again I'm really glad I wasn't there.

Today I think we're headed to some gardens and a supermarket.

Oh, and we had a wonderful dinner at El Fassia last night.

Anyway, thanks again Howie.  We feel a little like you're here with us.

UPDATE: 36 HOURS IN MARRAKESH-- TOO EXPRESS

Today's NY Times is right about one thing: Marrakesh is cool. Their vision of why... kind of superficial. Hey, but superficial people have a right to discover cool places too (and destroy them for everyone else).

I've probably thought about this more than most. Starting back when I was 13-- and attempting to hitchhike down to Miami Beach to visit my grandparents for Easter (they called it Pessach)-- I've been taking to the road alone. A few years after that, I hitched from New York to California to stow away on a boat so I could go live on Tonga. (I never made it past L.A.'s San Pedro harbor.) And then a few years later I drove to India by myself, spending around 2 years traveling through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal.

First off, you're never really alone that much. I mean when you're hitching, there's a driver and he's picking you up because he wants to talk to someone. And when I was driving through Europe and Asia I always had a crew of people to help me pay for gas and all. And, best of all, traveling alone more or less forces you to meet people, one of the greatest joys of travel.

More recently I've done a lot of more conventional traveling with friends like Roland or Craig. In 2005 I rented a villa on Bali and invited 3 of my friends, Rebecca, Brad and Craig to join me. And last month Roland and I went to Spain and Morocco. Roland is a great travel buddy and travel is probably the bondingest thing between us. We've been all over the world together: London, Paris, Rome, of course, as well as more off the beaten tracks kind of destinations like Calcutta, Kandy, Chiang Mai, Abu Simbel, Cappadocia, Corleone (on Sicily), the Mekong Delta... and, all over Morocco, not just Tangier and Marrakech, but to places like Sidi Ifni, Tiznit, Taroudant, Zagora and on into the Sahara (by camel). The traveling alone thing came up when I saw him off after almost 3 weeks at the Essaouira bus station. He was headed for Casablanca, London and his job back in L.A. and I had a few days on my own.

The first time I was in Morocco was 1969 and I went with my girlfriend Martha. We had been in college together and each of us was very much a full-fledged individual. Each could say or do whatever we wanted without the other feeling that he or she was being defined. Suddenly when we were on the road I was not an individual but one half of an entity called "Howie + Martha." Oh, did I not like that! I had graduated and she had another year left. I drove her up to England; we went to the Isle of Wight Festival, heard Dylan sing "I Threw It All Away" (which I was very conscious-- in a fatalistic and melancholy way-- I was doing) and then she flew home and I drove to India, no longer a fraction of anything.

Back to Roland. I'm sure I'll never find a better travel companion. He loves adventure, is practically fearless, likes poking around off any beaten path, eats foods not many red-blooded Americans would ever consider (sober)... all that kind of stuff. After his bus took off in Essaouira-- a city I've loved since I was there at the same time as Jimi Hendrix in '69-- I started walking back to my hotel and thought, "well, now I'm alone. Is that good?" It sure was!

Even when you travel with the greatest traveling companion (like Roland), you always have to make all these little compromises. He hates the sun, for example. I love the sun. But if a mediocre restaurant is closer (less sun) and an awesome restaurant is further, meaning walking in the sun, he always wants to eat in the mediocre one. Laugh... but that happened in Essaouira. We both love Chez Sam's, certainly long the best restaurant in town, way at the end of the docks, as picturesque as you'll get and delicious food. But just a little bit closer is a restaurant that is not mediocre in fact but excruciating-- Le Coquillage. It exists only to service the one-day bus trippers who come to poke around Essaouira from Marrakech or, worse, Agadir. The service is abysmal and the food is... well, like food anywhere if no one is worried about repeat customers. But it meant less walking in the sun. (The third seafood restaurant on the beach, the Chalet de la Plage, also a fave of both of us, was already closed but that one is almost as good as Chez Sam-- and highly recommended, although not for lunch when the bus tours are around.) Anyway, pardon the tangent. The point was that sometimes you just don't feel like compromising all the time, or even taking someone else into consideration. And since Roland dislikes people almost as much as he dislikes the sun... and yours truly LOVES meeting people on the road...

So, anyway, he's gone and the first thing I do is go right to the hotel I always used to stay at, Hotel des Iles. (We had decided to stay someplace else this time and I found what looked like a charming place on the internet, a "riad" called Lalla Mira, which claims to be a kind of health-food hotel. It tuned out to be a pretty gross tenement kind of joint and I moved out the next morning, to the sterile luxurious Sofitel Thalassa Mogador, the kind of character-deficient place I usually avoid. But, after a night at the Lalla Mira I wanted something clean and comfy and a little upscale and Mohammed behind the desk made me a GREAT deal-- really great-- whereas the even fancier hotel in town, the Heure Bleue Palais, was inordinately expensive and unwilling to offer a discount.) The reason I walked over to the Hotel des Iles was because Roland and I hadn't been able to find an old friend of mine who had a shop. The problem was that there had been only one street with shops in that part of town 10 years ago and now there were a dozen. Street after street had been turned into pretty identical shopping streets. Roland usually remembers how to find things but he had noreal interest in helping me find my friend anyway. But once he was gone, I just decided to retrace my steps-- from 10 years previous-- starting at the door of the Hotel des Iles. I turned off my brain and let my feet take me there. It worked. He has two kids now and lots of ideas as usual-- from an olive and argun oil museum to a line of handmade Berber handbags for women. Fun to see him again and catch up a little. And once I found his shop I was able to orient myself and find all the places I always liked most in Essaouira. More about that anon.

Once I get settled into this blog I'm sure it'll set its own rhythm. It won't be all chronological or anything like that. But yesterday I got home from 3 weeks in Morocco and for now that's what I want to write about. I took some notes while I was there and after a while maybe some reflections'll come to me too. But today I want to write about Fes, long one of my favorite Moroccan cities (although the first time I visited, July, 1969, I was too intestinally-afflicted to pay it much attention; and food was the last thing I was thinking about at the time). But I've been back many times and I was looking forward to it when I arrived from Tangier in late December (2005).

You can ask anyone in Morocco. Either they'll admit right off the bat that Fes has the best eats in the country or they'll make a tepid claim for their own city, asserting it and Fes are the title holders. But-- despite the fact that Hassan II hired a Meknesi chef for his kids' weddings-- everyone knows the best food in Morocco, a country with a highly sophisticated and unique cuisine, is made in Fes. Problem is, it's not easily available to visitors.

First a disclaimer: individual Fassi can be as nice and as helpful and as generous and as kind as people anywhere-- or as selfish, predatory and rotten. But it seems that Fes as a corporate body, particularly as a part of the Moroccan tourist industry, views (Western) visitors as fat pigeons brought to them for plucking. In the capital of Moroccan cuisine there is virtually no place to get a decent meal! The hotels and virtually all the restaurants serve blanded out versions of Moroccan classics for astronomical prices in absurd, gawdy atmospheres that even include the distinctly non-Moroccan (let alone Fassi) tradition of belly dancers. It's all about huge portions and they don't know from ala carte-- only ridiculously immense feasts (which are also ridiculously overpriced).

Like in any country, the best cooking is always in homes and because I've eaten in Moroccan homes for years, I know the difference between what is quality and what is swill. Heaping mounds of robotically-prepared mediocre food don't impress me even if it's served in a stunning atmosphere.

I stayed at the best address in Fes, the Palais Jamai, a place I've stayed for decades, although this was the first visit since it was acquired by multinational Sofitel in 1999. A glorious era that began in 1930 has definitely come to an end. The hotel was never really inexpensive but Sofitel has not only made it blander and more acceptable to a lower common denominator (i.e.- people who like Disneyworld), they have also made it outrageously more expensive. I mean, although it is quite lovely, built into the walls of Fes-el-Bali (the old city medina), when you get right down to it, it is, afterall, just a nice old hotel afloat in a sea of donkey shit. Literally. (One of the principal charms of Fes-- less charitable people might say the only charm-- is that it is a mysterious warren on dark, narrow cobblestone alleyways, with steps everywhere. It is the world's most complete functioning medieval city. No motor vehicles in medieval cities; only donkeys. And mules. And they don't wear diapers. After a while it only bothers you when it's raining.) Anyway, the hotel is charging London and Paris prices-- in a sea of donkey shit.

For those prices you should at least expect top notch eats, right? Breakfast's included and the key word is bland. If a Moroccan wife served her husband's guests harira like they had at breakfast at the Palais Jamai, she would be beaten before she was divorced.

A good price for GREAT harira (the national soup, the pride of every kitchen in the country) in a middle class Moroccan restaurant in Tangier is 5 dirhams. At the Jema el Fna in Marrakech, at one of the stalls, a heaping bowl of A-1 harira costs 2.5 dirham (like 30 U.S. cents). In tourist land-- not just in Fes, but in any Moroccan city catering to tourists-- the harira is of distinctly inferior quality and costs as much as 12 times that! A friend of mine from Meknes warned me-- as have other Moroccans outside of the tourist trade-- that if they think you're not Moroccan, the only limit to what they'll charge is what they think they can get away with. (Sounds something like Bush-Enron economics!)

According to the guide books, the "best" restaurant in Fes is the Al Fassia in our hotel. It is a very flashy atmosphere and the food is good. But there is no ala carte menu, just the absurd dinner made for a glutton (for around $50/person, an immense sum in this country). When I explained to Jamal, the concierge, that we wanted real Fassi food, not a touristic feeding station farce, he recommended L'Arabesque, a few steps away from the hotel. (Good concierges try to listen to what their client is saying and come up with a solution. In Morocco, concierges are not working for you; they're working for whomever is paying them to send rich foreigners their way.) L'Arabesque is the same kind of overdone nonsense as the Al Fassia-- and even more expensive! I'd wager no Moroccan has ever eaten there. And down the street-- and owned by the same outfit-- is the less grandiose joint along similar lines charging around $15/person, the Dar Jamaii. Dinner was somewhat better than canned dog food.

None of the tour books' highly recommended grand restaurants are open for dinner-- only lunch. We tried the Palais M'Nebhi, just me and Roland and a large troupe of picture-snapping Japanese. It is a beautiful setting-- all Moorish tiles and superbly carved ceilings and all-- but the food was remarkably mediocre-- and predictably overpriced. We were ready to give up on finding a good meal in the city with the best food in the country!

And along came Baba. Baba is a bizarre name for an Arab but this guy was born in Fes-- a former businessman whose stress-related heart problems led him away from business and towards calligraphy. Roland hired him to write the names of each of his 20 third graders in classic Arabic on exotic-looking cardstock. He recommended a restaurant called Riad Dar Tafilalet. We walked over around 6, told them exactly what we wanted and they told us to come back at 9. I asked them to make me a tagine of the tiny black artichokes that were in season (Tagine B'Lquoq beldi) that my friend from Meknes had told me about. Roland asked for a lamb and prunes tagine. I got an exceptionally good vegetarian tagine-- no artichokes-- and Roland got some first rate lamb with artichokes; no prunes. There were no other clients but the staff was friendly and the atmosphere was fine and we ate the rest of our dinners at this place.

We also had a lunch with Baba and his family (in the house he was born in). Predictably it was better than anything we could get in a restaurant. Tons of food, though, and his sister-in-law and another guest kept urging me to eat more and more. No belching though.

I'll talk more about Fes and also more about Moroccan food-- in Tangier, Casablanca, Essaouira and Marrakech-- in a day or two. Meanwhile, here's a great link for all the facts about Morocco.

Traditionally the main entrance to Fes-el-Bali (Fes' old walled medina) is through the beautiful Bab Bou Jeloud. Two things were "missing" when I strolled over to take a look a couple weeks ago. One was the large... birdcage in a corner of the square where the captured crown prince of Portugal was once displayed as he slowly died of starvation; and the other was the truly intolerable myriad of uber-aggressive "guides" (angry, unemployed young men with major chips on their shoulders). The scourge of tourist tranquility, the hordes of these pests are pretty much... gone (as they were even earlier from Tangier and Marrakech). I think Fes was the last hold out.

An aside here. Roland and I were once walking around in the late afternoon, wandering aimlessly in the vicinity of the Bab Bou Jeloud when a particularly obnoxious, snarling guy insisted that we couldn't walk around without him. The discussion quickly degenerated into him cursing and screaming at us and calling us Jews and Americans and whatnot; very threatening. When a cop appeared out of nowhere and grabbed him we were very relieved; our relief turned to mortification when the copy commenced beating him savagely. But I guess why we didn't see him or any of his colleagues on this trip.

There are now signs posted throughout the labyrinth that makes up the old city, marking sites and routes. I mean, it could be Rome or Dublin almost. It is no longer the forbidding, scary place it has always been reputed to be. We never even felt intimidated to not walk around late at night. We wandered around anywhere we wanted for 3 days essentially unmolested. Maybe the Fassi saw the benefits tourism have brought to Marrakech, but something-- maybe aggressive police action-- has made Fes' medina a lot more comfortable for tourists-- and a lot more profitable for bazaris. It isn't Disneyland yet and you won't see Ma and Pa Kettle ambling around alone yet, but that's probably coming soon. I definitely saw a lot more European families walking around freely.

I'm finally finished unpacking and guess what I found! 3 pages of notes that I took when I decided to start this blog while I was in Tangier. Well, it's not the first post like I planned on it being, but, hopefully you'll get an idea where I'm coming from and an idea about Tangier too. The day before I started thinking about a blog, Roland and I were wandering around the Tangier medina and kasbah. It was my 10th trip to Morocco, probably my 6th or 7th to Tangier and I didn't recognize much-- a flicker or a glimmer here, a flicker there. And not because it's all changed or something; the memory ain't what it used to be (even though I take this great holistic memory stuff my friend Lou recommended, Juvenon.) Anyway, Roland has a great memory and he navigated us up hills and through passageways. "Don't you remember this (mega hill)"? he demanded.

"Uh... no. Are you sure we went this way last time?" He was-- and we had. (Eventually I recalled; it just takes longer these days.) The hill leads right up into the Place du Kasbah, the place where the kasbah begins with the police station and my friend Absalaam's  little cafe (which I've only seen open exactly one time. It was closed.) Now how the hell are we gonna find Absalaam's house? Roland was undaunted. He even remembered the awesome ancient door. We both had a memory of a small, pastel mosque Matisse had painted a block from Absalaam's. (That's it with me in the photo.)

The first time I came to Tangier it was 1969. I had heard lurid things about the city-- it had a bad reputation back then, a holdover from the International City days-- and I avoided it on the way in by entering via an Algeciras ferry to Ceuta, the bit of Spain that is still left in Morocco. Dull, sleepy place, but we headed south from there and by-passed Tangier. A month later, we did enter the city of sin on the way back to Spain. It didn't impress me but I didn't give it a chance. It wasn't for years that I grew to really like Tangier. But not remembering much is what gave me the idea for starting the blog. I told Roland and he loved the idea-- and he never thinks anything is a good idea.

Allow me a quick detour from Tangier-- as though this really were the first piece in a brand new blog (instead of the seventh in a 5 day old blog)-- and I'll give you a few details about my traveler background. I hit the road for the first time in the mid-60s when I was just a kid. I think I had just turned 15 when I hitchhiked from Brooklyn to Miami Beach to visit my grandparents for Easter-- or tried to hitchhike. I got picked up by the New Jersey Highway Patrol and they made my pissed off father come and pick me up at the police station. In Bumfuck, NJ (which was like Georgia or Virginia as far as I was concerned). I figured I was gonna get a beating but instead he or my mom gave me the busfare to go down to Miami in style the next day; maybe even the same day. I lost my virginity behind the Jacksonville Greyhound terminal. I don't remember much-- a lot of black: big black tires, big black face... and I kind of blacked out when I um... you know (this isn't a porn site, so we'll leave it at that). She was so sweet and cool and friendly and I was such a nerd. I don't know if she told me her name. If I had this blog then, I'd know now.

I only spent 2 nights in Tangier this time. The ferry was like 6 hours late but we were lucky because it hadn't crossed in 3 days because of stormy weather. It only took 90 minutes once we left Algeciras. I always used to love the gradual approach from Europe to Africa, the sights, the sounds, the smells, the feeling of excitement. I didn't really feel it this time. It was drizzly and overcast. We stayed at the place I always stay there, the only decent place, the El Minzah Hotel. Some Scottish aristocrat got it going in 1930, Lord Bute. It's actually gotten quite a bit better since the last time I was there. There's even a business center on the second floor with 2 super-fast Dells ($5/hour, which is really expensive for Morocco but I didn't know that yet). It's a 5-star hotel in a country where stars are very relative; the hotel owner is probably married to a relative of the Minister of Stars. But it is the best hotel in Tangier, which is, after all, a slowly improving but still shabby port at the Northwest tip of Africa, a place of intrigue and desperation where people from Africa (all over the world, actually) come to try to smuggle themselves into Spain and the EU, where the streets are paved in gold (relatively). Some people say it reminds them of Tijuana. I'm sure it seems to some like the whole continent of Africa would like to come in order to cross over to the good life in Europe. And it's a place where the livers of that good life can cross over and have a quick look-see how the other 90% of the world lives. Someone once told me most visitors to Morocco just come for a day and never get beyond Tangier. That's a shame.

The concierge at the El Minzah told me that almost all their guests stay for one night. There hadn't been any for 3 days because of the ferry. Tangier's not really a destination any more-- at least not for more than a night-- which must be frustrating for the people running the hotel, although they seem to be trying to make the best of it. There's still an underlying seediness about it that you won't find in a real 5-star hotel but at least I don't think they'd steal a $100 travellers check left in the safe behind the reception (the way they did about 20 years ago when I stayed there once). Now they don't even have a safe behind the reception-- and I don't bother with travelers checks anymore anyway. I feel confident enough now, after almost 4 decades of travel, to keep my cash in the pockets of my relatively tight jeans.

A couple months ago when I tried booking our room on the net, the hotel was anything but receptive. Not only did my correspondent have no interest in agreeing on a decent discount, he also said we would have to participate in an extravagant Christmas Eve dinner if we booked a room. I pointed out that Expedia.com was offering much cheaper rates and he claimed they don't honor Expedia's bookings. The El Minzah, 5 stars and all, ain't much, but the drop down to the next level hotel is a far drop indeed. I booked through Expedia-- 1,125 dirhams (like $120) for a double room, breakfast included. They honored the booking and the price.

The pleasant surprise in Tangier was the restaurant scene. It's one of the few cities where there is a Moroccan middle class accustomed to going out to eat enough to support real restaurants that don't just cater to tourists. Tourist restaurants are always horrible-- bland, over-priced, pathetic... all decor and show and never anyone striving for excellence in the kitchen. The guide books all claim that the El Korsan in the El Minzah is the best restaurant in town. It's exactly the kind of place I do my best to avoid. We managed to find two really excellent restaurants we ate in. One was somewhat touristy, but reasonable and definitely oriented towards ala carte ordering, rather than forcing you into a gigantic feast, Raihani's. A little further from the tourist area we found a fish restaurant which catered 100% to Moroccans, the Andalus. It was so delicious-- real salt of the earth kind of place, very friendly and unpretentious and ridiculously cheap. Harira for 5 dirhams, not 60 or 80, for example. Hmmm... I'm drooling just thinking about the fish tagine I had!

A riad is an urban house situated in the medina or kasbah. It isn't a random loosely defined lodging but one whose plans and arrangements are rigorously codified. Since Moroccan architecture is more inward looking and given to isolation and intimacy rather than showing off, a riad is a private, cloistered place of escape from the busy swirl outside its thick walls. A riad is organized around a central square courtyard, often decorated with zelige (traditional mosaic patterns) centering on a fountain and orange or lemon trees. 4 paths intersect in the middle. The central courtyard is usually surrounded by an arched colonnade giving access to the living rooms and kitchen. More sleeping areas are constructed on the upper floors, creating a covered arcade around the patio with balustrades running around each story. Traditionally roof top terraces use awnings to protect against the sun; great place for a meal.

Marrakesh is the riad capital of Morocco-- and they are more than giving the hotels a run for their money. A concierge in Tangier told me he was trying to book a room for a client who was going to Marrakesh the following week and there was not one room available anywhere in town! Europeans and forward-looking Moroccans have been buying up stately old homes, restoring them to their original splendor and turning them into riads. Their thick walls protect the inhabitants from the heat or the cold and most of the outside noise and hustle and bustle. More often than not, you find them along a derb (narrow alleyway) with no access by car.

This was my 10th visit to Marrakesh but the first in a riad. It so beats hotels I don't know where to begin. I guess the 2 things that impressed me most of all were how personal the service was and how integrated you feel in the rhythm of the media which you feel like a resident of. In the past I've stayed at the the Mamounia Hotel, easily the best hotel in the country, and always a contender for best hotel in the world. It was famous for being a home-away-from-home for European aristocrats and for Winston Churchill. The chilly, aloof, snooty service still seems to be expecting Churchill-- and we did see Mick Jagger's ex, Jerry Hall there on New Years Eve when we went over to see if the gardens were still as gorgeous and lush as we remembered them (they were)-- but... well, you're more likely to be hanging around a busload of Belgian housewives on holiday than anyone with a von or van in front on their name. The last time we stayed there Roland left some considerable amount of cash in the inside pocket of a suit jacket inside the wardrobe (never a good idea but I guess he felt safe in "the best hotel in the world"). We were at dinner for 90 minutes and when we got back, the cash was gone. It isn't like he left it on a bench at the bus station. I mean how many people had access? But the hotel management was aggressively unhelpful and when we called the police, the hotel became downright nasty. Beautiful rooms, beautiful gardens, rapidly accelerating rates and not a place I'd ever stay again. So... weren't we happy to find that riads had sprung up all over the medina and were reputed to be offering as wonderful an experience as the Mamounia!

There seem to be riads at many price ranges. I read about them online and found one that looked like it would be good for me, the Riyad el Cadi-- and did I ever come up with a TOTAL WINNER! Maybe there are better riads in Marrakech but I will probably never find out because I loved the el Cadi so much I'll always go back. Their website and this general riad site have good descriptions and details. But after the utterly impersonal service at the gorgeous (and formerly very personal) Palais Jamai in Fes, the wonderful total service/family atmosphere of the el Cadi was perfect. Anyone looking to get away from impersonal hotel service and arm's length relation to the life of the country should try a riad. In a way it's total immersion as well as a somewhat authentic Moroccan style of accommodation, offering a haven of tranquillity in the midst of the medina. They are pretty much all architectural treasures, that will give you an insight into tradition, culture and craftsmanship. The el Cadi's art collection is really beautiful and displayed everywhere.

The riad concept is taking off in Tangier and starting in Fes. Essaouira has 'em-- although I didn't pick as well there. If you're planning a trip to Morocco, I urge you to do a little research and think about riads instead of hotels.

When I first drove down to Morocco from Spain in 1969 I had heard enough about Tangier to think I should avoid it. We took the ferry from Algeciras to Ceuta (a cheaper alternative than Algeciras-Tangier). Ceuta is technically part of Europe-- the last Spanish enclave in Morocco, just a couple hours drive northeast of Tangier. We headed for Tetouan instead, avoiding Tangier entirely. At least for a while. We drove all through Morocco, loving it-- I've been back a dozen times since-- and then decided we were old Moroccan hands enough to brave the weirdness of Tangier. I must have picked up my preconception about Tangier from meditations on Paul Bowles' most brilliant novel The Sheltering Sky-- although they were strictly my own meditations, Bowles having loved Tangier so much that he decided to live there... forever. It didn't take me long to start liking it either.

Yesterday I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum, which takes place in Moscow, London, Madrid, New York and... Tangier. I've never been to Moscow but the movie didn't evoke anything special for me geographically in the other cities-- except Tangier. The scenes-- shot on location, of course-- were beautiful, action-packed, exciting and realistic real and I recognized almost every spot they shot.

The last time I was in Tangier, December, 2005, I was already thinking about starting a blog and I took some notes and pictures and wrote it up. These days I wouldn't think about leaving Tangier out of a Moroccan itinerary. It's a sophisticated, exotic and unique city, very different from any other place in the country. The energy is powerfully kinetic-- young and vibrant and bursting at the seams. It's pretty cosmopolitan and very much it's own thing.

Here's some footage of two chase scenes shot in Tangier.

Not all of my friends are big travel freaks like me and Roland. I remember when my sister came to visit me in Amsterdam when I was living there in the mid-70s. She was like 20-something and I think it was her first trip outside of the U.S. I can't swear to this but I think she stayed one night and hightailed it back to Brooklyn. Years later I can remember telling two old friends, Ken and Tony, the former now NYC's most celebrated restauranteur and the latter the son of a wildly successful author of paperback romance novels, how Thailand was the most incredible place I had ever been and regaling them with stories of all that incredible place has to offer. They seemed particularly interested in the charms of Patpong, Bangkok's once notorious red light district (which now has more in common with Disneyland than Hell), and soon were winging their way over the big, blue Pacific. Ken called me from The Oriental Hotel, traditionally considered the best hotel in Thailand and a perennial contender for Best Hotel in the World (a presumption that will be duly examined once I start writing about Thailand). "What kind of a joke is this?" he demanded. Was he pissed! They must have seen some doody in the street or something else that infuriated them, made them feel insecure and angry and caused them to return to the safety of lovely clean California the next day. The horrible fiasco strained our relationship.

Some people love foreign travel for the foreignness and exoticness and they actually love trying foreign foods. (Rumor is true that one will find McDonald's in places like Paris, Tokyo, Casablanca, Moscow and even in Tuscany, not to mention Oulu, Finland and at the U.S. concentration camp at Guantanamo in Cuba.) One of the joys of travel, for me at least-- maybe second only to meeting people and exchanging ideas, etc-- is eating food from other countries. Here in the U.S. we all certainly love the U.S. versions of Italian food, Chinese food, Mexican food and French cooking. Yummy, right? Believe me (please, please, please), it's even better when you eat it the way it was meant to be eaten. And that doesn't even begin to talk about the joys of Thailand's royal court cuisine or of the unique cuisine of southern India (with their iddlis, thorans, avials, poottu, olens... things you won't find in the typical American curry house), nor of the delicious cuisine of Morocco which is as sophisticated and unique as the ancient cooking styles of China.

I never get enough Moroccan food and our favorite Moroccan bloggers, Samir, El Glaoui and Zany cover the bases authoritatively and with panache at The View From Fez, an absolute must read for anyone who is planning a non-fasting trip to Morocco. But the very foreignness of strange cuisines, as appealing as they are for me, repel some people and keep them from travel. It astounds me.

A few weeks ago Roland and I were stumbling around the Tangier medina around 8 PM. We were taking a 6 hour train ride to Fes the next day and I wanted to get some bananas and pecans to take along as a snack. We found a likely little grocery with a great display of all kinds of nuts. No pecans though; the proprietor had never heard of them and I figured they just didn't have 'em in Morocco (until I later found loads of them in Marrakech). Anyway, one thing lead to another-- as it so often and so fortuitously does when you're open to it-- and pretty soon the proprietor was having us try and compare this kind of date and that kind of dates and these nuts and those nuts. It was a joy and eventually he pulls out a plain unmarked bottle and beckons us to smell and then taste the murky-looking oil within. The smell was phenomenal and the taste... almost life-changing. It was argan oil.

One of the undying memories everyone who drives north from Essaouira will always cherish will be his first glimpse of an argan tree. That's because every branch, heading up to the sky, will be loaded with... goats. I'm not kidding and I swear I didn't use photoshop on the picture above! To me the argan tree was always primarily about the incredible climbing tree goats first and the amazing wooden things made in Essaouira.

Last night Roland came over and he was watching some ballgame in the living room while I was writing about the deprecations of George Bush, Tom DeLay and other Republican crooked politicians on Down With Tyranny. As I finished I suddenly remembered I had something really wonderful in the kitchen that Roland didn't know about. "Close your eyes. I want you to smell something." He resisted for a minute and then, assured I didn't have a prank in mind, he inhaled, first tentatively and then greedily. He sprang out of his chair yelling "argan oil" and demanded a teaspoon of it.

It tastes scrumptiously nutty, especially the roasted stuff and it is really healthy, reducing LDLs (bad cholesterol) in the blood, and providing essential fatty acids and lots of omega-6 and vitamin E. Today I had a long talk with the manager of Erehwon who had never heard of it but promised to see if he could order some. The bottle I smuggled into the states won't last forever!

The first time I went to Morocco, the 60s, it was all about the Marrakech Express. And once you got there, there were the gentle charms of Essaouira, not all that far down the road. On that first trip, before the Jamaa el-Fna was a parking lot during the day, Morocco and Marrakech were synonymous to me. I had driven my VW van down from Spain, taking a ferry to Ceuta and studiously avoiding what I thought would be Tijuana-like Tangier (a city I came to love in later years). We spent most of our time in Marrakech and Essaouira, slept in the van every night. But we also managed to visit many of the country's other main towns on that trip. I had a terrible case of dysentery when we got to Fes and I remember spending all my time in a camp ground outside of town.

I've been back to Morocco eleven times since then. And Fes has long since replaced Marrakech as my favorite city, although Fes has gotten a lot tamer and less dangerous feeling lately and Marrakech seems to have gotten cooler again, more like the way it was in the 60s. Fes, though, will always be exotic, basically because Fes is a functioning medieval city with streets too narrow and with too many steps for motor vehicles. Sunday's New York Times features it and calls it The Soul of Morocco. The title fits although you could ask almost any Morocco-hand and they'll think that title refers to Marrakech. The Times relied on a Fassi partisan, "a craftsman and cultural entrepreneur," Abdelfettah Seffar, to give them the lay of the land:

“Fez is really just the medieval city that it was,” Mr. Seffar went on, contrasting his hometown with its fast-developing jet-set sister and rival, Marrakech. “We are a little scared of what Marrakesh has become. Fez is the soul of Morocco. It’s the last bastion of what Morocco really is.”

Faded but stately, crumbling but proud, the walled city of Fez might well be the largest and most enduring medieval Islamic settlement in the world. It is indisputably Morocco’s spiritual and cultural heart.

You need only watch the daily procession of candle-toting mourners entering the tomb of the city’s founder, Moulay Idriss II — believed to be a great-great grandson of the prophet Mohammed — to feel the city’s connection to its past. A glance at the ninth-century Karaouine University, widely considered the world’s oldest operating institution of higher learning, reaffirms the impression.

As Marrakesh has opened to Tropezian swimming-pool clubs and branches of Ibiza night spots, Fez has turned ever deeper to its history, renovating architectural masterpieces and creating new festivals devoted to the city’s rich culinary and musical traditions.