Shop Till U Drop: Jemaa el Fna, Marrakech and surrounding area

Jemaa el Fna was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO few years back. Taufik had blogged about this place before. Anyway, the visit to this place is a must. This unique place exists as a cultural and economic backbone for Marrakech City for the past few centuries. Musicians, snake charmers, fortune-tellers etc are all there to entertain you. Just be generous with Dh as a token of your appreciation. In the evening, this place will be swarmed by food stalls.




The famous bazaar or souks are just at the back of Jemaa. It was really fun for us to shop at these souks. It will be more fun if you know the language and can easily haggle with the sellers. The physicial sourrounding of the souks is like a large maze and can be quite confusing. You can easily get lost if you are not familiar with the surrounding. So it is better to have someone with you that familiar with the language and the surrounding. We had Rahmat to guide us doing our shopping here.

You can find so many uniques and sometimes unthinkable goods around the souk. The souk sellers expect you to haggle that's why they mark up the price higher than the original price of the goods. As for me, I always start with 50% off from the original offered price. I recalled there's one time we already walked out from the shop because we did not agree with the price he offered for the tea tray. Few minutes later, the shopkeeper called us back and said he accepted our offered price. Well, we brought few stuffs back to London. We bought a small carpet with Moroccan design (not sure if it is a berber carpet or what - read here to know more about buying carpet in Morocco) but definitely we're satisfied with our choice. We also purchased Moroccan traditional clothing - two djellabas for Bi and one kaftan for me. I also bought one set of Morroccan tea glasses, a teapot and tea tray (check it here to see how they look like). We also bought tajine dish pot, Morroccan lantern, a mosque mirror, few cheap bracelets (for me and my sisters), few 'kopiah' (for Bi, my father, my brother and my nephew and his dad), three small-cheap paintings in addition to the usual one (i.e., postcards and keychains). While doing your shopping in the souk, ask the permission from the owner to take photos around the shop.

Have fun visiting Marrakech!