We want to show you Marrakesh from the inside out by encouraging you to stay in a medina house. The Marrakesh medina is the largest traditional Islamic city in North Africa. It dates back to the 11th century and is now being restored as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

In fact, a medina house, or riyad, is inside out. From the outside, it's windowless and unassuming, marked only by a heavy wooden door on straight narrow street. But then you cross the threshold into another world. The windows look in upon the life of the courtyard with its gardens and fountains and above is your own private patch of sky.

Here's our good friend Lalla Zoubida (or Hajja Zoubida, because she has made her Pilgrimage to Mecca) in the house we've rented for our celebration.

Look down a street in the neighborhood. We are in the heart of the medina near the Ben Youssef Mosque and medersa, a medieval Islamic school. That's a family's wasla or bread board, lying in street waiting for the baker's assistant. He'll to pick it up and take the still-rising round loaves to the oven to be baked. This modern service was unknown when we lived there. At that time, bread boards went to the oven on the heads of little kids. Today all the kids are in school and available only to fetch the hot loaves from the oven on their way home for lunch.

Meet Lalla Zoubida's daughter Kinza and her daughter-in-law Latifa and some of the nearly 30-odd grandchildren.

Here's our Joanna with Lalla Zoubida and Kinza and more grandkids visiting the Menara pool in an olive garden just outside the walls of the city.

Daughter Selena and friend Craig spent a part of July in Marrakesh last summer after graduation. They were delighted to find a city so authentic, hospitable, sophisticated and fun. They're coming back in July 2001 and bringing along friends.

















We don't get to Marrakesh as much as we'd like. But sometimes Marrakesh comes to us. Here's Zoubida and her son Abdeljalil, Latifa's husband, visiting Salé, across the river from Rabat. The decorative tilework called zelij is found in contemporary houses as well as 14th century buildings such as this medersa.

This is a comfortable (five bedroom and five bath) courtyard house looking down into the courtyard from the roof. We think it will be perfect for the McCreary and Fillips grandparents and grandchildren.

Here's a very modest rental house in the same neighborhood. The little alcove on the balcony is called a b'hou.















The sun-filled salon of the same house is upstairs and above it there is a roof top sitting area. You can book this house at Marrakesh Medina .

Today Marrakesh is home to the finest artisans in the Arab world. Much of their design and craft genius is seen in house decoration - the elaborate wooden doors, painted ceilings, carved plaster arches, polished, tadlakt walls, zelij tilework, and wrought iron arabesques for balconies. If you are ready to get out of the house to see Marrakesh's, mosques, medersas, gardens, souks, and Jema'a El Fna square please go to Tore Kjeilen's excellent on-line guide .