Flinn;

We woke up early today and went straight out after breakfast, to visit the Menara Gardens before it got too hot. It was cooler today, but still boiling. We walked across Djemma El Fna and hooray - made our first stop the ice-cream shop and patisserie. Mama said if I wasn't careful, I'd turn into an ice-cream! I had orange flavour today and Imogen had chocolate, then we both ate a pain au chocolat. Mmmmm, yum! Imogen ordered the ice-creams and other goodies all by herself so she could prcatice her french; "deux pain aux chocolate s'il vous plait". Mama said she was very impressed.

After munching our goodies we wandered down to the grand taxi stand and mama haggled a price to get to the Menara Gardens. She's pretty good at haggling and walks off if they try and rip us off.

When we arrived at the gardens, we had to walk miles and miles down the driveway to the pool that is suposed to be the highlight of the gardens. We were all disappointed by the pool and gardens. It is described in the guidebook as nice. Mama said it looked like "one long dirty irrigation ditch, interspersed with a couple of trees and a few thousand piles of stinking, steaming camel s***!". Mama said the gardens hardly lived up to the glowing reccomendatin the guide book offered. Jo and Sarah thought it was rubbish too.

The pool was dirty and scummy. I wanted to go swimming. Mama said "don't even think about it young man" and gave me the 'look'! I saw camels at the gardens too. Two of them were giving very expensive rides to people.

Our favourite part of the gardens was being able to see all the way to the Koutoubia Mosque, but the best part was leaving them! We got a taxi back to the square and decided to find a hotel with a swimming pool. We went o the Grand Hotel Tazi just off the square. I don't know why they called it the grand hotel. It wasn't very grand, but I did love the pool, even though mama said it was the most expensive swim ever (£10 or 150 dirhams). Mama said next time we fancied a swim, we should just go home and have along, cold shower!! Imogen wouldn't go in the pool after she saw a cockroach! Did you see it's big googly eyes mama?

When we left the hotel, we wandered around the souks and got another ice-cream and mama had an orange juice, then we went and relaxed on the hotel rooftop for a while before going out for tea.

We went to a restaurant overlooking Djemma El Fna for supper. It had a terrace high up on the roof that gave us a good view over the square. Mama had harira soup and salad again. Imogen and I had chicken and olives with rice. Afterwards, we spent ages looking at all the acts going on in the square. We saw acrobats and fortune tellers and women doing henna. We saw the magical potion men and the water sellers. IU spotted monkey man and snake boy and we saw a weight lifter man who collared mama to try and lift the weights he was humping around. He thought she couldn't do it, but she could, and did - very easily. Everyone clapped and cheered and mama pretended and jokingly passed her hat around for contributions for providing a side show!! We passed the weight lifter man a few times that night and verytime he looked at mama and made a muscle arm and grinned at her!

I saw an eagle sitting on an old mans shoulder and a dwarf fell in love with Imogen and kept blowing her kisses - she was traumatised by that!! I think mama was too, because she doesn't like dwarfs. She said they give her the heebie jeebies! I don't know what heebie jeebies are but I don't think I want them. Everytime dwarf man blew kisses to Imogen, she hid behind mama and said "mother - he's at it again. That bloody dwarf is blowing me kisses. Errghh!" Mama laughed and said "it's good to see I passed on the dwarf aversion gene to you sweetheart!!"

Imogen haggled for some henna and then we went to the tea stand for a glass of hunja and to rest and people watch. Thats mamas favourite thing to do - people watching. The man gave us some cake stuff with the tea tonight, but none of us were keen on it.

People kept touching my cheeks and scruffing my hair again and I didn't like it. I kept yelling "Ne touche pas", but they laughed at me and thought I was sweet. All the street boys selling things kept coming up to me and laughing and saying "no, no, no" or "no thankyou" because thats what I always say to them when they try and sell me wooden snakes and things.

Mama got asked if she was german, dutch and swedish again today and Imogen kept getting asked if she was married. "Do I look old enough to be married?" she would ask, before saying "No, I'm not married, don't want to be at my age and NO my mam doesn't want any camels for me either, so there!" She said to mama "What do they think you are going to do with a shed full of camels mam?" Mama laughed and said "Oh, I don't know. I'm sure I could tink of something though, if they offer me a good enough deal. Maybe I could ride off into the sunset on them, trade them in for a 4x4, ship them back to England and flog them to a zoo, turn them into a camel suitcase. What do you think?!"

Imogen says;

I practiced my french today and was really proud of myself. I did all our food and drinks orders and asked directions to places witha bit of help from mum. Mum said I did really, really well.

I had a stalker today - a 2 foot 5, short legged, dumpy little dwarf man! I was SO traumatised by it all. He kept blowing me kisses! Everytime I turned around he was there - popping out of places like a jack- in- the -box. It was freaky with a CAPITAL F! I actually hid behind mums skirts. Poor mum, what with freako dwarf guy plaguing me and popping up out of the woodwork and Flinn yelling 'Ne touche pas' every two seconds and whining about seeing the snakes every third second, she had quite the unrelaxing day again!

Then I saw a cockroach at the pool too - disgusting, scuttling things. More trauma! and mum was right, the Menara gardens were a definate miss!

It was funny in the square after mam lifted the weights. The man kept making muscle signs and grinning at her every time he saw her after that, he wasn't amused at her jokingly passing around her hat for donations though!

Mum says;

As usual, an interesting day was had by all, especially with the added complication of the dwarf-in-love situation!