We had a local guide for Sunday's tour which started in the souqs where we saw a vast variety of leather, glass and silver goods. Of particular interest was the colourful wool-dying shops. Just beyond the souqs we came to the Museum of Morocco and the Koran school.
The Museum of Morocco is a 19th century house with a big central courtyard and a hammam. The courtyard is covered by a big tent-like structure with a giant chandelier. Each of the rooms in the hammam contains a story told by one of the women who worked there in the recent past.
The Koran school or Medersa of Ali Ben Youssef is a large college where students started at the age of 9 and spent up to 17 years studying the Koran to become imams. It is a very fine 16th century building with beautiful islamic-style patterns cut in cedar wood and stone as well as patterns in coloured enameled tiles. The central courtyard is surrounded on the upper floors by numerous tiny cells in which the students lived. Each cell has room for students at two levels with stairs up.
The Karavanserai or fundu was traditionally a place where traders came to stay the night. Currently it is occupied by carpenters and leather craftsmen.
We visited a modern berber pharmacy in a cool inner room lined with colourful jars of herbs and spices. We were given a persuasive talk by the young woman pharmacist who talked of the culinary uses of the spices (35 spices for stews and 4 spices for grilled meat or fish as well as saffron and many others). She introduced a variety of herbal teas and their benefits. Then she passed round perfumes for us to try. Finally we were given green lipstick which always turns red, the deepness of the colour indicating the person's sexiness! Most of us bought some of these goods.
After lunch we went to the el-Badi palace and the Saadian tombs to the south of the walled town.
The chief feature of the el-Badi palace is the storks nesting on the roofs. It is a large palace and must have been very fine when it was built in the 16th century, but was destroyed about 100 years later.
We were shown round the Saadian tombs by a 1-legged guide. These tombs were built by Ahmed al-Mansour in the late 16th century. Each Saadian tomb is a decorated slab - close family are in one room, wives in another and concubines in a third. These rooms are made of beautifully decorated marble with columns. More tombs are outside in the courtyard,
In the late afternoon people went their various ways: some to the hamman, others to the souq and three of us to the Majorelle gardens. A small group searched out a distant supermarket where they bough 15 bottles of wine to drink with the evening meal - the hotel doesn't serve wine.
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