Oh my dear lord! Are you can quite clearly tell most of our posts are about food on here. This my virtual friends is no different.
We must have been 2 or 3 days into our honeymoon and we had booked ourselves onto an Urban Adventures Tour. We had done one of these while we were in Perth before our Indonesian Cruise.
Quite costly at just over £100 for the two of us we weren’t quite sure what to expect. However, as you will read and see. Right lets get stuck in.
We had not been into the main medina square in the heart of Marrakech yet, so decided to take a shuttle bus from our hotel a few hours earlier so we could take in the atmosphere before our food feast. The meeting place was outside the hotel restaurant Café de France. No, problem we thought. How hard can it be to find. Well, it took a lot longer than we had hoped, but alas found nonetheless.
With plenty of time to kill, we trundled upstairs to try and find a seat overlooking the incredible market place. My god, there is no place like it I have experienced on this glorious planet. Sitting there in relative tranquility while the hustle and bustle of traders, punters, and petty thieves operated beneath us.
We were what I thought was a relatively small group. We had 6 of us, a young Dutch couple and an American couple. All huge foodies, so we were looking forward to this.
We were in a bakery, not your normal one where everything was displayed nicely in cases. Oh no, we were in the heart of the beast.
Then out of nowhere, our guide arrived. An incredibly fun and knowledgably guy (I have completely forgotten his name **hangs head in shame**).
First stop was a tiny shop that served the most delicious Moroccan RgaÏf-Msemen (also known as Moroccan square flat bread). Cooked to order we sat down ready to sample our first of many Moroccan street food vendors. While waiting for our delights, we sampled some traditional Moroccan mint tea. Tina was in heaven at this point, a mint tea blend with hot water. That was it, not milk… no sugar… just the mint tea blend for flavour. Not my cup of tea (ha-ha, see what I did there), I declined but Tina loved it, and even got the chance to pour tea the Moroccan way.
Our first RgaÏf-Msemen was a onion mix folded into the bread, the second was a chocolate hazelnut spread. Both were incredible, however, I couldn’t help but think the sweet version is for the tens of thousands of tourists flocking daily.
We found out quite soon afterwards that this food tour was more than just sampling some of the local delights. We were quickly taken own a few narrow streets and ushered into another tiny shop. This time, full of spices, rubs, and blends. After what seemed like no time at all, we were off to seek out more grub.
A few more twists and turns down some very narrow dark alleys and we were ducking under a door and low and behold. We were in a bakery, not your normal one where everything was displayed nicely in cases. Oh no, we were in the heart of the beast. It was mesmerising to watch this guy pulling out these wooden paddles with tiny little bread rolls. We were handed one fresh off the paddle, and oh my. It was some of the best fresh bread I’ve ever had. Health and safety was certainly not a priority as there was smoking going on while they were rolling the dough. They even allowed Tina to roll some without any hair nets or anything.
This was quickly followed by eating some snails, olives, pastries soaked in sugar syrup, lamb and more bread, all ending with the drinking some more hot Moroccan mint tea.
The whole vibe around the souks and medina was just incredible. A completely different feel and atmosphere to what you would see during the day. You think that it is alive during the day, but once the sun sets, it hits a whole new level.
After 3 and a half hours the tour had ended, stuffed to our eyeballs and dreading getting a taxi back to the hotel. That was an event just in itself!
If you are in Marrakech and fancy sampling some of the delights it has to offer, you will need to have one of these tours or you will almost certainly get lost.
