Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

I feel like a lot happened today, but it's hard to recall it all for journalling. We started out with breakfast on the roof deck of the riad.

We checked to see if the Medersa Bou Inania, which we saw closed yesterday was open (the LP says it's closed for renovations). Happily, the renovations seem (mostly?) complete. The interior is stunning, with excellent examples of stucco work, patterned tilings, and carved wood domes and doors. There are a few places where you can see a piece was missing when they were doing the restoration, which is pretty neat. You get a sense for the patterning, and how much decoration was actually present.

We had lunch at one of the places in near the Blue Gate, and afterwards, Tinny went back to the riad. When she didn't return within fifteen minutes, we went back to check on her and discovered that Mo had arrived.

We planned to go watch sunset at the tombs overlooking the city, but clouds had rolled in, and we decided to just wander instead. We walked a bit through a fairly residential area, which had a very different feel than the main streets of the part of the medina where our riad is. Much quieter. Nobody trying to sell us things or tell us which way we should be going. We ended up walking in a circle, without realizing it, and found our way back to the gate easily.

We splurged on dinner and went to a place, Dar Saada, which was intricately decorated and had really good food. I think the bstila I had was the best I've had yet.

Afterwards we discovered that we were in a section of the souk that was closed for the evening. Not just the shops were closed, the gates at both ends of the street too. The gate looked scalable, but we decided to look for another exit first. Luckily, an alley led us to another door.