Marrakesh Weekend

It was a very tiresome week for the whole team.  We need to capture all information needed for our project/s, attend meetings, meetings and more meetings, and then submit a revised SOW by the end of the week.  Another team even experienced getting a request from the client for a totally different SOW. >.<  I thank God that we were able to get most of the information that we need for our project and that we were able to talk to most of the committee heads as scheduled.


To relax a bit, the whole team decided to go for a little roadtrip over the weekend.  We went to Marrakesh which is a 4-hour drive away from Rabat.  We hired a minibus with driver for the weekend since we are a group of 10 and it would be difficult to organize a train ride and reserve tickets, etc.

As soon as we arrived in Marrakech, we didn't waste our time and headed straight to the Medina.  We looked for a decent restaurant within the area because we're all so famished. We opted for the rooftop seats to get a great view of the whole Place Jemaa el-Fna.

Our tajines

Harira soup

never ending couscous

At the back of the restaurant, you could easily see the snow-capped Atlas Mountains in the background. 

Place Jemaa el-Fna

This square has been the nerve centre of Marrakech and the symbol of the city.  It has been declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage site and it has a gruesome past where criminals on whom the death sentence had been passed were beheaded here. Right now, the whole area is a large market full of life -- musicians, dancers, storytellers, fortune-tellers, snake-charmers, etc.  

 Our teammate Tracey even had her first-hand experience with the snake-charmer! 

 After touring around the square, we went to the souk. Since we didn't have enough time, we weren't really able to shop (except for Tracey who's a real shopper! LOL).  

Before we headed back to the hotel, we also checked out Ben Youssef Medersa which is a Koranic school. 

We ended our saturday night by watching a Moroccan show called Chez Ali. We weren't really able to understand the story of the show as it was all in French. 

A set menu was included with the show.  At first, we thought that the soup was our appetizer and the tajine was the main course. Little did we know that the real main course was just around the corner! Our couscous came which was totally unexpected…it was humongous!! We weren’t really able to finish even half of it as we were already full.  Had a picture taken with it to prove how big it is.

Here's a shot of the salad for the vegetarians

#ibmcsc morocco