away to morocco, part one: out & about in marrakech.

i have spent the week since our return home turning thoughts of these travels over in my head, and i hardly know how to begin to talk about this place or what it was to lay our eyes -- our feet -- upon it. i suppose the best i can do is just...begin.

marrakech was utterly different, entirely other, than anyplace either of us had witnessed. every element challenged all we had known -- the flavors, the expressions of faith, the interactions with locals, the arabic language like velvet rolling off tongues, the way the sun feels so close, like you could reach up and touch it. we were enchanted from the first.

we explored on foot, our eyes open in awe. we found such exquisite beauty in masterwork carvings and mosaics, in each call to prayer, in the pink walled city, in the dry african air perfumed with spices and mint. our spirits flickered at the vibrance of the souks, each a tangle of berber carpets and snake charmers and hawkers and fresh pressed juices. we ached at the way the sun lit afire jemaa el-fnaa at dusk.

we made way in and out of alleys and gardens, filling our bellies with lamb tagine and mint tea and pastilla with milk, peeling back the layers of this mysterious place. to see the worlds of deep and ancient beauty beneath. to make sense of the place, and our place in it.

how this place moved us. how this place stirred our wandering souls.

(and to us, marrakech will always be where i first felt our babe's kicks, like tiny shooting stars, giving papa quite the thirtieth birthday present, giving us more joy than we could've dreamt up.)