Marrakech
The view from my hotel window of dawn rising over the Atlas mountains is a censored one. Had I pointed the camera down a fraction the first rays of the sun would have caught the empty street below my hotel room. This was punctuated by large holes in the asphalt made for some unknown purpose and now forgotten. On the other side of the road you would have seen a row of shuttered, empty shop fronts and in the mid-distance the ochre turrets and minarets of the Disneyesque new hotel area that is being flung up to accomodate the stream of tourists mainly from Spain, France and the UK. I wondered whether the style of these hotels, with their acres of mosaic tiles, arches and intricate latticework wooden panels reflected what the Moroccan architects wanted or what they thought the tourists wanted. A nerve wracking, seatbeltless taxi ride gets you the Medina (walled old city) which is where the real action is. Magnificent gates like the one in this picture open out into dusty, unpaved alleyway...