Things you might see on a menu

You know what I like?  I like it when a restaurant menu just says what's what.  I mean, come on - greedy pancakes?  Okay, so it's not perfect English usage (yeah, as if I should snark at anyone else about that - hee!), but boy, it sure is descriptive, right? Mmmmmm, greeeeeeeeeedy pancakes.  Love it.  And don't even get me started about the alcoholic pancakes - I actually had something else when I ate there (I know, right?  I'm an idiot), but rest assured I'll be going back to try those bad boys out...

Things you might see on a menu

One of the great amusements for expats in Paris (or maybe just me, I'm easily amused) is the bad translation from French to English found on many restaurant menus.  Waiters will often give you the English version (if they have one), even if you've asked for it in French, so you might as well enjoy it. I'm quite vexed that I forgot to take a photo on the occasion when I saw "rat potatoes" on a menu, but this one is also a particular favourite of mine...

The lost weekend (and about a week on either side of it)

I have a vague memory that I used to write a blog - this is it, right?  It's been a while, it all seems very unfamiliar...  Wow, where have the last two weeks gone?  Well, I'll tell you what happened - I had a party.  A housewarming party, in fact.  Now, those of you who are regular readers are probably saying something along the lines of "Really, Miss K, a housewarming party?  Really?  Didn't you move quite a while ago?  In...ummm...July?!?"  Well, yes, I did, and I wrote about it at the time (APARTMENT, bitches) but I never quite got around to warming my damn house, so it was high time I entertained chez moi.  

The problem, however, is that I have some kind of freaky German hausfrau gene buried deep in my DNA and it only emerges when I am having people over and it makes me buy and cook insane amounts of food, because GOD FORBID anyone ever be hungry under my roof.  So I spent a whole week running around getting ready for this party, then had the party (which was excellent, by the way), then had to clean up after the party and somehow managed to mess up my back, which meant that I spent pretty much all of last week lying around zoned out of my mind on painkillers.  You might be thinking that all that lying around might have been a good time for me to catch up on - oh, I don't know - blogging, perhaps?  But when I say I was zoned out, I mean zoooooooooned out.  I couldn't possibly subject my gentle readers to such random, incoherent babbling from me; obviously I had to get off the painkillers and clear my head so that I can subject you to my normal random, incoherent babbling...

Favourite Paris photos - 32

My Top 10 (so far)

I was looking at my blog stats today, and it's quite interesting to see which posts have been the most popular with you, gentle readers.  And since it also seems that I've had an influx of new readers recently (welcome!), I thought I would let you know what this blog's  Top 10 All-Time Most Popular Posts have been thus far:

10.  No surprise that another compilation made it into the Top 10 - I had so many left-over photos of crappy outfits from 2010 that I needed to do a whole extra post just to share them all:

Totally crap outfits of 2010 (previously unseen)

9.  Ahh, the glamour of living in Paris.  You seemed to enjoy hearing about how moving is just as stressful here as it is anywhere else...

Déménagement

8.  Not much in the way of writing, but some of my prettiest photos ever:
Jour Blanche

7.  Same again - minimal writing in this travel post, but y'all sure seemed to appreciate the photos:
Charming Chartres

6.  One of my sillier moments, but I had fun writing it and it seems you also enjoyed this story of doomed feline romance:

"Tails" of romance from the City of Love

5. Another post about travel - I personally think you only liked it because you're all now hooked on cheese crack:

Why the Belgians are better than the French (Pt 2)

4. Aaaand you're back to the topic of love (although human this time, not feline); coming in at Number Four, my romantic travails in the most romantic (yeah, whatever) city on the planet :

Paris: City of Love. Really?

3.  Seriously, you guys?  This is what you clicked on enough times to put it into third place?  Jeez.  Glad you were all so amused at my hideousness.  Hmph.  And I'll have you know that my eyelashes are, in fact, growing back - I expect to look human again sometime around the end of...erm...June, or thereabouts...
The eyes have it. Well, they used to...

2.  In second place, one of my more educational and well-written (if I do say so myself - it amused me to re-read it, which is always a good sign) posts, featuring the ever-popular Tiny Dancer (previously known as Miss A before I decided I had to give people proper nicknames):
Nature Capitale

1.  And at Number One, this is hands-down, by-a-mile, the most popular blog post I have ever written - I don't know if it's because it features the awesome Mr and Mrs Redneck, or because I took some mighty pretty photos, or because the subject matter (champagne) is interesting to a lot of people, but whatever the appeal is, here it is again:
Reims with the Rednecks

So, having seen what you like (not all of which would have been in my own personal Top 10 of my best work, I have to admit - which goes to show how little I know of popular opinion!), I must conclude that you're totally down with my pretty pictures, but not so much with my yapping.  Hmmm - I am not sure if I should consider that a big "yay!" to my photographic skills and a giant "booo, you suck!" to my writing skills, but I'm hoping it all just averages out over time.  Regardless, thanks for following/subscribing/visiting, and I'll try to keep up with your high standards, gentle-but-demanding readers!  Much love, Miss K

Tiny Dancer and the furry man-whore

For those of you who are long-time readers of this blog, you may remember my post from last year on the subject of Valentine's Day.  If not, or if you are new here, I am attaching the link: Paris - City of Love. Really?  

So, have things improved for Miss K in the romance department?  Well, let me tell you how I spent Valentine's Day this year.  First, I went for dinner with Tiny Dancer - and you know, she's more delightful than a box of puppies and all that, but she's not a hot man.  Nonetheless, we had a lovely evening - I had been detoxing for nine days and wasn't planning to drink, but Tiny Dancer made the excellent argument that a single girl can't possibly be expected to get through V-Day without the benefit of alcohol, and that surely there is some kind of amnesty granted for such an occasion.  Doesn't that make sense to everyone?  Yes, I thought so too.  So we had pre-dinner aperos, a bottle of wine at dinner, champagne with dessert, and a post-dinner nightcap.  Hee!

And then I went stumbling home to my furry little feline man-whore.   Of course, he doesn't just love me, he'll basically fling himself at anyone who walks into the apartment (hence his reputation as a furry man-whore), but it's still nice to come home to.  And this is the snuggliest cat in the world - you can pick him up any old time and he looooves it.  Most cats would claw your face off if you tried that, and granted, he is a cat and therefore unpredictable (which probably means he'll claw my face off about ten seconds after I write this), but he's still adorable.

Soooo, was this year's Valentine's Day an improvement over last year?  Well, admittedly there were still no hot men romancing me, but a fabulous girly dinner with the awesome Tiny Dancer and then having a furry little feline man-whore snuggle up to me in bed?  Hell yeah - definite improvement!

Tales from Toronto (Part 3)

Yes, yes, I know I left Toronto two weeks ago, but I was sifting through my photos and they were making me laugh, so I just had to do one more post about my wonderfully weird hometown before getting fully back to the goings-on in Paris. Yes, I'm going to be one of those annoying people who make you look at their holiday photos - sorry!

This is a little family Xmas tradition - the building of the gingerbread houses.  There were five of them this year (so it's a bit more like building a whole gingerbread suburb, actually) but this was my favourite house - please note the giant plume of icing "smoke" coming from the chimney, and the chocolate-button bosoms on the gingerbread lady.  Hee!  Outstanding...

A lovely friend, whom I have known since I was eight years old, took me out for a very boozy lunch one day (ahh, she knows me so well) and this little piece of weirdness was on the wall of the restaurant bathroom.  And I think I speak for us all with a resounding "Huh?  Why?  What the -?  Why would you -? Huh??"  See, I told you before that Canadians are slightly strange  - in the nicest possible way, of course.

On another day, I was out for a very boozy dinner (yes, apparently there was a theme to my Toronto visit) with some other friends, and we went to this lovely restaurant.  Isn't it nice?  Doesn't it look like a reasonably sophisticated dining establishment?  Well, scroll on down to the next photo...

...because this is the outdoor seating area for the above restaurant.  Yes, those are hay bales.  Hee!  So. Freakin'. Awesome. 

For those of you who don't personally know Miss K, here's a bit of info about me: I hate dry food - things like toast are my idea of hell.  Ugh.  But I love sauce, gravy, everything like that (at family holiday dinners, I'm actually not allowed to have the gravy boat until everyone else has their turn, because I would cheerfully just take it all),  so when dining out, I always ask for extra sauce - and in Toronto, when you ask for extra, they give you extra.  Heaven...

In case you're wondering what the hell this is, let me enlighten you.  It's a Christmas tree made entirely of snowshoes, it's in the poshest department store in Toronto, and it's awesome.

All right, technically I should have used this photo for a Totally Crap Outfit of the Week post, but it makes me laugh so much -  I just had to keep it with the rest of the Toronto photos.  Look at him - he's all: "Ooooh yeah, fedora, big scarf, fur coat,  I am one pimptastic bad-ass mofo, that's right.  I'm so bad."  And then he goes and slings a Jamaica backpack on top of it all like a total doofus.  Heeheeheeheehee! 

All right, so that's the end of the Tales from Toronto for another year, I hope you liked them (although I am still totally kicking myself for not getting a photo of the chandelier made entirely of hockey sticks - if any of you TO readers know the restaurant it's in and you send me a photo, I'll publish on here and give you full credit!).  We now return you to your regular Paris programming...

Fried. Turkey. Parts.

Was this what we had for the redneck Thanksgiving?  Alas, no (but it's such a great title, I couldn't waste it).  Mr and Mrs Redneck had originally planned to deep-fry some turkey parts, since their apartment here in Paris doesn't have an oven, but they went with pre-cooked poultry and just heated it up.   Although, quite honestly, I'm amazed that any of us could eat our main meal considering that the pre-dinner snacks consisted of: nuts, olives, chips, popcorn, veggies and dip, two kinds of sausage, five kinds of cheese, and a five-layer Tex Mex dip.  Then there was: turkey, cranberry sauce, creamed corn, regular corn, macaroni and cheese, mashed sweet potatoes, stuffing and a cranberry jello salad sort of thing (which was actually much nicer than the jello salads I used to encounter when I was growing up in swamp country, so clearly, rednecks are a step up the culinary ladder from swamp trash like me!).

I was so busy cramming my face with food that I didn't even manage to drink all that much wine, but not to worry - Mr and Mrs Redneck are having another party tomorrow afternoon, which will be followed by a visit to the Paris Wine Show.  Yikes - you just know that's not going to end well for my liver...

Thanksgiving - redneck style

One of the wonderful things about living in Paris that you make friends with other expats.  In my case, the vast majority of my friends here are American.  I've never had American friends before (well, a long time ago there was that gorgeous American boyfriend who looked like a young Elvis Presley...sigh... Ahhh, back in the day Miss K had some game, let me tell you.  Ahem.  Moving on...), which you might think odd, since I'm Canadian and we're national neighbours, but Americans don't really seem to like crossing our border all that much.  I don't know if it's because they think they'll be eaten by moose, or seduced by socialized medical care, or freeze to death in July (because, hey, everyone knows it snows in Canada all year long, right?), but I just never met all that many when I lived in Toronto.  Also not when I lived in London, but in Paris?  The place is swarming with Americans, and may I just say, I am delighted to have made such wonderful, fun, generous, kind-hearted friends. 

So the point of this is to say that the awesome Mr and Mrs Redneck have invited me to my very first American Thanksgiving dinner tonight and I am in a state of excitement akin to a small, hyperactive child on a sugar high on Christmas morning.  Now, if you recall my post about Canadian Thanksgiving last month (thanksgiving), being in a foreign country poses certain challenges for such a celebration, so I can't wait to see what the Rednecks have come up with.  One thing I know they will come up with is a ton of alcohol, so I may not report until my sure-to-be-monumental hangover subsides tomorrow, but there will be a report and I'm betting it's going to be worth reading, because a Redneck Thanksgiving?  This is going to be FUN!

Walk of shame

Are you perhaps thinking, from that title, that Miss K might have a little salacious something to confess?  (Not that I would tell you if I did, but I will most certainly complain about the fact that I don't!)  Alas, no.  I went to a very good party with Tiny Dancer last night and we left just a little bit too late to catch my metro connection home.  So I ended up crashing at her place (and I slept in a child-sized bunk bed, no less), but at least I had an adorable kitten to keep me company, and they made me a rather splendid breakfast this morning.  So the shame part of my walk of shame home this morning is that it was completely not shameful.  I mean, really.  There I was, at a party where I saw several people couple up and leave with clearly amorous intentions, but me?  Rien.  Disgraceful!  Shouldn't I be living a scandalous, decadent life here in Paris, in the classic tradition of writers?  Clearly I'm not doing very well at scandal and decadence -  which really is a shame!

Why the Belgians are better than the French (Pt 4 and final)

16.  Okay, you need to look very carefully at the photo below: the two people on this bike are facing away from each other.  Yes, that's right.  On the same bike, facing in different directions.  I...just...don't even know what to say about it, except that you would certainly never see the French doing anything that awesomely insane. 

17.  This is how the Belgians do hot chocolate.  Totally. Civilized. Country.

18.  The Belgian waffle (and yes, there actually is a waffle lurking underneath all that, you just can't see it - and that's how I like it!):  suuuure, the French do amazingly delicious and perfect pastries, but would you ever find anything resembling this hot mess in France?  Mais non! But quite honestly, if they loosened up on the perfection once in a while, it might do them some good...

19.  The French can sometimes be a bit too subtle.  The Belgians?  Yeah, not so much.

20.  A giant replica cone of frites by the front door - you would never see anything this tacky (and awesome) in France.  But I swear, every time I see this photo I get hungry, so it's effective advertising.  And also?  Hee!  Truly, my love knows no bounds.

 

So here we are at the end of my twenty reasons why the Belgians are better than the French (which, I repeat, was all tongue-in-cheek affectionate teasing, of course) - I've had fun choosing the photos and writing about it, I hope you've enjoyed reading it.  I now return you to our regularly scheduled programme...

Why the Belgians are better than the French (Pt 3)

11.  The Belgians make about 8000 kinds of beer.  Miss K is not a fan of beer, but I appreciate a) the inventiveness and b) the names.  Like Kwak, for example.  Just say it a few times: Kwak, Kwak, Kwak.  Hee!

12.  The Segway tour in Bruges.  There are Segway tours in other cities, but this one is fabulous.  You go all over town, which is a great thing when you are short on time (we were only there for a day, so this was ideal).  Plus - fun!  The Segway is just about the most fun you can have standing up...

13.  The Belgians are not afraid to let you know they have a kinky side.  This little shop was right along one of the main tourist streets in Bruges - yes, you can buy linens and chocolates and postcards and chain-and-leather lingerie all on the same block.  Hey, you just never know when you might need to get all those things at once...

14.  They have a museum entirely dedicated to frites.  And why not?  The frites in Belgium deserve their own museum.  French frites should hide their little frite faces in shame at the vast superiority of the Belgian version.  Oh yeah, them's fighting words, but I'm not wrong.

15.  Deckchairs outside a Brussels city centre bar on a cold night in September.  This is so awesomely freaky that you would never see it in Paris. 

 

To be continued...

Why the Belgians are better than the French (Pt 2)

6.  Oh. My. God.  Where do I even start???  Believe me, I cannot even begin to describe how intrigued I am by the "poulycroc" and the "crizly", but I swear that I will go to my deathbed still wondering about the "cheese crack".  But perhaps it's for the best - I might have gotten hooked and ended up selling myself on the mean streets of Brussels for just another taste of cheese crack.  Dude, it's cheese crack - that could totally happen...

7. Belgium is a civilized country where you can buy frites at the little stand in the street (in this case, from Antoine's, which makes the best frites in Brussels) and then sit and enjoy them with beer or wine or whatever at a neighbouring bar where frites are "accepted".  Civilized, I'm telling you.

8.  The half-and-half - it's half white wine, half champagne, and the waiter brings both bottles and fills your glass to the point where the only thing keeping it from spilling is the surface tension, so the only way to start drinking it is to slurp - hee!  So not classy but so much fun.  And it's about half what it would cost in Paris, if they even served such an awesome thing, which they do not.

9.  Sure, the French make pain au chocolat, and it's wonderful.  But the Belgians do it too, and they add chocolate glaze on top.  Chocolate glaze on top of your pain au chocolat...mmm...excuse me for a moment while I wipe the drool off my chin.  Seriously, when the French are being left behind in the field of pastry?  Well, you might want to strap on your ice-skates, because apparently Hell has just frozen over...

10.  They sell copies of In Bruges in the tourist office in Bruges!!!  If you haven't seen the movie (Tiny Dancer hasn't, and I had to educate her that the correct way to refer to the city is: In F*ckin' Bruges), you may not realize how completely, totally, insanely awesome this fact is, but if you have?  Well, then you know.

To be continued...

Déménagement

Let's face it, moving is always a hassle.  Particularly so in Paris, where buildings often don't have elevators, where staircases are always curved and narrow, and where streets are usually so tiny that a moving van will block them completely.  Ah, good times.

So yesterday I helped Tiny Dancer and her boyfriend move.  Partly out of the goodness of my heart (yes, my frozen black heart does occasionally contain some goodness) and partly because I am fully aware that I will need help with my upcoming move and I am storing up goodwill and favours like a squirrel storing up for winter.  What?  At least I admit it...

Anyway, I turn up at 11am to help with the packing and, as I've mentioned before, Tiny Dancer lives on a street frequented by ladies who are in a very particular line of work (if you know what I mean, and I think you do) and I must say, I was rather surprised to see the ladies out in force at 11am on a Sunday morning; perhaps it's due to my upbringing as a country hick, but I wasn't expecting that.  So exactly how does this work?  A guy goes to church, gets himself all absolved of this week's sinning, and then gets a quick blowjob on the way home in order to get a start on next week's sinning?  Or perhaps he pays for sex on his way to church?  It all seems a bit odd to me, but then again, I'm not a religious person, so what do I know?

Back to the move - we finish the packing and then, around 5pm, the muscle shows up to do the heavy lifting.  All of that goes well until it's time to move the sofa.  So picture this: three big strong men trying to move one very large sofa down four flights of one very narrow spiral staircase.  Well, you don't need to picture it because I took photos:

The sofa is so big you can't even see the guys

Half an hour later, it was halfway down

Four stories down, it finally got into the van

At the new place - stairs slightly wider but still curved...

And in the grand tradition of helping friends move, they treated us to large amounts of food and alcohol afterward, hence my completely lame post yesterday.  Everyone else was drinking beer, so I had to drink all the wine - yes, a whole bottle on my own.  What?  I'd had a long day...

Stories from the supermarket

Today I was in the grocery store, trying to decide on which yogurt to choose and an English-speaking man asked me to help him find the natural yogurt, which I did.  But here's the thing:

1) Hey, I am always happy to help out a fellow stranger in a strange land - when I was in Thailand, I admit I spent some time looking blankly at things on the grocery store shelves, having absolutely no idea what those items were, so it's not like I haven't had the experience myself.  But really?  Yogurt?  I'm quite sure the entire English-speaking world sells them in pretty much the same little pots.  What else would be in them?

2) Okay, it's not like I'm going to be challenging Balzac (or, you know, a third-grader) with my command of the French language anytime soon, but since the word for yogurt in French is "yaourt" and the word for natural in French is "nature", it's not really a massive stretch to work it out for yourself, now is it?  Not to mention the fact that if one of the aforementioned little pots doesn't have a cute little picture on it of a lemon or a strawberry or a coconut, chances are they're not in there.  Honestly.

Disclaimer:  I'm not actually irate about this incident at all, but I was in the mood for a bit of a rant and this was all I had to rant about at the moment.  I was nice to the guy, he went happily away with his yogurt and I am counting it as my good deed for the day...but it was still fun to complain about it to you guys.  Hee!

Gobble, gobble

Dammit!  There went my perfect record of posting every day in October.  Sorry -  I was defeated by post-Thanksgiving exhaustion, not food poisoning, in spite of worrying about that in my previous post.  So my first Canadian Thanksgiving in Paris was a big success, which is fortunate, considering that seven of my eleven guests were American and my nation's culinary honour was at stake!  Anyway, this is basically how it looked:

And it was fun, and it was delicious, and my guests were delightful, and I enjoyed the leftovers, but I am so freakin' happy it's all finished for this year - yaaaay!!!

Thanksgiving

It's Canadian Thanksgiving this weekend, which is a big holiday in my native land.  And, what with my lumberjack shoulders and my fondness for maple syrup, I am a good old Canadian gal and I like to celebrate Thanksgiving.  But there are a couple of problems with this:

1) I live in Europe where they don't celebrate it at all, so trying to get the ingredients you need?  Not easy.   I can actually tell so many stories about trying to buy turkeys that I am going to do a whole separate post on that subject.

2) See above -  you can occasionally get those ingredients because some stores here stock them when Thanksgiving rolls around.  However, that's for American Thanksgiving, which is about six weeks later than the Canadian version.  Try to buy fresh cranberries in Paris in early October?  Ha!

3) I am insane to even attempt to do it here at all - it's so stressful that I only make Thanksgiving dinner every other year because it takes me that long to get motivated to do it again.  Which actually makes it a hot ticket and the parties just keep getting bigger - my last one in London was for 24 people.  A full-on turkey dinner for 24 - you see the insanity, yes?  Thank god I don't know that many people in Paris yet, but there are still 11 people coming for dinner tonight - eek!!!

And this year there is the added stress that I didn't know precisely when I would be moving (which still hasn't happened, btw, and don't even ask me when it will because I don't know - grrr!), so I am not even hosting the dinner in my own home, I had to ask friends to let me do it at their apartment.  So here's the rundown: I am about to go and cook a gigantic turkey, and let me tell you, this is not a nice tidy turkey you buy at the supermarket, this is one that was ordered from the butcher and it's got legs and wings sticking out all over the place, so I actually have to wrestle and tie it into a nice turkey-shaped bundle before I can even attempt to cram it into the tiny Parisian oven I have never used before.  Yep, this should be fun...  I will update you tomorrow on how it went, assuming I don't die of food poisoning before then.

Magical Marrakech - Part 5

Well, I have to admit that yesterday wasn't my best day here in Marrakech - I woke up feeling horribly ill and still had to drag myself out on a pre-booked daytrip to the High Atlas.  Which would have been fine - I dosed myself up with medication and felt better, but I nearly fainted from the heat and number of people at a village market, managed to ram a steel wire under my fingernail while crossing a rope bridge, and had to climb a mountain barefoot over sharp stones because it was almost completely vertical and I didn't have the right shoes (we had been somewhat misinformed about the difficulty of the trail).  Admittedly, the mountains were beautiful and I am glad we went, but sometimes the travel gods do test you...

One tiny corner of the village market, which was immense

The rope bridge of OUCH!

Look closely - see all those tiny specks? Yeah, those are people climbing up the mountain and yes, it's as high and steep as it looks

Having said that, there were highlights to the day.  We stopped in to visit with a Berber family on the way to the mountain and I learned that mint tea with sugar, and bread dipped in honey and olive oil (yes, both at the same time) are a) delicious and b) a fantastic way to settle an upset stomach. Who knew?  And the mountains themselves are magnificent and well worth seeing.  But do you know what else is also magnificent and well worth seeing?  La Mamounia back in Marrakech, which is considered to be one of the most beautiful hotels in the world, particularly now, after a brilliant renovation.  I have been booze-free the whole time I have been here in Morocco (my liver needed some loving after the boozapalooza that I have been indulging in for the past few weeks in Paris), but if ever anyone needed a cocktail?  It was me, yesterday.   

Bronx Girl and I got back to the city at about 6pm, took some time to relax and then went out to dinner at Comptoir, one of the hot spots of Marrakech.  Although I have to say, I completely fail to see why.  The food was okay (I never realized that chicken and icing sugar would be a good combination. Again, who knew?) but the entertainment was dismal (other than the middle-aged bellydancer - who may or may not have been a man, I'm still not sure - with the big ol' plate of candles on her/his head, that was a highlight) and the service practically nonexistent.  We had to ask three times for our bill and I am pretty sure we could have just strolled out without paying - we didn't, because we are good girls, but the temptation was extremely strong.  So after such a day, we took ourselves over to La Mamounia, where, as long as you are well-dressed enough to enter (which we were) and you have enough money (which we didn't, but the nice people at Amex always come through), you can sit in the bar and have a wonderful cocktail and relax in the cool, serene room and enjoy proper customer service, where it is all about you and nothing is too much trouble.  Ahhhhh.... bliss.

High Atlas

high camp

Magical Marrakech - Part 4

On Sunday, Bronx Girl and I decided we needed a break from the heat and general madness of Marrakech, so we headed for Essaouira, a laid-back little city on the coast.  In lieu of me yapping about it, how about we just have some photos?

On the way there we encountered a horse festival - very cool

Spectacular seafood in Essaouira - this is Bronx Girl's lunch

Strolling along the ramparts

Handicraft vendors

An awesome railing for a seafood restaurant

Wandering the back streets - just us and lots of cats

The seafood stalls by the harbour, where you can eat the freshest fish imaginable.  Char-grilled sardines -mmmm

Always something amazing to see in the back streets

Place Moulay Hassan

Busy day at the beach

A perfect Moroccan moon

Magical Marrakech - Part 3

Saturday's activities are pretty easy to sum up: we spent the day at the souks.  It was the hottest day here yet (45C) and we absolutely boiled all day, but will a little (okay, a lot) of heat keep two girls from their shopping?  I think not:

We also accidentally stumbled upon the Medersa Ben Youssef, previously a religious school, and one of the most stunning buildings in Marrakech:

And after such a busy day, we deserved a nice dinner at a lovely spot - took a taxi (an adventure all by itself, trust me) to the New City and had the most amazing grilled brochettes at Rotisserie de la Paix, which I also highly recommend - not just for the food, but for the gorgeous garden:

And today was a trip to Essaouira, on the coast, but I am far too exhausted to write about it now - tune in tomorrow, though...