Lantern Alley

We thought we'd got the souks pretty much covered. We could get to the spice square, to the olive corner, the sheep head nook, the chick pea man and all the bits around and about without losing our bearings for more than 10 minutes or so.

I'm using the word we very loosely.

Until I had a sudden epiphany and felt the soul of the souk blossom in my breast: 'THIS WAY!' I cried... and the darling fools followed.

We got so incredibly, marvellously, wonderfully lost I cannot begin to describe. And we found such treasures... and just as we were starting to worry we'd never ever find our way out again, out popped my new best friend from 2 days before, Ayoub. "You kept your promise!" he cried. He was my last promise, and I was so worried I'd have to let him down. We didn't: we sat and drank mint tea together, chatted, sniffed all the goodies in the herboriste (and were robustly tested and passed with flying colours) and then he directed us to the quickest way back to our riad.

Nadia was waiting and together we learned to cook authentic tagines under her careful and incredibly patient instruction - we are now REAL Berber women.

Three unaccompanied western women in the heart of Marrakech. We were made to feel welcome, asked about our homelands, asked if we were happy. We were safe - we were looked after by every person we came into contact with. We laughed, we hugged, we respected others and were respected in return, we made friends, we made & kept promises, bartered with aplomb and came away with priceless memories.

And I lost my heart to Marrakech.