Musée Yves Saint Laurent and Jardin Majorelle, Marrakech, Morocco

We had a guide/driver for a day in Marrakech and he brought us to Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Marrakech (mYSLm).

Concurrent with the opening of Musée Yves Saint Laurent, Paris (Av. Marceau), the Foundation Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent created this museum in 2017 with the Foundation Jardin Majorelle.

A retrospective movie Yves Saint Laurent was made in 2014. Here is the soundtrack, it has a few opera favorites and nice quiet piano pieces.

The main hall of the museum (photos not allowed) shows a retrospective featuring 50 pieces representative of the essential work of YSL from 1962 to 2002 including the pea coat (1962), the Mondrian dress (1965), “le smoking” tuxedo suit (1966) and the safari jacket (1967).

He designed clothes for women that borrowed from a masculine wardrobe, “avoiding the fashion of the moment and give them more self-confidence”.  Catherine Deneuve and Isabelle Adjani wore his designs in various movies.

The museum also has a space for temporary exhibition, an auditorium where we saw a short documentary film, a cafe and a bookshop.

YSL was trained at the House of Dior and in 1957, he found himself, at age 21, the head designer after Christian Dior died of a heart attack in his fifties.

In 1961, he opened YSL couture house with Pierre Bergé in Paris.

Les Quatre Saison (The Four Seasons) posters by YSL in 1983.

In 1970, YSL designed the first in a series of greeting cards with the word “Love” in poster form that he would send his friends, collaborators, and clients annually until 2007.

The YSL museum is adjacent to the Jardin Majorelle which was saved from demolition by Pierre Bergé and YSL in 1980. The garden (English link here), also opened to the public, was designed by the French artist, Jacques Majorelle (1886-1962) in 1923.  Jacques Majorelle commissioned the architect, Paul Sinoir, to design a Cubist villa for the property in 1931.  I included a copyright-free photo below because it was impossible to take a picture due to overcrowding.

YSL was born in 1936 in Oran, Algeria and seemed to have a great affinity for north Africa.  He and Bergé collected over 600 traditional North African objects and a Berber Museum (Le Musée Berbère, linked here) was created in 2011, which houses their collection.

Majorelle was a celebrated Orientalist painter, and a special shade of cobalt blue was used extensively in the garden and its buildings which is named after him, bleu Majorelle –Majorelle Blue. Everywhere in the garden, the blue is contrasted with almost-neon lemony yellow and deep vermilion-orange.

The garden offers a series of walkways at different levels among the boldly-colored buildings. There is a large collection of cactus, all perfectly laid out and beautifully managed.

The garden was extremely popular and it was packed with tourists. There was even an Asian couple taking bridal pictures. I cannot imagine the crowds during peak tourist season.

YSL and Bergé were a couple but they split amicably in 1976 and remained lifelong friends and business partners.

Just before YSL died in 2008 of brain cancer, Bergé married YSL. His body was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the Jardin Majorelle. Bergé died in 2017.

Random moment #2 – There is an end

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

There is an end – soulful

Four songs, old & new, enjoy + like.

 

 

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #thegreenhornes #direstraits #elviscostello #donaldfagen

Place Jemaa-el-Fna, Marrakech, Morocco – part 2

It was our first day in Marrakech. Continuing with our walk in the Place Jemaa-el-Fna after dark. Catch Part 1 here if you missed it. Feel free to browse earlier posts about other places and more photos. Use the tags or the archives feature at the bottom of the page.

To accompany this post, there is another track of Gnaoua found on Spotify.

The square is not really a square but a huge polygon where multiple streets and alleys converge. More people came to the square than in the afternoon.

There were numerous fruit juices carts (orange is abundant in Morocco); and dried fruit and nuts stalls – dates, many different kinds (medjool, sukkari, etc), walnuts, dried apricots and figs.

Along one side of the square is an entrance to the souk, a traditional market catering to the common daily needs of the locals, and tourists. We went in there later with a guide.  If you are visiting for the first time, direction challenged, nervous and/or inexperienced traveler, please, please get a local guide before venturing into a souk.  It’s a crazy maze in there.

A few stalls sell handcrafted lamps – metal with stained glass seemed popular.

Argan oil products are ubiquitous – for consumption (by locals mostly) and cosmetic uses – it became very popular in the 2010s around the world – and we encountered many shops and co-operatives selling it for all kinds of aliments and beauty treatments. It is the quintessential modern day snake oil.  The oil is not without its merits but it has been over-marketed.

Who cares?  We’re tourists!  It’s our job to buy needless, useless things when vacationing.  So we happily bought some (and lotsa other stuff that we now just look at and think, hmm…what do we do with this one?  Why did we get it? What’s it for?).

These stools were placed there by henna artists with photos of their body art designs – mostly hands.

Henna is a temporary plant-based dye applied to the body as one goes through major life events, such as a wedding. Men also wear it.

It was after our dinner, we walked and looked around for a short while, some of us were jet lagged (and some of us didn’t sleep well the night before so was sleep walking at this point) so we decided we can all go for some dessert and/or coffee/tea.  We see this brightly lit building and thought hey, look! Looks like a nice cafe, let’s go there.

The cafe was on the 2nd floor.  We walked in and there it was: a metal detector. It’s a cafe not a jewelry store. Also, the metal detector was situated so that one can sorta go around it if you didn’t want to go through it. There was no guard or personnel to tell customers that everyone needs to go through the metal detector.  So WTH?  Chris did a quick research after we got home and found out that while Morocco is one of the safest, moderate Islamic countries, a suspected bomb blast killed 17 people in 2011 in Café Argana, the brightly lit building in the back of the picture.  The same brightly lit building that housed the cafe that we went to to have some dessert.  But that was 9 years ago: the metal detector was not even on when we went in that evening.

There was never any sense of danger – not even a checkpoint – while we were in the country. I(Chris) went to Jordan, another very safe country in the middle east, and Morocco appeared even more relaxed. In comparison, the metro stations in the center of Beijing and Moscow deployed metal detector for passengers and x-ray machines for bags.

Yeah, that was Chris.  This is me (Sue):  OMG, danger, danger!  I have never seen so many motorcycles in one place in my life.  China had bicycles; Marrakesh has motorcycles.  They were everywhere; big streets, small streets, narrow alleys, if it’s wide enough to fit a motorcycle, it will be there.  And the fumes from them motors !!!  Just thinking about it is making my eyes water and lungs quiver in fear.

Anyway, after our dessert, we were walking back towards our riad and came across this really pretty store (left, photo below).  First, the ground right in front of the store was decorated with flower petals (very colorful and pretty) and there was incense smouldering so the area smelled really nice.  So you’re led with sight and smell to this store that sold spices, soaps (the famous savon noir) and fragrance stuff.   In the picture below, you see the colorful cones?  They are spices.  In powder form.  How is that shape maintained?  We stared at that for a while (and tried not to breathe too heavily in case we messed up that cone shape).

It’s our first night in a new city none of us have ever been to, so we were all very excited and roaring to spend tourist money.  We spent a lot of time here.  We learned during our stay in Morocco that when you enter a shop, you are usually greeted by the shopkeepers with mint tea.  So we had our tea (different kinds, including eucalyptus – feeling tired? smell the eucalyptus crystals, it’ll clear your nose and open your eyes) and bought stuff.

After our shopping spree, we headed down rue des Banques (entrance flanked by Le Marrakchi and Cafe de France) to return to our riad.

A truly unique place.

If you like night markets, check out our posts on Hong Kong’s Chinese new year flower market (here and here) and the night market just outside Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia (here and here).

#morocco #marrakesh #maroc #maghreb #argan

Random moment #1 – Stronger

Random moment is our playlist series started during the 2020 pandemic.

Stronger (what doesn’t kill you) – earworm

Four songs, old & new, enjoy + like.

 

 

#spotify #playlist #nowplaying #kellyclarkson #selenagomez #ladygaga #kylieminogue

Place Jemaa-el-Fna, Marrakesh, Morocco – part 1

Hello world.

This blog has been on hiatus for a little more than a year.  Since so many of us are marooned at home and cannot (should not) travel in the foreseeable future, it could be a relief to do some virtual sightseeing.  We will start with sharing our last trip taken in the beginning of 2020, just before the pandemic hit Europe.

The destination was the kingdom of Morocco.  We were a party of six. IT, our frequent travel companion, joined us for the full two weeks. DL, IL and SG traveled with us in the first week of the trip.  None of us have been to Morocco before, and in fact, it was the first time for us (Chris and Sue) to set foot on the continent of Africa.

We chose Morocco because it is relatively easy to get to from Europe, and the weather is agreeable during a Northern hemisphere winter season. Our point of entry was Marrakesh, Menara airport. It receives direct flights from Geneva.  The other popular option, more for business travelers, is Casablanca.

We were warned about long lines at the immigration checkpoint and even paid extra (per passenger) to use the speedy VIP lane. Well, it was nice to be greeted by a smiling English speaker at the gate but there was hardly anyone in the spacious modern terminal.  It felt like a scam. Perhaps it is different during the peak travel season.

Our drivers were already waiting to take us to our riad. Emerging from the modern terminal building, we saw another breezy white building, apparently built earlier, that handles departure (see above).

After having settled into our riad in the medina, we wandered into the maze of alleyways and ended up 15-20 minutes later in Place Jemaa-el-Fna, the main square of the city.

The square was packed with people, locals and tourists, stalls, tarp on the ground, and carts selling all kinds of goods and edibles. Surprisingly, there were no donkeys or mules, bicycles and motor bikes. So it made strolling in the square a less stressful activity.

The square has been a part of the UNESCO World Heritage site since 1985. We bought this postcard showing the square circa 1916.

We grabbed an early dinner at Le Marrakachi which had a terrace offering a panoramic view over the square.

Le Marrakachi – a touristy restaurant, but a comfortable place to relax and catch up with DL, IL and SG.  We last saw them in July 2019.

The square became more alive as the sun disappeared behind the minaret of the Koutoubia mosque (Bookseller’s mosque), the largest in Marrakesh, built around 1158.  We did not go to see this landmark as non-worshipers are not allowed.

We took a stroll after dinner around the huge square. There were all sorts of entertainment from parading peacocks, snake charmers (daytime), storytelling, to Gnaoua music (photo below).

The description of Gnaoua music on WIkipedia: deeply hypnotic trance music, marked by low-toned, rhythmic melodies played on a skin-covered lute called sintir or guembri, call-and-response singing, hand clapping and cymbals called krakeb. Gnawa ceremonies use music and dance to evoke ancestral saints who can drive out evil, cure psychological ills, or remedy scorpion stings. Glad to find it on Spotify.

Food is a major attraction in the square. Grilled meats galore. As it was early in the evening, most stalls were just setting up the tables. To some people, the setup in this photo below seems unhygienic. Having seen the place first hand, I think it is not a problem. Since we had an early dinner, we were not tempted.

Another stall was selling sheep’s head and tangia (a different kind of stew from tagine, see center of photo below). Locals did not care but it might be hard for tourists to eat while staring at the rows of heads.

These deep-dried triangles (briwate) of meats, vegetables and seafoods are our favorites – often offered as appetizers in tourist restaurants. They are essentially big samosas.

There were no tall buildings in sight which made the square felt very open and large. We relied on a few brightly lit buildings to orient ourselves in the square.

By the way, if you are wondering, the common English spelling of this place is “Marrakesh”, although “Marrakech” (the French spelling) is also widely used. The name is spelt Mṛṛakc in the Berber Latin alphabet, Marraquexe in Portuguese, Marraquech in Spanish, and “Mer-raksh” in Moroccan Arabic.

To be continued.

#morocco #marrakesh #gnaoua #maroc #maghreb