Beautiful books and bindings

Inspired by a post on another blog, The Peak of Chic I thought that I would ignore Morocco for today and think about books that are as attractive on the outside as they are on the inside. For a long time I thought that Loebs were the height of style and substance, gorgeous little red (for Latin) and green (for Greek) parallel text editions of classical literature. Then I thought that French paperbacks were the pinnacle of printed chic, such as those elegant books from Éditions Gallimard. But now... oh but now.... A recent flurry of enthusiasm for books by the likes of Nancy Mitford and Stella Gibbons brought me inevitably to my discovery of Persephone Books.

These gorgeously designed and produced editions, in dove grey binding, each book graced by a different endpaper relevant to the era and feel of the story, have been filling up my bookshelves and I have been sitting impatiently by the door of our house here in Marrakech waiting for the postman to deliver my next fix. Persephone Books have been reprinting forgotten and out of print works by a broad range of writers, mostly from the first half of the last century and mostly of feminine interest. I won't take up any more of your time here, but must send you immediately to their website and urge you to spend as much time as you can spare this afternoon browsing their wondeful catalogue.

Favourites? Recommendations? Well, you'll be buying three, at least, so let me recommend The Making of a Marchioness, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (now being made into a film, would you believe) and Greenery Street, if only for the wonderful scene when Ian first meets Felicity's parents.

Should you already know about Persephone Books, and have other recommendations, or have any other publishers to suggest to me, do leave a comment - I would love to hear from some of my readers, lurking, as you are, all over the world!

Persephone Books
59 Lamb's Conduit Street,
London WC1N 3NB

(Image of Persephone books above from www.biddles.co.uk with thanks)

Goodness, it's hot.

It's been over 40 degrees here every day for the last while and today my trusty weather widget informs me that it is currently 43 degrees. We have been spending every day locked in our green sitting room (if you have practically any Moroccan interiors book, it would seem, you will have seen a picture of this room - it really is very pretty) as it rejoices in a ceiling fan. God help us when the electricity bill comes in.

Ah... sweet Essaouira. When we were *there* I wore two long-sleeved tops (they're not very nice, but neither is premature ageing or skin cancer, so I endure) at once, a cardigan AND a jacket. And a scarf. It was wonderful. And windy. It wasn't quite as cold when I was in Dublin last week, but even then I got to wear my navy Burberry trench with a cardigan under it (I'm a big cardigan lover). Who knew that I would ever be reduced to writing nostalgic posts about the days when I got to wear so many layers I couldn't put my arms down by my sides?

*drifts off into memories of the Cliffs of Moher in May when she wore a hat and a scarf and a winter coat*

Expat Women Blog Directory

Food again and bliss in a tourist's (or an expat's) heart

You may have detected a slight antipathy regarding Moroccan food in my past posts, subtle, discreet, but lurking there between the lines. Well, I'll come out and say it. Moroccan food is awful. Naturally, if you are willing to spend a lot of money and do a tour of the upmarket restaurants of the city (they are plentiful and they are not cheap) you could track down a genuinely nice tagine - and I have - but really, a lot of the time you'd just be finding a tagine that was less ghastly than all the others you had tried, rather than something that was fabulous in its own right.

When it comes down to it, a tagine is a mixed stew. They use fatty "lamb", stringy and dry chicken, deeply questionable unidentified-meat-balls and, for the vegetarian, carrots and potatoes. I don't know what they do with all the spices they are constantly pushing on tourists here, because they certainly don't use them in their cooking. If you are eating in local places and don't want to partake of the dreaded tagine then there is a whole array of... no, wait. There isn't. There are questionable brochettes, cous cous (the less said about that, the better, for the most part), omelette and chips that you have to wrap individually in napkins to squeeze out the oil. I will grant you that the yoghurt in El Bahia cafe on Rue Bani Marine is fabulous, and indeed for all my complaints I have eaten a full lunch in that cafe on several occasions and have lived to tell the tale (I must risk my credibility admit a partiality for their meatball and scrambled egg tagine). I suspect that the difficulty is that because Moroccan food has been romanced by tourists (and certainly there is worse food out there), a lot of mid-range eateries cut corners by serving very cheaply-produced food with substandard cuts of meat and so forth, so in order to hit the "nice" Moroccan food you are forced to play a Russian roulette with the top-end places while avoiding the horrors of belly-dancers and so forth.

However, for anybody who has spent more than three days in the country, the search begins for the food *least* akin to Moroccan food possible. Unfortunately, the best international restaurants and cafes are naturally going to be a little expensive for daily eating - Narwama, Kechmara, Tachibana - so you can imagine with what joys and ecstasies we found Bougainvillea in 2005, and indeed we have been eating there regularly since we arrived here in early June as we live just around the corner from it. They serve pizzas (big, nice and only 35DH - a little over 3 euros), pasta, salads, quiche, non-alcoholic cocktails, crepes, toasted sandwiches and so forth and you'd have to really go at it in order to get your bill for two to exceed 120DH. They do have tagine and brochettes too, but they are only for show, I'm sure (okay, I will confess that I have eaten their brochettes and they are quite nice). It is easy to criticise the place for being commercial and touristy, as some have, but it is also easy to be too precious about these things in the eternal search for "authenticity". Besides, it's very pretty, isn't it?

(PS: In case you think I am completelly negative about Moroccan food, Moroccan honey is divine - I'm eating some out of a huge jar right now)

Cafe Bougainvillea
33 Rue el Mouassine (adjacent to the mosque, facing down Rue el Mouassine as you come at it from the Djemma end)
Marrakech

Mixed feelings... resolved

Morocco is very strange. Unlike any other country I have visited (and I am reasonably well travelled, with a colourfully stamped and visa-ed passport) it can inspire tension and hate on one day and langour and love the next. I suppose it depends on how tired one feels.

I was in Dublin for a couple of days, and although it was lovely to see my darling parents and tease my mother and bully my father about doing a PhD, I was exhausted by my day in the city in a way that I have never been exhausted by Marrakech, for all my complaints. John thinks that noise is the culprit - that no city we have ever visited suffers as badly from the noise pollution caused by the concentration of buses and other traffic in one tiny city centre. For those of you who do not know Dublin, although it is a European capital city with all the resources one would expect, when it was laid out (oh that Wide Streets Commission) nobody expected quite so many people to live there, with the effect that a 1.5 million person city actually has a main street - O'Connell Street - through which almost all traffic must pass to cross the city. There are but two shopping districts (although many would call them one) - the Henry Street area and the Grafton Street area - and these two streets and their precincts are filled to capacity every hour and every day of the week. It is hellish. Other cities simply are not like that, even London (for the most part). When I go to Manhattan I am always surprised by the emptiness (physically, at least - as for spiritual emptiness, well, that's a whole different post!). People in London and New York complain about crowds and jostling and pushing - well, they should try Dublin on a Tuesday afternoon.

As for Marrakech, no matter how annoying the hustlers, stall and shop-keepers and vulgar youths are, it is quiet. All you can hear is a gentle hubbub of voices, the warning cries of delivery men with their donkeys and small carts (still the primary method of moving goods around the city centre) and the occasional deathwish moped, all this punctuated at regular but inscrutable intervals by the call to prayer. I think John is right - it is Dublin Bus that makes Dublin so exhausting and any Dubliner who has ever felt a moment of weariness or has lain awake at night for no apparent reason should not look within, for physical or emotional complaints, however valid these may be, but they should consider leaving the city for a couple of months and seeing how they feel when removed from the vicinity of Dorset, O'Connell and Grafton Street before giving themselves up for lost.

On the other hand, Marrakech can be a little emotionally wearing. Even though I know not to worry about the odd teenager who feels the need to proclaim his heterosexuality like an insecure tomcat and the shopkeeper who *still* doesn't grasp that I have passed him up to four times a day for two months, suggesting that perhaps I am a permanent fixture and thus unlikely to be seduced by his bizarre paintings of disembodied turbaned heads floating over a desert landscape (I must take a picture some day to show you), and thus persists in calling to me every day with "Bonjour, hello, just to look, just to look, one moment please", although I am now used to all that, it still grates a little, to the extent that I am far more comforable when John is with me, and although I am more than happy to spend every minute of every day in my husband's company, it makes me feel a little edgy to *require* it in order to step out the door. Well, require is a strong word - of course I can safely move about the city unchaperoned, but I am far more relaxed when I am escorted, and that limitation, however slight, annoys me sometimes.

Of course though, as the two pictures at the top of this post might suggest, life here is still pretty wonderful. We have a beautiful house and in two days will be moving into our equally lovely (although quite different) more permanent home next door. The view from the two terraces is one of the most serene in the Medina and we have no fewer than four pairs of doves, a family of falcons, a blackbird and innumerable other smaller birds singing and chirping all day long (it is less serene when they start up at 6am though). The heat is quite breathtaking at the moment, but that is just for a little while - usually it is blissfully hot during the day and blissfully cool in the evening, perfect for lounging around with a jug of Pimm's... so really, life here is rather heavenly.

Isabella Blow

It has been several months now since Isabella Blow died, but today I came across an article on her in July's American edition of Vogue there and I have been thinking about her all day. I am in Dublin today, you see, on a whirlwind visit to my parents, which also involved brief visits to the office at Foster Place, Reiss, Topshop, and of course, the mothership - Brown Thomas. Many things were tried on, a couple were bought. I admit that very little of it would have appealed to Isabella, but then she would probably have been a lot braver than I about suitable attire for the Djemma.

There will be a memorial service for Isabella Blow on the 18th of September in London.

http://www.isabellablow.com/

We are just back from a short break in Essaouira, where we were deliciously chilled to the bone, windswept and almost blown from our terrace into the sea and it was wonderful! We had originally intended to stay at the delightful and colourful Tea House, run by Alison MacDonald. Sadly it was booked out, but Alison suggested the Riad de la Mer in the gorgeous and medieval-feeling Kasbah of the city, so off we went!

The thing about spending more than a couple of weeks in Marrakech is that you very quickly start to value things that are not *too* Morroccan (calling to mind Bowles' short story "A Man Must Not Be Very Muslim"). Unlikely as it sounds, there comes a time when the constant oranges and reds and tadellakts and zellijs become a little wearing and that is just when a couple of nights in the white studio suite of Riad de la Mer becomes a blissful escape! If you like pared-down Anthropologie interiors and unbleached soft wool blankets and drinking your breakfast cafe au lait on the terrace with an enviable view over the sea and the old harbour of Mogador, then you will enjoy your stay there every bit as much as we did.

To add to our bliss, we also found two tagine-free restaurants (tagines being the most wearing aspect of Moroccan "cuisine") - La Cantina, a tiny Mexican cafe run by three English people serving marvellously tasty chilli and carrot cake, and San Silvestro, an Italian place with a sadly bleak atmosphere but wonderful food, including home made spinach and ricotta ravioli!

Essaouira and wonderful food (not a tagine in sight)

We have been in Essaouira for the last couple of days, and it is wonderful here - cool (sufficiently so for cardigans and heaters!) and windy with lots of great food. This morning we went riding in the dunes and galloped along the deserted beach, reins dropped, stirrups akimbo, clutching the saddle for dear life and having a generally marvellous time:

I will post properly tomorrow when I get my photographs off my camera and so forth and then I can tell you about the wondeful place we have been staying.

Sometimes almost anywhere else would be nice.

It is a constant shock to me that young men here not only feel that they can make vulgar and suggestive comments to passing women, but that when called on it, they feel justified. Today I received a volley of abuse (which I will not type out here) and the threat of a blow because I asked a teenager why he felt he had the right to speak to me in such a manner. Needless to say, though, he did not feel the need to defend his behaviour to my husband, when I offered him this opportunity.

But you know what is even odder? While I, and most women I know, object to being spoken to as if they are prostitutes, some (Western) women not only tolerate it, but lap it up. Apparently there is a certain sort of woman who will eat out the hand of a Moroccan man who verbally insults her in a sexual manner, and will even go so far as to sleep with him and sometimes marry him. The world is even stranger than I thought.

Where next? Paris would be nice...

Utterly carried away by my patchy progrees in French, followed by our host's offhand offer of a stay in his own apartment in Paris while he is away in Argentina this autumn, I am full of enthusiasm for moving to Paris next year after we get back from our South American odyssey. You may smile and say "Oh, Sarah..." but remember that it was an even more casual notion that got us to Marrakech, and surely anyone would agree that Paris is a more respectable place than here?

As for my doting parents, well, I do have a dim and distant recollection of my father saying he wanted to learn French, and how better than coming to France too, with La Mamma?

Lamps, landlords and lounging around

Remember the huge lamp from a couple of days ago? Well, spurred on by the fact that I will be visiting Dublin for a couple of days later this month and travelling with a real airline (i.e. one that has a proper baggage allowance, i.e. not Ryanair), we bought it yesterday evening! Bargaining was relaxed but determined as we had researched our prices that day in Place des Ferblantiers, and despite an opening price of an outrageous 1600DH (€143) we eventually walked away with it for 700DH (€62). Now, admittedly, a Moroccan or long-time resident here could probably have done a bit better, but we were very pleased and now all I have to do is get it back to Ireland! It is chest-height...

The last couple of days have had their challenges increased by a persistent power cut. Hot breathless nights and computerless days... then yesterday morning a phone call announced the imminent arrival of our host and landlord, the famous stylist, Hugo Curletto. Within hours we had a fountain, buckets of roses, a fridge full of food and beer and probably the cleanest house in Marrakech. We waited with trepidation. Then got bored and went out for ice cream (you heard about that yesterday - it turns out that coffee ice cream in the evening *will* keep you awake all night, by the way). Finally, long after we had gone to bed, we heard him arrive. This morning we met him and all our fears have vanished. He is handsome (very), friendly and best of all, he is ringing Maroc Telecom today to get Wifi installed in the house immediately, which we will also be able to access when we move in next door! O glorious man! This will of course reduce our need to spend our mornings sitting in Jardins de la Koutoubia, and indeed potentially obviate the need to set foot outside our front door from one day to the next.

The picture above, incidentally, is the view from where I am sitting right now.

Slow days...

The heat brings on such ennui and Brie cravings. It is quite extraordinary. The Brie part, I mean. And of course, what better to have with Brie than white wine? Thank goodness we can buy half bottles of quite respectable Moroccan white for a mere two euros. The half bottles are to evade the inevitable temptation to finish off a whole bottle, you see, but that aside, we are discovering that Moroccan wine is surprisingly good - I will certainly be bringing a couple of bottles to my parents to show off when I visit them in a couple of weeks.

But the ennui... oh dear... I have so much work today and this morning I had just wasted my laptop's battery playing a wretched dinosaur computer game (don't ask - I'm embarrassed to be typing this at all) when our district was struck by another power cut which has been going strong for six hours now, leaving me with no computer but admittedly ample reading, certainly (perhaps even a little of Saplings, by Noel Streatfield). However, the lack of a fan coupled with a windless heat of 39 degrees, has made more than a couple of hours of reading slightly unwelcome, unfortunately, so here I am in our trusty internet cafe; we had initally wandered out just to see if the rest of the world was equally afflicted, but no, just our area, so after I hit "post" I am off to wean myself away from Brie with ice-cream.

ayearofshoppinginmarrakech.com?

The heat is increasing steadily and as work has become more difficult as a result, we have been venturing out of doors more, which, of course, is resulting in more to tell you about here.

On Sunday I ventured out alone. I wanted to go to the internet café to check for replies about our proposed trip to Essaouira later in the month. The streets were relatively quiet and emboldened by the absence of vulgar comments from passing youths (I have developed a sneer before which Caligula himself would quail), I opened the unassuming door of Beldi and stepped inside.



Beldi is spoken of in almost hushed tones on the internet as being the chicest and most upmarket of Moroccan textile shops. This reputation is further enhanced from my perspective by the fact that their prices are fixed, so no dreaded haggling lurks on the horizon inside those hallowed walls. Beldi is run by refreshingly severe and reserved men, utterly unsullied by those infernal cringeing smiles which many men in the service industry here affect for reasons best known to themselves. I flicked through the rack of clothing but beautiful as it all undoubtedly is, I asked to be shown their bedspeads instead. Oh my. I was far too shy to ask to take any photographs, so you must imagine the glories I was shown. Vast lengths of cashmere, bound in five inch deep woven silk borders for 450 euros, the softest paisley weaves and most extraordinary of all, a bedspread which they alleged was king size, but which would certainly have covered our entire bedroom in Ireland, in the softest ivory wool blend, embroidered in sunshine yellow almost in its entirety. It took two women two months to make and is for sale at a stunningly reasonable 650 euros. By local standards, their prices are astronomical, but for anyone interested in buying absolutely top quality textiles the place is a gem.

But of course, you have heard me talk before about lamps, and I promised pictures, did I not? Well here you are:





Yesterday we went on a bit of lamp reconaissance and although we haven’t bought anything yet, I had sufficient presence of mind to take a couple of pictures. See the first one? See the great big silver lamp in the middle? Now look at the large dark lamp immediately to its right. That one. And probably the dark one on the far right, too. We also went to Place des Ferblantiers, the tinsmith’s square (also home to the fabulous Kosybar), and they had some more lamps for us to gaze at – and sinks too, it would seem.

Right beside Ferblantiers lies the Bahia palace, and we might have wandered in there for a little while afterwards….

Let me tell you about my boat

Well, I have been very lax in showing you photographs of where I am living, apart from a few shots of our very elegant abode. Morocco being a country of interior space, the gorgeousness of our riad and our riad-to-be is not at all representative of the street on which we walk every day. There are three types of street in the Medina. The first ones the traveller encounters are the upmarket tourist-oriented ones, all expensive craft shops selling pottery, leather, carpets and metalwork of varying price and quality. Then there are the Moroccan-oriented shopping streets, which are just that – lined with kiosk-like groceries, cafes, dressmakers and mechanics (all run by men). Finally there are the derbs, which is where most people live. They are little neighbourhood-lanes, all twisty and confusing, awash with children and cats. And us, for it is in a derb that we also live. We have quite elevated neighbours; Moroccan families, French expats and Jean Paul Gaultier.

Today we took a walk to the tanneries. It seemed like the longest walk in the world but was acutally an embarrasingly short 1.5km round trip. However, we did finally take some pictures, of a street around the corner from us, a fondouk filled with lamps and finally a couple of our derb (perhaps even one with me in it).

Quiet, but not bored

Our days have been rather quiet lately, hence the silence on here. It has been getting hotter (33 degrees today, going up to 38 by Tuesday) and we have been hiding in the cool downstairs salon and working with interludes of conversation with Moulaid, our housekeeper and surrogate mother.

When we walk around the souks I stare at everything with greedy but sideways eyes, for although I avoid fatal eyecontact with the shopkeepers or even looking too directly at their wares, I do have some shopping planning. We decided before we got here that we would rather return to Europe with five very good things than twenty-five mediocre things, but it is difficult to be steadfast in such decisions. Admittedly, we have dropped the carpet from our shopping list after we realised that Moroccan carpets are not quite to our taste - if you go to http://www.rugcompany.co.uk/ and go to Rug Designs and Woven Classics you will see the sort of thing on which my heart is set for our house in England (our next home after Marrakech). However, I have fallen in love with the embroidery which we have seen in some of the shops here, in particular Darkoum in Gueliz and must now lie awake at night wondering how to work monochrome geometric patterns into my interiors taste (think Longbourne in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice). Whether or not I can work through my embroidery crisis, I will most certainly be bringing home at least five chocolate-brown tooled leather pouffes, quite plain - no embroidery or patchwork, just dark brown with a geometric pattern on the top.

Finally, I want some lamps. Big ones. Big fancy, ornate ones with curves and points and general excessiveness. I will do my best to photograph the sort of thing I am after later on today or tomorrow and post some pictures. In the unlikely event that you do not know the sort of thing I mean then do a google images search and find the wildest and most extravagant.

In the meantime, I am off home again to rewatch PandP 2005 and try to imagine that embroidery in such a setting. All advice and justifications gratefully received.

As an aside, I have all sorts of regular readers whose identities are quite unknown to me! Naturally I have not the slightest objection to strangers reading about my adventures, but do feel free to leave a comment just to say hello.

We have been the reverse of most Europeans in Marrakech it seems. Content to hide in the Medina, we cross into the Ville Nouvelle only with the greatest trepidation and anxiety. Unfortunately it is frequently necessary as our supermarket is there and twice we have endured the greed of taxi drivers (Us: 50DH? For a three minute drive? 10DH! *he sneers and walks off to find some less well-informed tourists to steal from instead*) but today, oh today, all was different. We got a bus. This changes everything – fixed, low prices, no asking to go to one place and being brought to a completely different one because our poor accents were misunderstood – it was wonderful. Admittedly I committed the apparent faux pas of ringing the bell as the bus came to our stop – old ladies jumped, men stared, girls giggled – but that aside, we arrived at the exact place we wished to visit. This place was Rue de la Liberte.

Rue de la Liberte has been rather optimistically described as the Bond Street of Marrakech. While that might be a slight exagerration, it was indeed a successful visit. My main destination was Scenes du Lin, a textiles shop specialising in, mirabile dictu, linen. The shop is divine. It is slightly more for the person furnishing their elegant guesthouse than the casual shopper – their towels for instance (they do other household textiles besides linen, admittedly) are gorgeous, but as John pointed out, more for the bathroom that wants to be a hotel bathroom than anything else – gorgeously embroidered and edged, but yes, they try a little too hard for domestic use (and I am not a girl known for her economy when it comes to domestic use – I came to Marrakech armed with my own Frette sheets). Other than little quibbles like that, I will definitely return when we move into our house and we decide to buy table linen and the suchlike. Downstairs, though, I made the best discovery – a long rack of gorgeous linen dresses by a company called Bleu Majorelle. They are in the djellaba style, sleeveless, with little knobbly fabric buttons on the front and at the side slits and I confess that I was lured into buying two – one long white one and a deep red mid-thigh one. Alas, they had no Sarah-sized trousers in stock, but I’m sure I can pick some up elsewhere, and probably for less than they wanted anyway.

Our next stop was L’Orientaliste. Gorgeous shop, but nothing particularly original or impressive, except perhaps their sweet little bottles of perfume. Most of their stock, while very lovely indeed, is easily gettable elsewhere and for less, mostly in the Medina, although I grant you that if you are not in a mood or position to spend a few days or weeks drifting through the souks, bargaining as if your life depended on it, then L’Orientaliste is definitely a safe bet. Not all of their stock is Moroccan – I think they purport to be Indian in theme, but perhaps I am wrong, for I didn’t see anything especially Indian.

After that, we went to Darkoum. Well. Gosh. He has some absolutely stunning furniture there – really really stunning. A neo-colonialist’s dream really. He imports from all over the world, and had such treasures as a 19th century Indian baldaquin for 20,000 euros as well as some carved Moroccan doors of dubious antiquity but conceivable prices – if nothing else, they will provide a starting point for bargaining in the Medina antique markets. There is also a good range of L’Occitane products. But. Oh isn’t there always a but? Upstairs, in the “gallery” section, he had a pair of elephant’s tusks for sale. Oh dear. This is bad, surely? There was nothing to suggest that they were antique, I think, and even if there was, that wouldn’t really make it any better, would it? It’s hard to be consistent with such things – I wear leather, I think antique fur accessories are gorgeous (sometimes!), but never modern fur, and I object absolutely to ivory. That’s fair enough, isn’t it? But then I must admit that such trinkets as, say, an antique ivory comb, have an appeal, and when my mother was a little girl in the early 1940’s she was given an ivory-handled toothbrush and brush that had belonged to another little girl who had died of leukemia, and I’m certainly not going to get on my high horse about that. But (apparently modern) tusks today? They were real, by they way – the label stated that they were. We were interested in a carved door, but John felt that he might not be comfortable buying anything at all from someone who dealt in ivory. I don’t know what I think. What do you think?

From what I can gather their sale is definitely illegal: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12066-cites-deal-wins-reprieve-for-elephants.html

After that we had lunch in an ultra-modern café called Kechbar. It was fabulous. You know why? The bread basket. Bread is ubiquitous at meals here in Morocco, but it is always a particularly boring kind of round flattish white roll which tastes of nothing, but not in Kechbar! They had gorgeous light and crusty baguette to eat with their tasty goat’s cheese salad and Indian chai. What bliss!

Lastly, we made it to Acima, the supermarket and bought our own weight in spaghetti, coconut milk and white roses. Right now, I am wearing my new white linen dress, sitting in our courtyard under an orange tree with the roses on the table in a vase beside me. Life seems very pleasant just now.

(This was written yesterday and posted today)

Apologies and food

I am terribly sorry for my long silence - I have a long entry written about shopping in Gueliz, but our usual free wifi failed us today and it is temporarily stuck on my mac. Tomorrow, if the wifi is still down, I will put the entry on a memory stick and bring it here to the internet cafe to post - I will not fail you!

In the mean time, we have discovered a wonderful Thai restaurant right beside our house AND that most of the ingredients they used are freely available in our supermarket in Gueliz, if not the markets in the Medina so tonight instead of our usual Italian creations, we will be having a pink grapefruit and fried peanut/onion/chilli salad followed by a vegetarian green curry - what heaven!