Marrakech day 3

Today was a super wonderful day, my favourite day of the holiday so far. We awoke to very heavy rain but I checked the weather and it said it was going to clear up by lunchtime so we weren't too worried. We did have to eat our delicious breakfast inside though.

We headed out and hopped in a taxi to the new town, he used his meter which is unusual here and the 15 minute journey was only about £1 - conversely we got quoted £7 for the way back! The weird thing about our journey was that he picked up another hire for the front seat who came about half the way! At first we thought he was his friend but he paid when he left. It was weird entering the new town as it is so different from the Medina, crowded chaos gave way to European style boulevards and market stalls to chains like Zara and McDonald's.

We arrived at Amal Women's Training Centre for our cookery class and were delighted at how lovely it was. It is an amazing place and if any of you are ever in Marrakech I urge you to go. If you don't want to cook they also have a very well regarded restaurant. We spent a lot of time with Oumaima, the communication officer, and she told us about the amazing work they do for disadvantaged women, helping them gain skills so they can enter the workplace. Her passion for her job was infectious and it was genuinely wonderful to hear all about it.

There were 6 other pairs doing the class with us and they were all nice but a special shout out has to be made for Sam and Grace from Cleveland who were just lovely. The cooking part of the morning was great fun, we learnt about morrocan cooking and what spices to use in different meals. We were making one dish between each pair so we had to make a vegetable tagine but when Oumaima heard I wasn't vegetarian she put extra lamb in Grace and Sam's so I could have some. We cooked our tagines outside and had to sit and fan the flames, it was great fun.

When our tagines were ready we all sat round a big table and ate together,  it was probably my best meal of the holiday. The whole class (about 3 hours) including all the food and bread and tea was only about £15 - amazing value. I bought an apron as a souvenir and that was only £7. I basically just wanted to empty out my purse and give them all my money cos the place was so wonderful and they obviously care so much about their cause.

Afterwards we strolled down to the Majorelle Gardens with Grace and Sam and we ran into another couple (Cindy and Davis) from the class on the way too which was nice. The gardens, famously resurrected by Yves Saint Laurent in the 80s, were beautiful and a world away from the chaos of the city. We strolled round taking snaps for a while, being generally delighted, then decided to visit the Berber Museum which was within the gardens. Sam and Grace decided to give it a miss so we parted ways but we might meet them tomorrow. The Berber museum was interesting and it was cool to see all the artifacts but I wouldn't class it as a 'must-do'.

What happened next was classic me, I bent down to get the perfect photo and managed to rip my chinos at the crotch. It wasn't too noticeable so we still stopped at Kaowa for a lovely iced melon juice before heading back to get changed. The taxi drivers outside the gardens were taking the piss with prices so we headed down to the main road to hail one. When we got there we ended up getting seduced into a horse and carriage ride round town then eventually back to the riad.  It was great but being in a wee, open top carriage on the wild streets of Marrakesh was a bit wild. The tour was cool though and we even saw some camels!

Back at the riad we chilled out for a couple of hours, reading on the roof with some delicious mint tea. We had dinner reservation at 7pm at Nomad so we headed out at about 6 and wandered slowly over taking in the sights and sounds. We got a lovely seat on the terrace with views for miles which got more beautiful as the sun started to sink. The meal was excellent, I can't recommend it enough even though it was the priciest meal we've had. We shared a lentil salad to start with beetroot and goats cheese then I had chicken skewers with courgette cous cous and Gem had fish. For pudding we shared what was basically a sticky toffee pudding with salted caramel sauce, it quickly disappeared!

On the way back through the souks after dinner we ran into Cindy and Davis from this morning which was very unexpected in such a busy place! We then went through the crazy square and headed back to the riad.  Gem is sleeping cos she is an early to bed kinda guy and I am wondering how we'll spend our final day tomorrow.