Im back from Morocco and it was beautiful!

Ah Paradise! But only at night when the temperature goes down, bit more like hell during the day

Im back! And I had a great time.  There is only one way to describe Marrakech in early September: hot.  The type of searing continuous boiling heat that makes me want to crawl under a damp dark rock and stay there.  Its wrong but I enjoyed coming home and putting on a sweater.  Although I enjoy seeing the world I am not a natural born traveller, I dislike flying intensely and enjoy home comforts like a soft bed that a bunch of strangers haven’t been in and proper English brews too much.  I believe that essential holiday packing is a china teapot and bags not sun cream. Im not a great one for heat, so I decided to visit a desert in the middle of summer, go figure.  If this was a beauty or fashion blog I would insert a picture here of me in my bikini lounging elegantly by the pool, but such a photo does not exist.  I just look hot, sweaty and bothered and even took to wearing a vest upon my head turban style to survive the endless sun.

As thrilling as my holiday was, I have not brought it up here to rub in how I spent a week drinking cocktails by a pool.  I mention it to just confirm that a. I haven’t fallen out of love with my garden although I did abandon it for a week, and b. because despite being an incredibly dry, dusty desert, Marrakech is also a surprisingly green place and I have lots of photos of plants and wildlife to share over the coming weeks.  I braved hailing a cab in order to visit the Jardin Majorelle; a garden once owned by Yves Saint Laurent so will definitely share that with you.  Im not going to lie, the plant life tends to fall into one of two categories, palm or cactus, but there are some other interesting specimens in there as well.

Palm trees in the Jardin Majorelle 

 The absolute highlight of my holiday, above seeing the medina and haggling, swimming in the pool, the daily consumption of my own body weight in food and just generally not being at work, was small, green and moist.  The hotel we stayed at actually had really excellent gardens with ponds that weren’t overly interesting during the day but at night were chock-a-block with toads; beautiful, big green toads.  The night air was thick with the sound of them ribbiting away to each other, and boy did they have a lot of chat!  The evening entertainment in the hotel was unfortunately not that great, but I spent several nights engaged in ‘toad hunt‘ trying to capture the little beauties on camera so that passed the time.

With over 400 pictures to sort through my Moroccan posts will be interspersed with my normal posts over the next few weeks, but here is a toad and a few pictures in the mean time. 

What a beauty with his puffed out vocal sack, and spot the terrapin sneaking up behind!