Clear with a Chance of Rain

That's the Wunderground forecast for Madrid on Friday, September 13th -- maybe the rain is forecast because Friday the 13th is an unlucky day, although in Spain rain should be lucky.  There was no extended forecast for Marrakesh on the Weather Underground - just the current temperature so I couldn't put a Marrakesh weather sticker on my blog.  I had to go to Weather.com for a 10 day forecast, which predicted highs of 88 degrees and lows in the lower 60s, without a chance of rain.

I'm waiting for my Top 10 guide to Marrakesh so I can start planning for that city.  I'm not sure how far out from the Medina the hotel really is and whether the route into the old city is walkable.  Many of the locations are not marked on the Google map and there are few bus stops - they must depend on user input for much of the data.  Yet supposedly Marrakesh is the top tourist draw in Morocco.

I looked at a question posted in the Frommers Forum on Morocco and the respondents answered that the best place to stay was in a Riad, not a hotel.  Whoops.  Too late to change now!  We'll scope them out for the next trip.  The Guardian has a 2006 (!) list of the 20 best places to stay in Marrakesh, which says that 10 years before there were 25 riads and now there are 500.  (I've heard that figure before.  It's nice and round.)  But maybe after the craziness of the Medina and the souks, we'll want to come back to an international luxury hotel outside the old city.

Conde Nast Travel has a guide to Marrakesh, with a list of riads and also where to eat.  The links to the longer reviews are broken but can be found at "Where's medina? Restaurants in Marrakech".  Should we try Chez Chegrouni, facing the main market square, Jemaa el-Fna?  On Trip Advisor you can page through 72 photos of the restaurant and its food -- to see if you'd like it...  Oh, but look at this one: Patisserie Amandine.  It's number one on Trip Advisor and I wouldn't mind a few French pastries for breakfast or supper!  They have Moroccan pastries as well, including the Pastilla with chicken.  Trip Advisor has a lot more restaurants but the top rated ones are a bit expensive.



Maybe we could go to the Henna Cafe, learn Arabic and get a henna job.  These photos of Henna cafe is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

Or maybe the Souk Kafe.
Or maybe Eveil des Sens which is in Gueliz, just north of the hotel, where supposedly they have a three course meal for 70 Dh .  I can see ourselves going there to eat rather than to the Medina.  It's not easy to add these restaurants to the google map, since they often aren't listed.