New feature to our daily postings…Today is a sightseeing day!…A peculiar coincidence…

Beginning today, we’ll be posting one photo that we previously posted one year ago on the exact day and month. We’ll also include the link from that date, for any of our readers who may have missed it at that time. 

This particular photo will be our chosen favorite from that date and will be placed at the end of each day’s post. For example, scroll to the end of this page, to find last year’s photo with a caption.

We’d appreciate any feedback if this is something you’d like to continue to see by commenting at the end of today’s post.  It’s easy to comment!

We’ve yet to take one of these horse and buggies when we prefer walking in the Medina. Also, we feel uncomfortable with these poor horses working for hours in the hot sun, often without water.

In less than 45 minutes Samir will pick us up for a day of sightseeing. We aren’t quite sure what we’ll see. With Samir in charge, we’re confident it will be a good day. We’ll wind up the day at a restaurant we’ve selected, outside the Medina, returning home after dark. He’ll drop us off at the restaurant at the end of the day and we’ll catch a taxi back after a leisurely dinner.

It was early afternoon when we went to the ATM, which are scattered about the Medina. None of the vendors accept credit cards, although a few of the more upscale restaurants do.

We’d planned this outing for last Monday but my illness prevented us from following through. Now, fully recovered, we’re both anxious to get out. Overall, the sights in Marrakech consist of that which one would find in most larger cities; museums, parks, old buildings, and mosques (or churches, in many other countries). 

Various vendors occupy these “stations” during the day in order to sell their wares. Most likely, the use of these spots is on a “first-come, first-serve” basis, although yesterday, we noticed that several were unattended.

As we’ve mentioned in the past, old buildings in big cities, which we fully appreciate for their design and history, are not in our “bucket list.” There are a few exceptions, such as when we’ll be in Paris from August 1 to 15th and then in London, for the remainder of the month. One can’t travel the world and not see Paris and London. Our travels would be incomplete without them.

This park is next to the entrance of the Medina where it appears many locals, especially the older population, find comfort and rest in its familiar surroundings.

For those of our readers regularly reading our posts, this is not new information. For the remainder, we’d decided last fall to spend time in both cities since we’ll be departing on a cruise from Harwich, England on August 31st.  

The men sitting on the ground in the white shirts are snake charmers. They have five or six snakes they use to attract tourists for a photo op. Neither of us has any interest in interacting with snakes after our Mozambique Spitting Cobra experience in South Africa. Also, in Kenya, we did participate in a snake show which satisfied us both for a lifetime.

In 52 days we’ll leave Morocco for the island of Madeira, Portugal where we’ll stay until July 31st, at which time we’ll fly to Paris, staying in a hotel with a view of the Eiffel Tower. Then off to London and then, the cruise. It all makes sense based on our close proximity at the time.

Many tourists are seated at these umbrella tables getting semi-permanent tattoos.

Plenty of old buildings are on the horizon. But, it’s hard to think about all of that right now. Instead, we have today’s plans as we strive to live in the moment.

We wandered down several similar streets in the Medina in search of a pharmacy.  I needed to purchase a mascara. We stumbled upon a pharmacy with many designer brands of mascara. I opted for Maybelline (Lancôme, was my favorite brand in the old life) when it’s common knowledge that designer labels are often “knock offs.” Why bother making a “knock off” of these already low priced items? The cost of the mascara was US $9.85, MAD $80. Overall, it wasn’t much higher than it would have been at Target.

Tomorrow, we’ll be back with photos of sightseeing in Marrakech.  Stay tuned for more.

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Photo from one year ago today. March 24, 2013:

This is a weird coincidence!  It was totally unplanned when we decided to post a photo from one year ago to the date. After writing here today, I looked back for a photo to post from one year ago today, and here’s what I found, a photo from, here at Dar Aicha, our home in Marrakech for which we’d just completed the booking. It was one year ago today, that we posted the first photos of our upcoming home here in Morocco.  How odd.  Tomorrow’s photo will be back in Belize. Here’s the link from one year ago.