Thursday, January 7, 2010

day cinq

well, friends. today is pouring rain. pouring pouring pouring.

we had our breakfast as usual, then waited it out in our room a while. since half of the riad's "lobby" is open air, the rain hits us on our walk to our room. there is an overhang, sort of, but you can reach out and touch the rain.
the pouring didn't stop.

after a while, we went down and sat in the lobby. our host advised us to wait a while longer. he was wearing a head-to-toe rain outfit, going out to get supplies. we waited a while, but it was getting late and we were restless and bored. we didn't want to lose our last day to walk around! we ducked our heads and ducked out the door!

we had a simple plan- just get lost in the souks one final time. we didn't want to venture too far out, as we had no rain gear, only our simple hats, sneakers and jackets. it wasn't so bad at first. the walk to the souks is uncovered. after about 1o minutes, the alleys start to have either metal or woven reed roofs. we just picked a new street to wander down.

i did some "window" shopping and made my final purchase- a beautiful pair of bright yellow babouches (slippers). they were a bit more than the others i had already purchased, but the leather work was much more detailed, and they had a nice heel. i bartered him down a lot, too. sold!

we wandered down a couple more alleys and some neon colored yarns caught my eyes. we entered a store and little did we know what we were in store for us. giant skeins of neon yarns lined the walls. they were HUGE- and gorgeous. we followed them around a corner, and we were met by a very friendly moroccan gentleman wearing the traditional long dark brown hooded robe. he started talking to us in english about the things they made there- it was a wholesale carpet and blanket business. it was a huge house. he led us around another corner to show us a large weaving machine, and explained the two different kinds of weaving that moroccans do- women do weaving sitting down, by machine, and men do weaving by hand (and feet),with loom and shuttles. the women typically do the more detailed work. we were both very interested, and he was very interested in talking more, so he invited us upstairs to see more...

the walls and shelves were filled with colorful blankets, neatly stacked in piles and piles. the walls had beautiful blankets and carpets hanging as art. we entered one room and he had the men start weaving to show us how it worked. we entered another room (little did we know we'd be there for a long long time!!) and he began to talk about all the different types of blankets and rugs.

one after another, he started pulling rugs from the 6 foot piles that lined the huge room we were standing in the middle of. i thought he was just giving us a quick tour, but we soon found out he was making a sales call. 40 blankets and rugs later, camel wools, vegetable dyes, so many layers upon layers ... he then began asking what we were interested in buying, then offered us tea.

mauricio, much to my surprise, was interested in both a blanket and a rug! in the reverse order he put them down, the old man's assistant lifted each rug up, each rug that he had carefully layed down and described in great detail, and told us how to say "like it" or "hate it" in arabic. so he lifted each piece up, and mauricio would say if he was interested in it or not.

he ended up on a huge, thin blanket. it's in gradaded colors, fire colors of orange, yellow and red. it's vegetable dyed. very beautiful. and a carpet runner made of camel wool, with a very detailed pattern on it, mainly in a darkish blue, but with lots of other colors. it was packaged up all together, nice and tight, wrapped in paper.

and off we went, 3000 dirhams later, a pretty crazy experience for an otherwise boring rainy day.

we walked around a little more, got completely soaked, had some more tea, and some lunch, and came home to dry off and warm up.

it's our last night in marrakech, off to catch a flight back to madrid tomorrow morning, staying there for two nights, then back home to boston on Sunday.

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