Simply entering or leaving is an aesthetic north face coats outlet experience, as twin sets of coloured glass doors in turn are opened with a perfectly choreographed movement by pairs of white-robed doormen.
From La Mamounia, it's just a short walk along the rose-coloured avenues to central Marrakech, though be warned: crossing roads is even more hair-raising than in Rome when the Vespas are swarming.
Despite the longtime erotic vibration in its name, the kasbah i s merely the city's old residential area, while the souk is its market. The day I visited the souk, it could almost have been designed by Jacques Garcia, with help from Yves St Laurent, as sunlight 50% off north face coats streamed through its slatted roof, covering everyone and everything in couture-ish black and gold stripes.
Tourists were far outnumbered by locals, wonderfully comfortable-looking in their unisex, monk-hooded djellabas, doing their everyday shopping among pyramids of olives in every shade from black to rose, scrawny chicken pieces, American T-shirts and plastic flip-flops.
Many women wore hijabs, but in attractive shades of pale violet or pea-green, with only the occasional smudge of fundamentalist black. Now and again, a man would pass, wheeling a handcart of CDs with a sound system broadcasting readings from the Koran. One senses that here, radical Islam may not be the easiest of sells.
I was, of course, entreated to buy everything from a hand-woven Berber carpet and miniature Tuareg scimitar to a hubble-bubble pipe just like The Rolling Stones once used. But the huckstering was never aggressive, and usually accompanied by tremendous charm.
Moroccans are the most tactile of people: here one sees men strolling arm-in-arm or even holding hands without the smallest homoerotic charge. More than once, an unsuccessful salesman saw north face online me off with a no-hard-feelings touch on the upper arm or a convivial slap on the back.
Walking behind one violet-silk-covered woman and her small daughter, I accidentally trod on the child's espadrille and pulled it off. 'Oh, mademoiselle,' I said, handing it back to the little girl, 'je m'excuse.' From her mother's violet hijab came the most pleasant of voices: 'No problem.'
I ended in Jemaa el Fnaa, Marrakech's huge central square, the traditional meeting place for the local musicians who so fascinated Brian Jones, an early proponent of world music. Indeed, it was to here that Brian was decoyed that fateful day in 1967 when Keith stole Anita Pallenberg from him.
At night , Jemaa el Fnaa turns into an extraordinary spectacle, again as much for locals as tourists, with snake-charmers, Berber dancers and groups of musicians seemingly playing just for the love of it. It's a magical, almost mystical experience, walking through the darkness from one soft pipe-and-drum symphony to the next. If Brian's unhappy shade is anywhere, it must be here.
Temporary restaurants pop up with long picnic-style tables and cooks quick-frying Marrakech delicacies that made me almost forget the traveller's rule number one: never eat street food.
For the menu-waving touts turned out to be the most charming of all. One pointed proudly to a photograph of TV chef Rick Stein as a satisfied customer. Another had clearly lived long in Britain. 'Sainsbury's . . . taste the difference,' he invited. 'Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck at Bray. Come and 'ave a butcher's.'
He might have been speaking on his city's behalf to the whole world. Though I didn't sample his food, I can only agree.
没有评论:
发表评论