Ohayogozaimasu Marrakech

Pop quiz: where in the world can you hear more Japanese than in Japan?

Answer: as an Asian in Marrakesh

The last few days in Marrakesh have been a melding pot of dusty roads, various Asian languages (all the street vendors seem to know some Japanese, Chinese, Korean, you name it, that they willingly test out on a passing Asian tourist), trinket lined walls, and deliciously fragrant foods. A very hot melding pot. The temperature the day we arrived was 46 degrees Celsius, or 116 degrees Fahrenheit.

R and I spent yesterday wandering the streets and popping into a few touristy locations - palaces, tombs, plazas. We also wandered into the souk, and wandered and wandered. The souk is a labyrinth of shops and vendors that has to be experienced to be believed. In the evening we had a (unintentionally) romantic dinner at Pepe Nero, a swanky Moroccon-Italian restaurant.

Today we took a different approach, a full day dedicated to cooking! I'll let the images explain how that went.

We started off by blind-identifying all of the spices by smell
I would say R and I failed that

I've got Ray Ban Vision... I-I-I can't see, I-I-I-I can't see
Sharpied out raybans for blind smell tests

The cooking station with a traditional tagine pot and spices

R can't handle the amount of fun he's having

Our veal with artichoke, lemon, and peas tagine
(Mine on the left, R's on the right)

The whole shebang - we made the bread and tagine
Both were yums

Two interesting tidbits. One, another student (out of five) was also a recent Harvard graduate now working at BCG Boston. Two, nutmeg is 20x as effective as cocaine. 20x the high, 20x the crash.