Category: travels

other ways of being

so my daughter forgets to pack her ipad and leaves it at the hotel in marrakesh. around morocco, the wonderful people we worked with, find the ipad and fedex it to us. i ask how much it will be. it’s almost a $100 but they refuse any payment and tell me it’s a gift from them to us. a gift? just not used to this kind of generosity. i think that’s one of the reasons i loved morocco so much – its rich and ancient history, yes, its arts and culture and abundance of natural, architectural and ornamental beauty, of course, but also its people, an alternative paradigm and way of life, of warmth, hospitality and human connectedness. it’s truly refreshing to get out of the coldness of western capitalism and experience something different for a while. oh, i know morocco’s not perfect. but it’s just these short glimpses of how there are other ways of being.

majorelle garden

the #majorelle #garden in #marrakesh #morocco was created in the 1920s by the #french #painter #jacques #majorelle
it was opened to the public in 1947
it has “marble #pools, raised pathways, banana #trees, groves of #bamboo, coconut #palms and #bougainvilleas. perhaps unsuprisingly as the garden was designed by a painter, it is composed and colored like a #painting. many of the built features are painted in majorelle #blue – a clear, intense, #ultramarine blue – which works very well with the soil, climate and plants

water is an important feature of the garden – there are channels, lily-filled

#ponds and #fountains. majorelle was an avid #plant collector

after years of neglect, the garden was taken over and #restored by the #fashion designer #yves #saint #laurent and his partner pierre berge”
more pictures here.