After visiting Le Jardin Majorelle, my travel partner and I got in the smallest, oldest taxi with a tubby taxi driver who weaved in and out of traffic practicing his English, while driving us to the Bahia palace, located in the medina of Marrakech along the northern edge of the Mellah or Jewish quarter. We had actually asked him to take us to the old ruins of the The El Badi Palace but he thought he knew better and took us to the Bahia Palace instead telling us that the El Badi Palace was boring and 'no good'!
All taxi drivers in Marrakech seem to try to get you to use them for the whole day and also want to take you to their cousin's shop on the way to your destination! Often they don’t drop you close enough to where you want to go, which is quite annoying. It's one of the downsides to being an obvious tourist, so you have to be firm about where you want to go and a little impolite to get your point across. Luckily, we had a lovely personal driver that our hotel supplied for most of the trip and only had to catch the local taxis a few times to get from place to place.
I'm sure the ruins would have been great to see, but so was the Bahia Palace, even if it wasn't furnished. Sadly we ran out of time and energy to see the El Badi Palace ruins as well. However, the ornate ceilings, colourful tiles and bright colours of the Bahia Palace made it very beautiful and gave you a real sense of how opulent it was when it was inhabitated in past times, so we were glad we saw this one.
