How do you pronounce Marrakech / Marrakesh? The correct spelling is Marrakech but is
pronounced Marrakesh. Morocco was a
French protectorate from 1912 to 1956 and the French pronounce “ch” as a soft
“sh” sound and so the confusion began for us English speakers who pronounce
“ch” as “ch.
Once again perceptions of what I expected to see on our arrival
into Marrakech / Marrakesh and what reality presented me differed greatly. My vision was of an old, ancient city with
narrow, crowded streets,
dark, swarthy Moroccan men lounging around in
street cafes, drinking tiny cups of coffee, looking very mysterious and
dangerous, a tie die of hippies intermingling with them, sucking in lung fulls
of smoke from 6’ high hookahs,
all the while being watched carefully by German spies and
French soldiers. You must understand, my
perceptions were created mostly from the movies and the counter culture of the
60’s. So those of you born in the 50’s can relate. Things got a little muddled.
What I found was a very modern city with Starbucks, MacDonald's, no hippies and if there were any German spies about, they
were very good at blending in to the background.
We arrived at our hotel in the late afternoon. This was the end of our guided tour and we
had to say goodbye to Jamal. We will
spend tomorrow seeing Marrakech / Marrakesh and leave by train for Casablanca
the following day. Our first order of
business after checking in was to find the train and organize our tickets for
Casablanca.
Marrakech has a nice new train station and about a 20 minute
stroll from our hotel.
We found the
streets clean, wide, shaded by huge palm trees, lined with ritzy hotels
and filled with expensive cars.
If it
weren’t for the palm trees you could have thought you were in Vancouver with
the snow capped Atlas Mountains in the distance.
Tomorrow we will look for old Marrakech. It must be out there somewhere.
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