A friend and I recently took it into our heads to lace up our hiking boots, pack a picnic lunch, and employ Said as our guide.
Starting point: L’Amandier Villas, Ouirgane.
Destination: Kasbah Tamadot (Richard Branson’s Moroccan Retreat), Asni.
Estimated hike time: 4.5 hours.
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but, can I just say one more time how [...]

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Villa 5 was finished, so it was time to dress it up and fire the imagination a little. It can be difficult to envisage an empty house with the benefit of warmth and furnishings. We wanted to capture some images that would nudge that imagination into working and bring the villa alive.
In order to achieve [...]

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Just down the road from L’Amandier Villas, in the small village of Marigha, is Ksar Shama. It’s a lovely guesthouse nestled in a grove of olive trees with a beautiful swimming pool that definitely saved me from over-heating the other day. As I swam a couple of laps of the pool, under the bridge and [...]

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Today I saw an old gentleman in a embroidered hat crossing the ‘Oxford Street’ of Marrakech. Nothing unusual in that, except he was cradling a fully grown peacock in his arms.
Yesterday, I came out of my apartment building and found a baby camel parked in the street.
A couple of weeks ago I came up the [...]

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I had been invited to visit L’Amandier for about three months and finally got there last Sunday. And now I wonder…why did it take me so long ? Just the thrill of leaving behind  the chaos of Marrakech gives you such a wonderful feeling of freedom that is hard to explain. It is just outside the red city that the excitement of the journey [...]

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