Pondi Travels: Honeymoon in Morocco
I've always been drawn to Morocco. I know I am not alone when I write this. There is something in the colors, the spices, the gardens, the culture, the textiles, and the architecture that is both alluring and elusive to the Western traveler. After our dreamlike wedding on my home island of Kauai, Chase and I packed our bags and embarked on an excursion to a place so unlike our day-to-day in New York. From the language to the interiors to the time zone, I expected our trip to be in direct contrast to our regular lives. I did not know that Morocco itself is a land of contrasts, and that the calculated practice of contrariety is one of the beautiful and defining aspects of Morocco's culture.
Morocco is home to a use of color that is at once excessively playful and acutely practiced. From the hot pinks woven into Azilal rugs to all-white lattice towers to rooms made up of 1,000 shades of navy, nothing impressed me more than the uniquely Moroccan appreciation and use of color. This daring finds itself also in their use of spices and masterful contrasts of flavor. And if the food and the architecture and the unparalleled textiles are not enough, there are Moroccan gardens. Fruit trees, leaves of every shape, and petals of every imaginable hue find their way over and around an ever-present feature of cascading or pooled water. It's heaven.
