Olives and pickles

The medina in Marrakech is huge compared with the medina in Fes but Fes is older. A medina is an enclosed area where people live, it is a self contained community. Here in Marrakech the enclosure is marked by thick remparts with various gates leading into the city. This was where we stayed, the new city is built around it. Here in the medina, one finds the souk or market place, one area for clothing, one for food, and different areas for different things. It is so big in Marrakech that one can just wander for days on end. Besides the mountains of mint, there are those mountains of olives, they are everywhere. The limited time we had did not allow us to taste every kind of olive though we would have liked it. Besides the olives, there are these huge jars of pickles of every sort. I read a travelers' account of how she remembered those jeweled bottles of pickles. These are the memories one take away. The olives and the pickles are staples of Morrocan cooking.