Another Two Visits To Jemaa-El-Fna

This morning Elena and I went to Jemaa-El-Fna to visit it and the Royal Palace.  We had a 3 dh orange juice and watched the snake charmers.

The snake charmers are interesting.  They have a whole selection of animals they put out under a couple of umbrellas.  There are about 2 men playing woodwind snake charming instruments repeating the same notes over and over and over again. Even the snakes must be sick of it.  But, then again, the life of a musician, when you think of it, is always to play the same music over and over.  Maybe that's why they all take drugs.

The ones we were watching had 2 cobras standing with their necks flaired.  They also had non-cobras that they let loose and chased around.  There was also some sort of lizard.  That's the reptiles. In the mammal department they had what I guess are mongooses that they also released and chased around, keeping them corralled with their hats or tambourines that they threw on top of them to trap them.  A guy tried to convince me to have a picture taken but while he did that, a mongoose got away and hid under an orange juicer.

We decided to take our watching of the spectacle to the terrace of the Argana and have a coffee.  It was a moderate 9 dh for my black and 10 dh for Elena's cafe au lait.

After settling our bill, we headed down to where the palace was.  We didn't really see anything exciting other than some more parts of the medina.  We entered a jewelry market with lots of bling.  People were trying to sell us spices.  I told them we don't cook.

Then tonight, we headed over to have dinner.  It seems that there are a lot of restaurants numbered 117.  So we just picked one.  We ordered chicken kebabs for me, chicken tajine for Elena, eggplant salad, fries and a bottle of water.  They also brought us bread, hot sauces, and olives.  The food was OK but not great--they could use some yakitori sauce on their yakitori.  The tajine doesn't come in a tajine dish--just on a plate.  We ate and got pretty full on what actually isn't a whole lot of food, and then asked for the bill.  There are often some surprises and this was no exception.  They charged us for the hot sauces which we didn't order.  We thought they were just part of the free appetizers.  Still, even with tip, it was only 100 dh.  It was 30 dh each for our entrees, 5 each for the 2 salads, 10 for the water, and 10 for the hot sauces.

We walked to and from the medina in both instances.  It's about an hour to do the walk.  Today was not oppressively hot.  In fact, it was pleasant at times.