There are two things I truly wanted to experience whilst in Morocco...participating in a belly dancing class and going to a hammam (think spa- Moroccan-style). Well, one out of two isn't bad, right? Maybe there is just too much belly in my dancing and Morocco wasn't ready for all of that :) but the hammam in Rabat was ready.
It is fair to say that with any new experience in a foreign country where I do not speak their language and they do not speak any of the 3 1/2 I know, I enter an experience with a little bit of trepidation. I admit it. I do not like surprises. Thank goodness for Sara. Sara is my friend who moved to Rabat with her husband Christopher and children. They are the reason Mom and I are in Morocco...to visit with them. Sara has been to the hammam before and this is where we find ourselves on a sunny Wednesday in Rabat.
The hammam looks harmless enough. A sports fitness center on one side of the building and what looks like an entrance to a spa on the other side. Sara knows the lay of the land so I just follow her lead, strip down and surrender myself to the experience...
The woman working at the hammam (her name is Sophia) pantomines to me to stretch my arms out in front of me and gestures to interlock my fingers with hers. No big deal one would think. Okay, then I would like you to try this whilst laying naked on a marble table, faced-down, after having been doused and slathered (there are no other words here, really) in a mixture of olive and eucalyptus oil. I am surrounded by marble...the marble table I'm laying on, the marble floors, the marble columns, the marble walls and I am thinking, "Oh, this is how the story ends with me feeling as slippery as an eel and sliding off this marble table and cracking my head open". Yes, everytime she asks me to move or roll-over I envision this scenario playing out. I know this is suppose to be relaxing but I seem to be formulating my Last Will and Testament everytime I move. Oh, but wait I am getting ahead of myself here. This was preceded by Sophia dumping a bucket of water (thankfully not cold) over my head to rinse off the initial soaping of my body. After the bucket or two of water is tossed over my head, I find myself being loofahed (is that a verb?) with a mixture of ground olive pits and oils. Sophia is loofahing places I am not sure actually needed such vigorous scrubbing. Look, I am an unusual 50-year old in that I have extremely soft skin naturally. I really do....so this scrubbing? Tiny ouches. But I am committed to trying something new. Sophia also takes great pride in showing me the dead skin cells that have fallen off my body and onto the marble courtesy of this process. I would argue that some of those cells may have been very much alive whilst pre-scrubbing. I will never know :) This is also where I should remind everyone that the hammam experience is a communal experience (sorry to tell some of my male friends this but it is a gender segregated experience as well). The day Sara and I are there we are the only guests there so the only ones who hears my giggles are the hammam ladies and Sara. I just don't know if this whole experience is suppose to invoke laughter but I could not stop giggling...probably because I was so happy to be alive and hey, I was still maintaining my balance on that slippery marble table.
Okay, back to the marble table and me. I am starting to think I must have signed some kind of waiver relinguishing the hammam from any responsibility from what comes next. The next thing I know, Sophia and I have our hands interlocked as she requested. She is standing in front of me about 6 inches from my prone, slippery, naked self. It's dimly-lit....slightly steamy ...very warm....I did not know that marble could feel so warm to one's skin. The next thing I know I am the newest push-me, pull-you toy as she is sliding me back and forth on this marble table. Any idea what a delicate balancing act it is to keep my olive-oiled self from completely slipping off the marble table (after all, there is more of me than table :) rendering myself unconscious and never to be heard from again?!
"Wheeeeeeee"....I say and giggle as this slip and slide ride continues for a few minutes. Although fun, I still can not quite wrap my mind around what is therapeutic about this. This all culminates in honey being placed on my face and cool compresses over my eyes...and a final body wash of various oils and shampooed hair ...and then we are rinsed off and wrapped in terry cloth robes. I still can not help but thinking I smell a little bit like an olive salad . It is probably just my imagination.
I waddle (because I do feel a little rubbery and Gumby-like) in my too small slippers across the wet marble floors of the hammam to change back into my street clothes. Sara and I have some fresh-squeezed juice afterwards.
I am glad I experienced it...and thank you Sara for making it happen and for putting up with my giggles. Would I do it again? Yes, if ever I am back in Morocco..sure and particularly because I know what to expect. But Sophia and I would have to come to an agreement that I'm not going on the "slip and slide" ride again.
Maybe you are wondering where my Mom is during this whole time? Notice she did not sign up for this.
"Oh, wait until you see the casbah. Wait until you see my pictures. I got some great photos today and Christopher and I had such a nice talk and....", Mom tells me. She loves bragging about her photos...and yes, she takes some excellent ones. She also loves to brag when she gets to see something before I do. I get a little jealous when she gets to see something before me, in this case, the casbah. Mind you, the casbah is only a few blocks from the riad (think bed and breakfast) where we are staying yet I have yet to make it to the casbah. This must change...and so it does...the next day.
The casbah is a walled neighborhood. White-washed architecture mingles with fortress-like doors behind which lay courtyards, gardens and insulated worlds of Moroccan life. Picture a white-washed labyrinth and that would describe the casbah. Stone steps and little alleyways that lead seemingly nowhere and everywhere simultaneously; that make no sense to the uninitiated...they are designed to be confusing and they succeed. Mom evidently likes a good puzzle; to her credit she navigates the casbah like a native. If it were left to me to find our way out of the casbah...we would still be there months later. The uneven pavement and steps present challenges for her...but it's manageable although a walking stick would have come in handy. One thing I like about traveling with my Mom (and I want to make this very clear to everyone who travels with a "mature" travel companion), appreciate the fact that we need to slow down the pace a bit. It is true we will not see everything or do as much in a given day but I am comforted that we will see and experience that which we are meant to see and do. I am infinitely grateful to just have the time together with my Mom...period. If I wanted a speedy tour, I would sign up for one of those guided tours being led by a guide with a yellow flag or upside-down umbrella wherein the tourists get 17 minutes to enjoy a town before parading off to the next tourist site. We make our way to the terraces overlooking the ocean and just enjoy looking at the scenery. Down one of the stone stairways we stumble (and that is the correct word because it is hot, the midday sun is making a strong appearance today and we probably both need a nap right about now) upon a terrace cafe with mosaic-tiled tables that offer up an array of Moroccan cookies, the ubiquituous mint tea and bougainvillea flowers that cascade down the side of the casbah walls to the ocean.
Did someone mention cookies? I should apologize in advance. I know I should rave about the tagine prepared dishes of long-stewing lamb and chicken with brilliant Moroccan spices and veggies. I know I should extoll the virtues of cous cous and freshly-baked breads...breads that are prepared daily in communal ovens in the casbah because not every home has its individual oven. I know I should mention the pastilla which is a wonderful melange of pastry crust and meat and raisins and such which is a meal unto itself...and yet, what I went back to, day after day was our cookie place.
Our first night at our riad, we decide to explore the neighborhood a little bit. Great little shops filled with argan oils (to make your hair silky smooth) and fabric shops (I now own more tassles than any one bedroom apartment should be adorned with) and 99 cent stores where nothing is 99 cents but would be at home...and tucked in between a little shop selling thread...just spools of thread and a tiny vendor that sells yogurt and bottled water and phone cards is...my cookie place. The shop is actually a counter space...step up to the counter that faces the street of the alleyway in the casbah and place your order. This cookie shop comes to me...there is no door...just a counter display case filled with cookies...a few gentlemen working the counter...and a scale...and some boxes to pack one's selection of cookies. Ooooooohhh...they all look good. Some are drenched in honey...but we can get these cookies here in NYC. And I see some that Mom and I figure out are filled with figs and dates...but again, I already have my favorite place in NYC for fig cookies....but then there is THE cookie. It is crescent-shaped, looks like shortbread...but it is not...and the vendor gives me one to sample. It has hints of orange and almond and powdered sugar and is filled with something we are never quite successful in understanding...but we understand yummy.
One of our evening's in Rabat finds Mom and I meeting up with Christopher and Sara. It is a balmy night and we are off to Restaurant Dinarjat. We arrive at the top of one of many streets in our neighborhood. A gentleman in a black robe and fes hat with a lit lantern greets us and escorts us to the restaurant. We follow his billowing robe and swinging lantern to the restaurant....yes, this is another we-would-have-walked-right-by-it moment in Rabat. One thing that must be stressed is that one can never imagine what lies beyond an unmarked, heavy wooden door in Morocco. Down one alleyway, around the corner, through a few obscure doorways and we arrive at a beyond-the-door Moroccan architectural wonderland of high archways and mosaic fountains, low-seated tables and musicians playing traditional music in the background. The food is wonderful but the company was the best treat of all. To Christopher and Sara...for your friendship and hospitality...and Christopher, before I forget....loved the moment when we visited the cork forest....a million and one thank yous to you both. I learned a lot that night...a little bit more about Morocco and a little bit more about my friends...and loved it all. There is nothing better than traveling and realizing yes, new places are fascinating and good food in a pretty eatery is great but basking in the love and joy that friendship brings ...that is the greatest joy of travel....for me....well, that and cookies....
Our last day in Rabat....because know that each day, the road always ended with me back at MY COOKIE SHOP (it doesn't even have a name....probably doesn't have an address either....I could not tell you how to get there without holding your hand and taking you there myself), I went to my cookie shop. I requested 45 of the same cookie ...my crescent-shaped little pieces of cookie heaven. The vendors at the shop thought they were misunderstanding me. They kept giving me different cookies to sample.
"No, she wants 45 of those cookies", a woman next to me explains to the vendor in Arabic. She understood English and asked where I was from.
"New York City", I tell her and thank her for her help.
She laughs and tells me how much she loves New York and then asks, "Do you not have these cookies in New York?"
New York City has many things. The 45 cookies never made it back to NYC. My plan was that I would bring them back to NYC to share with Fatima and her family. I am ashamed that not even the crumbs made it back. 45 cookies....some went to Christopher and Sara and family, some to friends in Maryland upon our arrival back to the U.S....and after describing them to Fatima... our Moroccan friend here in NYC...she is baffled as well.
So yes, I could say that friends would be a reason for us visiting again....the lure of the casbah....the places we have yet to visit...another visit to the hammam but if the truth be known....
...It's all about the lure of the cookie.
It is fair to say that with any new experience in a foreign country where I do not speak their language and they do not speak any of the 3 1/2 I know, I enter an experience with a little bit of trepidation. I admit it. I do not like surprises. Thank goodness for Sara. Sara is my friend who moved to Rabat with her husband Christopher and children. They are the reason Mom and I are in Morocco...to visit with them. Sara has been to the hammam before and this is where we find ourselves on a sunny Wednesday in Rabat.
The hammam looks harmless enough. A sports fitness center on one side of the building and what looks like an entrance to a spa on the other side. Sara knows the lay of the land so I just follow her lead, strip down and surrender myself to the experience...
The woman working at the hammam (her name is Sophia) pantomines to me to stretch my arms out in front of me and gestures to interlock my fingers with hers. No big deal one would think. Okay, then I would like you to try this whilst laying naked on a marble table, faced-down, after having been doused and slathered (there are no other words here, really) in a mixture of olive and eucalyptus oil. I am surrounded by marble...the marble table I'm laying on, the marble floors, the marble columns, the marble walls and I am thinking, "Oh, this is how the story ends with me feeling as slippery as an eel and sliding off this marble table and cracking my head open". Yes, everytime she asks me to move or roll-over I envision this scenario playing out. I know this is suppose to be relaxing but I seem to be formulating my Last Will and Testament everytime I move. Oh, but wait I am getting ahead of myself here. This was preceded by Sophia dumping a bucket of water (thankfully not cold) over my head to rinse off the initial soaping of my body. After the bucket or two of water is tossed over my head, I find myself being loofahed (is that a verb?) with a mixture of ground olive pits and oils. Sophia is loofahing places I am not sure actually needed such vigorous scrubbing. Look, I am an unusual 50-year old in that I have extremely soft skin naturally. I really do....so this scrubbing? Tiny ouches. But I am committed to trying something new. Sophia also takes great pride in showing me the dead skin cells that have fallen off my body and onto the marble courtesy of this process. I would argue that some of those cells may have been very much alive whilst pre-scrubbing. I will never know :) This is also where I should remind everyone that the hammam experience is a communal experience (sorry to tell some of my male friends this but it is a gender segregated experience as well). The day Sara and I are there we are the only guests there so the only ones who hears my giggles are the hammam ladies and Sara. I just don't know if this whole experience is suppose to invoke laughter but I could not stop giggling...probably because I was so happy to be alive and hey, I was still maintaining my balance on that slippery marble table.
Okay, back to the marble table and me. I am starting to think I must have signed some kind of waiver relinguishing the hammam from any responsibility from what comes next. The next thing I know, Sophia and I have our hands interlocked as she requested. She is standing in front of me about 6 inches from my prone, slippery, naked self. It's dimly-lit....slightly steamy ...very warm....I did not know that marble could feel so warm to one's skin. The next thing I know I am the newest push-me, pull-you toy as she is sliding me back and forth on this marble table. Any idea what a delicate balancing act it is to keep my olive-oiled self from completely slipping off the marble table (after all, there is more of me than table :) rendering myself unconscious and never to be heard from again?!
"Wheeeeeeee"....I say and giggle as this slip and slide ride continues for a few minutes. Although fun, I still can not quite wrap my mind around what is therapeutic about this. This all culminates in honey being placed on my face and cool compresses over my eyes...and a final body wash of various oils and shampooed hair ...and then we are rinsed off and wrapped in terry cloth robes. I still can not help but thinking I smell a little bit like an olive salad . It is probably just my imagination.
I waddle (because I do feel a little rubbery and Gumby-like) in my too small slippers across the wet marble floors of the hammam to change back into my street clothes. Sara and I have some fresh-squeezed juice afterwards.
I am glad I experienced it...and thank you Sara for making it happen and for putting up with my giggles. Would I do it again? Yes, if ever I am back in Morocco..sure and particularly because I know what to expect. But Sophia and I would have to come to an agreement that I'm not going on the "slip and slide" ride again.
Maybe you are wondering where my Mom is during this whole time? Notice she did not sign up for this.
"Oh, wait until you see the casbah. Wait until you see my pictures. I got some great photos today and Christopher and I had such a nice talk and....", Mom tells me. She loves bragging about her photos...and yes, she takes some excellent ones. She also loves to brag when she gets to see something before I do. I get a little jealous when she gets to see something before me, in this case, the casbah. Mind you, the casbah is only a few blocks from the riad (think bed and breakfast) where we are staying yet I have yet to make it to the casbah. This must change...and so it does...the next day.
The casbah is a walled neighborhood. White-washed architecture mingles with fortress-like doors behind which lay courtyards, gardens and insulated worlds of Moroccan life. Picture a white-washed labyrinth and that would describe the casbah. Stone steps and little alleyways that lead seemingly nowhere and everywhere simultaneously; that make no sense to the uninitiated...they are designed to be confusing and they succeed. Mom evidently likes a good puzzle; to her credit she navigates the casbah like a native. If it were left to me to find our way out of the casbah...we would still be there months later. The uneven pavement and steps present challenges for her...but it's manageable although a walking stick would have come in handy. One thing I like about traveling with my Mom (and I want to make this very clear to everyone who travels with a "mature" travel companion), appreciate the fact that we need to slow down the pace a bit. It is true we will not see everything or do as much in a given day but I am comforted that we will see and experience that which we are meant to see and do. I am infinitely grateful to just have the time together with my Mom...period. If I wanted a speedy tour, I would sign up for one of those guided tours being led by a guide with a yellow flag or upside-down umbrella wherein the tourists get 17 minutes to enjoy a town before parading off to the next tourist site. We make our way to the terraces overlooking the ocean and just enjoy looking at the scenery. Down one of the stone stairways we stumble (and that is the correct word because it is hot, the midday sun is making a strong appearance today and we probably both need a nap right about now) upon a terrace cafe with mosaic-tiled tables that offer up an array of Moroccan cookies, the ubiquituous mint tea and bougainvillea flowers that cascade down the side of the casbah walls to the ocean.
Did someone mention cookies? I should apologize in advance. I know I should rave about the tagine prepared dishes of long-stewing lamb and chicken with brilliant Moroccan spices and veggies. I know I should extoll the virtues of cous cous and freshly-baked breads...breads that are prepared daily in communal ovens in the casbah because not every home has its individual oven. I know I should mention the pastilla which is a wonderful melange of pastry crust and meat and raisins and such which is a meal unto itself...and yet, what I went back to, day after day was our cookie place.
Our first night at our riad, we decide to explore the neighborhood a little bit. Great little shops filled with argan oils (to make your hair silky smooth) and fabric shops (I now own more tassles than any one bedroom apartment should be adorned with) and 99 cent stores where nothing is 99 cents but would be at home...and tucked in between a little shop selling thread...just spools of thread and a tiny vendor that sells yogurt and bottled water and phone cards is...my cookie place. The shop is actually a counter space...step up to the counter that faces the street of the alleyway in the casbah and place your order. This cookie shop comes to me...there is no door...just a counter display case filled with cookies...a few gentlemen working the counter...and a scale...and some boxes to pack one's selection of cookies. Ooooooohhh...they all look good. Some are drenched in honey...but we can get these cookies here in NYC. And I see some that Mom and I figure out are filled with figs and dates...but again, I already have my favorite place in NYC for fig cookies....but then there is THE cookie. It is crescent-shaped, looks like shortbread...but it is not...and the vendor gives me one to sample. It has hints of orange and almond and powdered sugar and is filled with something we are never quite successful in understanding...but we understand yummy.
One of our evening's in Rabat finds Mom and I meeting up with Christopher and Sara. It is a balmy night and we are off to Restaurant Dinarjat. We arrive at the top of one of many streets in our neighborhood. A gentleman in a black robe and fes hat with a lit lantern greets us and escorts us to the restaurant. We follow his billowing robe and swinging lantern to the restaurant....yes, this is another we-would-have-walked-right-by-it moment in Rabat. One thing that must be stressed is that one can never imagine what lies beyond an unmarked, heavy wooden door in Morocco. Down one alleyway, around the corner, through a few obscure doorways and we arrive at a beyond-the-door Moroccan architectural wonderland of high archways and mosaic fountains, low-seated tables and musicians playing traditional music in the background. The food is wonderful but the company was the best treat of all. To Christopher and Sara...for your friendship and hospitality...and Christopher, before I forget....loved the moment when we visited the cork forest....a million and one thank yous to you both. I learned a lot that night...a little bit more about Morocco and a little bit more about my friends...and loved it all. There is nothing better than traveling and realizing yes, new places are fascinating and good food in a pretty eatery is great but basking in the love and joy that friendship brings ...that is the greatest joy of travel....for me....well, that and cookies....
Our last day in Rabat....because know that each day, the road always ended with me back at MY COOKIE SHOP (it doesn't even have a name....probably doesn't have an address either....I could not tell you how to get there without holding your hand and taking you there myself), I went to my cookie shop. I requested 45 of the same cookie ...my crescent-shaped little pieces of cookie heaven. The vendors at the shop thought they were misunderstanding me. They kept giving me different cookies to sample.
"No, she wants 45 of those cookies", a woman next to me explains to the vendor in Arabic. She understood English and asked where I was from.
"New York City", I tell her and thank her for her help.
She laughs and tells me how much she loves New York and then asks, "Do you not have these cookies in New York?"
New York City has many things. The 45 cookies never made it back to NYC. My plan was that I would bring them back to NYC to share with Fatima and her family. I am ashamed that not even the crumbs made it back. 45 cookies....some went to Christopher and Sara and family, some to friends in Maryland upon our arrival back to the U.S....and after describing them to Fatima... our Moroccan friend here in NYC...she is baffled as well.
So yes, I could say that friends would be a reason for us visiting again....the lure of the casbah....the places we have yet to visit...another visit to the hammam but if the truth be known....
...It's all about the lure of the cookie.
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