Post wedding: Boules and Morocco!

Some say the French beat the English at Boules on the Sunday after our wedding! During the morning a steady trickle of folk arrived at Oli's parents in St Orens. Like most residential areas they have a boules pitch just across the road from the house. Of course we were playing against French teams with so called 'semi pros' on their side. However, the English folk did manage to beat one French team. Christophe reckoned he had used his left hand to play. The photo evidence below though, clearly shows otherwise!!
This was a really great way to finish off the wedding weekend. The day was very sunny, relaxed and fun! I kept forgetting which language to speak in and would chat in French to my Dad, who looked back at me with a rather puzzled expression! It's not easy to keep switching between the two languages!
I must admit to feeling shattered by the end of the day. Despite planning to avoid alcohol I did end up joining the others with a steady flow of wine and beer!!

The best part of beating the inevitable post wedding blues was flying off to Morocco for a week! It's a country I've always wanted to visit and what could be better to get a real test than staying in Marrakesh!

We spent the first day getting to know the route from our lovely hotel into the medina. This was just a short walk along the old city walls which are a gorgeous pink colour. The main Koutoubia mosque was a good landmark if we got lost! We headed staight to the big square, Djemma el-Fna to sip mint tea, watch the action and plan out our week! During the day Djemma el-Fna is a fairly quiet place with people coming to and from the souq delivering goods and just the odd snake charmer or lady doing henna tattoos. The centre of the square is taken up with juice stalls, the best and cheapest place to get a refreshing drink when you finally find a way out of the souq!! It's so easy to get lost! As well as exploring the narrow streets on a walking tour we checked out a few cultural sights like the Palace Rahba Kedina and Saadian tombs. Despite Morocco being the most liberal Muslim country we have visited (I had no problems and felt at ease dressed in my normal summer garb!) we found that non Muslims are not allowed to enter the mosques. Still it didn't matter as the palace was a lovely place to wander in the cool and we found a lovely place to eat in the courtyard of a traditional Moroccan Medina house known as a riad. There are lots of places to get away from the bussle of the souq's. We visited the Menara garden which is realy a huge olive grove. At first glance it seemed empty but then in the shade of the olive trees we saw families having their picnics. It was hard to find a free tree!! We also rested a bit in the cyber park, a really nice place to relax tired feet in a cool fountain. Dotted around the immaculate gardens were places to surf the web! I was quite impressed with this park and it was so clean. Interesting to watch the different birds hop about too!But the parks are not really what we went for. For me getting into the souq and getting lost made me feel like I was really in Marrakesh. I mean going deeper than the first tourist shops and really discovering the nooks and crannies!!! Quite often we would discover little squares after wandering for ages in a neverending mazes.

They would be good places to sit and take photo's of people selling their goods.
Every now and then we would pass little shops selling spices which smelt wonderful! Often we would see pretty lanterns being sold, but deeper into the souq we discovered the workshops where they are made and little corners where all the scrap metal is stored! You never know what's around the next corner. One minute an alley full of Moroccan slippers the next turn and you are in the heart of the scrap metal merchants, turn again and you are in an alley full of herbalists! I found a place to get the local lipstick which was given to me. It looks like clay and has a deep pink colour which becomes a paste when you wet it. I tried it out back at the hotel. Strange flavour. No wonder too, as I later found out it is made from crushed insects!!

While we wandering the streets we found a berber pharmacy. We passed an old fashioned shop counter and went into a consulting room. Here the walls were floor to ceiling with shelves and these were full of glass jars. It was fascinating to discover their contents. Inside were spices, tree bark, resins, herbs, animal hair, whole birds, insects.......all kinds of weird things. Often when asked the berber would reply 'yes, that is for witchcraft, not tourist,hahaha!' So we left with some oils for massage, natural perfume, and a few spices! The oil I bought actually come from a nut kernal. After it has been passed through the stomach of the goat that eats the nut!!! The nuts grow on prickly trees with branches very high and using the goats as harvesters is the easiest way to collect the kernels!!! It's called Argan oil. The perfume comes in blocks and you just rub it on your skin. There is no alchohol in it, thats why it's popular with Muslims. We also saw berbers selling witchcraft and medicines in the big square. Look closely on the image above to see what you could buy!! (click on image for a bigger view)


Essaouira is a coastal town 3 hours from Marrakesh. A favorite city escape for the hippies who came to Morocco in the 60's. We could have gone on a tour operator trip but we took the local bus, for a fraction of the price. It was a relaxing place to spend the day. This town was once occupied by the Portugese and you can tell from the very different style of buildings. The souq area lies behind the fortified walls along the seafront. We had a lovely lunch of fresh fish, just after watching the fishermen unload their boats in the crowded harbour! This is where I bought my lovely fishermans jumper, lovely untreated wool! I might have been mad to buy this, being in 40 degree heat, but I was thinking ahead!!! (I recently wore it at a wolf sanctuary in the Pyrenees and wondered why the wolves kept following me along the fence......it does have a rather sheepish smell, nothing like natural fashion!!!) Essaouira was also a good palce to buy crafts and is where Oli got himself a colourful berber blanket!


Every evening we hung out in the Djemaa el-Fna. After dark the square would become filled with guys setting up little kitchens and cafés. These would sell great food, meals of tagine, couscous, kebab and others selling snails or juices. The smoke from their cooking would drift across the square adding to the atmosphere. In the rest of the square would be all the wierd and wonderful performers. People were formed circles around storytellers, snake chrarmers, jugglers, men boxing, cross dressers dancing, women whispering fortune readings to men and groups of young men singing and playing traditional music together. I enjoyed the latter the most. You could just edge into the front of the circle and listen to the hypnotic drumming and song! We didn't have any problem with men pestering me, though we were carefull to make sure Oli was the real gent and stood behind me in the big crowds, which were mainly full of blokes! Some restaurants around the square have top floor balconies, which was great for viewing the scene down below, though it was a bit spoiled with people trying to get a table at the front!!
We were glad to have a lovely hotel with a nice pool virtually to ourselves. At the end of a hot day in the souq a swim in the was heaven! Even Oli, who isn't really a pool man found it nice to spend a few zen hours lounging by the pool!
Before coming home we visited the Majorelle garden. Not really every gardeners favorite, cactus plants!! But these huge specimens were fascinating! It really made me want to start a cactus garden of my own.


These huge plants in different strange, twisted or gigantic spikey towers were really cool to wander between and looked striking against the vivid blue of the painted villa.
Then to finish off we had the most romantic hammam ever!! This was the highlight of our honeymoon! Talk about pampering. The decor was very Morrocan and very luxurious. We had an hour in the steam room being lavered, scrubed and sweating in oil scented steam, followed by relaxing with mint tea in a room with floaty curtains, silk pillows and inscense. Next came an hour massage each in private candle and lantern lit rooms. Next we were taken to a room with huge sunken black marble baths. The steps leading up to them were lit by candles and strewn with flower petals and the orange scented water was covered in floating rose petals.....heaven!! We wandered back to the hotel afterwards in a lazy daze!!! I would go back to Marrakesh anytime, just to repeat the experience and would highly recommend it!!! (see link to be tempted!)

Our Wedding day!

Our wedding went just too fast!!! One minute it was all anticipation and nerves the next it was all over!! How ever we had such a lovely day. In fact we had a wonderful time from the start of the week when guests began to arrive, to the post wedding day 'boules' tournament!
The days before the big day were spent entertaining my Grandparents and dining out in the city's restaurants as the English folk arrived. I really loved the meals we had at Assiette en Rose and Restaurant de Mai both serving traditional South of France grub. In fact we ate really well all week!The day before the wedding we decorated the tables at the restaurant with skeleton leaves and sheaves of corn and berries on the tables. We had also made menus and hung skeleton leaf fairy lights around the dance floor. It was so exciting waiting for everyone to arrive.....talk about a build up to the main event and I was so impatient!

After waking with the dawn suddenly the hours just before the wedding began to fly past! Nothing like a glass of bubbly to calm the nerves! Despite all the last minute organising of hotels, hair do sessions, people getting lost and putting that dress over my head everything just fell into place and we all set off for the Mairie in St Orens. Like all French weddings this is where we had our civil service. If you get married you have to have this, by law and then if you want you can go on to have a religious service. I got all teary in the car as I recited my lines to say to Oli!

We were lucky to have the Mayor himself do our service. After reading through the laws of marriage (very much referring to any future children) he read some poetry and then Oli and I exchanged rings saying our own little vows to each other!
As well as our rings we were given a medal. It shows a man and
woman on the front who are looking towards the future together, it also has details of our wedding day on the back! We also got given our family book, which I think is really cool; not so sure about the eight blank pages for registering our future children though!!























After the ceremony we all met up at the restaurant set in the grounds of the lovely old farmhouse, Domaine du Bousquet. During the Vin d'honneur we rushed outside during a sunny spell to take some photos. Everyone just looked so lovely!




























Then after downing a few more glasses of punch at the Vin d'honneur we moved onto the feast! I think I was already rather drunk by this point as I grabbed Dad for some pre dinner dancing and I got all confident with my French as I tried to chat with the guests!
Firstly we had a starter which was delicious, a salad with smoked duck cutlets, potted meat on toast and foie gras in a raspberry dressing!
We then had a bit of dancing to the music our Breton/Occitan band (traditional French music) were playing. We then had a fish course of Salmon and caramelised onion sauce! Feeling a bit full up by now, what with the tight corset on my dress we had a pause while Oli's parents gave a very moving speech. This is where I found out that the trips to the mountains with Joël were not really pre wedding 'tests'!!Then we had the meat course....Duck with Olives..........more dancing...... a cheese selection....... Fred's speech (which moved Oli to tears) and finaly the dessert!!!!! This was carried through the room a blaze with sparklers......a traditional decoration for the 'bringing out the cake'!But before we sat down to this final course the champagne was brought out and Oli was given a sword to cork the first bottle!! It's a shame we didn't have a photo but we did save the cork which still had the neck of the bottle around it! We spent the rest of the evening trying to learn the dance steps we were shown.....but as the evening went on it just didn't get any easier.....I wonder why!!!!!! As the guests left a few of us stayed on to swig back some beer, I think we got home around 4.30am!!!!
It was such a special day that went too fast... my dress is still hanging in our bedroom, It will be such a shame to put it away! I've spent ages trying to choose the photos for the blog, I hope it gives you an idea of what a lovely day we had!!!