Greencaviar Travel

Morocco is one of the most colorful countries I have visited. My visit in the spring gave me a full sensory experience, some of which I shared in my blog. However, I realized that only photos of the multi-colored valleys, the Sahara Desert, the Atlas Mountain and multi-colored landscape made it to my Instagram and blog. Thank God, I took plenty of photos to help me reflect upon the visits to the museums and the city. I would like to share some of the pictures from Marrakech that I did not get around to posting. The Bahia Palace is an example of Eastern Architecture from the 19th century. Information posted tells us that the palace has 160 rooms, but we only saw a few. I especially like this picture because it captures the essence of Islamic and Moroccan style architecture through the beautifully carved archways, tiled panels, the intricate carvings above the windows, and the painted ceiling. I especially admire the intricate carvings and the painted cedar ceiling. An...

Jardin Majorelle I was curious to see the garden associated with the Yves Saint Laurent name, the famous French designer. But when I entered the garden, I did not see what I expected to see; no rows of flowers in repeated patterns or flowers in exuberant colors. Instead, I walked into a shady area surrounded by towering bamboo trees. Streaks of light passed through the bamboo trees and reflected on the terracotta courtyard. I stepped into a square gazebo where people pose for pictures with the stream, lined with bamboo trees in the background. It had an Asian (Zen) feel, with the water in the stream and the bamboo creating an elegant rhyme. Except that, it did not have that subtle and gray color of a Zen garden. I wandered under huge trees and amidst exotic plants wondering about the design that made it so elegant and mysterious. The garden reminded me of our backyard when I was a kid where my father planted everything that he could find from the wild, including bamboos and fe...

  Morocco Road Trip, Part 3:  The Road to Marrakesh Along the fabled road to Marrakesh or Ouarzazate (depending on where you are headed) lies a place that never existed in my imagination: Tichka Pass . Approaching the pass, our guide told us a tiny bit of history, “We are coming to this pass…7,400 feet or approximately 2200 meters. The road, by the way, was built by the French, the road that links Marrakesh to Ouarzazate”. Soon we reached the peak and stopped to take photos of the Tichka Pass marker and the astonishing views. As we traveled in the heart of the High Atlas Mountain chain, I started to film our journey using my iPhone 6+, mostly shooting the landscape – the snow-capped Atlas Mountain reaching towards the sky - bisected by a thin road.   As if shooting from a moving vehicle not challenging enough, the refracted light made filming the landscape even more impossible.  But I found a workaround by pressing my iPhone against the window. We stopped ...