Old tiled buildings

The past two days have been days of old buildings. Yesterday we went to a palace that took 20 years to build by the Saadians, and then 12 years to strip by the next ruling group. Now the tops of the walls are filled with nesting storks. The word for stork in arabic (or at least moroccan arabic) is el clack (not spelled like that) because of the noise that they make. Their nests are huge. The palace is also home to a mimbar of the oldest most famous mosque in the city. The mimbar is made of wood with elaborate carving, and was done in the 1100s in andalusia, and then shipped in parts. It's been restored and was taken out of the mosque in the 1960s.

We also went to the jewish quarter, saw the old cemetary and a fake cynagogue and were scammed. It reminded me of my worst experiences in egypt. Yucky

Today we visited the Marrakesh museam, the Ben Youssef medresa, and this domed building that was an abolution fountan and was surrounded by an elaborite hydralic system, although since the description was in french, and kind of technical, mom wasn't quite sure how the system worked. The museam is in an old restored house of someone who must have been very wealthy. It's build around a spectacular tiled courtyard, which has been covered for preservation purposes. The museam does have exhibits, but what's most interesting is the building. I can't really describe it, you need photos.

A medresa is a theological school. Contrary to reports in the american news, when Barak Obama visited a medresa, he was visiting a school, not a terrorist place. This one also has an amazing tiled courtyard, topped by carved plaster and then carved wood. Around the courtyard are rooms for the students. All the rooms are off of mini, two story, court yards. They're about the size of a small dorm room. It was really neat to be able to walk into all the rooms, and get an idea of what the school could have been like.

On our way to the famous buildings we passed a guy who was doing the carving in plaster, He had a square of it, and he was chipping out the design with what looked like a screw driver. He said it took him 5 hours for a square that must have been 6 inches on a side. I can't even imagine how much work went into the tiled mosaics, and carved plaster and wood in these buildlings. And it's not just in the fancy buildings. Many doors we've past while exploring have also been carved.

Tomorrow we rent a car (hopefully with air conditioning) and head off east to the village where lawrence of arabia was filmed