Anna’s birthday always coincides with a conference in a great spot

Anna has a big conference every year that coincides with her birthday at the end of June and this year it would be in Marrakesh, Morocco, but if we’re going to fly all of that way, we might as well make something out of it, as opposed to just going there for a couple of nights and coming straight back with no time to recover from the jet lag. We have a lot of friends and family in London that we haven’t seen in a long time, plus there’s more to Morocco than just Marrakesh so lets make a few stops!

Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Anna during her meticulous research while booking flights discovered that it would be significantly cheaper if, instead of flying directly to London, we flew into Paris and took the Eurostar train across, a trip that departs from Gare du Nord, the main train station in Paris and then only takes two hours and 15 minutes to arrive in the UK. We landed at 9:30am and after we had cleared immigration and caught the train to Gare du Nord two hours had already passed, leaving us enough time to grab a coffee and find where we needed to be for the next leg. However, in typical style our Eurostar train was delayed by over an hour, leaving a few grumpy people waiting around, sweating on the platform during the European heatwave (right). When we were eventually on our train and had arrived at our hotel in London it was 4:30pm and for Anna this wasn’t any regular hotel. To give the first part of our trip a little nostalgic vibe, we would be staying at the hotel where Anna had worked as a waitress when she studied in London in 2000-01, The Gore in South Kensington, more interesting to me as the location where the Rolling Stones had the launch party for their album Beggars Banquet on the 5th of December, 1968, an event that went how you probably would have expected:

A Banquet to Remember: The Rolling Stones’ Wild Night at the Gore Hotel

The Gore Hotel in Kensington, London, was the site of the real “beggars banquet” held in celebration of the release of the Beggars Banquet album on December 5, 1968. The bash cost over £1,000 and ended with the Stones throwing custard pies in the faces of Decca Record executives (who had caused the LP’s late release), and in other guests.

Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet: From Tower Plans to Custard Chaos

*By Marcelo Sonaglioni

What was meant to be a refined celebration of Beggars Banquet turned into one of the most infamous parties in rock history. The original plan had been to host the album launch at the Tower of London—an appropriately grand setting for the Rolling Stones’ latest creation. But when the venue fell through, the band pivoted in true Stones fashion, relocating the event to the Elizabethan Room at the Gore Hotel.

There, the Stones embraced theatrical decadence, dressed as beggars dripping in glam—ragged in name only. Surrounded by candlelight and elite media guests, they were served a lavish seven-course meal by voluptuous “serving wenches” in corsets. But the night took an unforgettable turn during dessert: Mick Jagger, in high spirits, playfully smashed a custard pie into Brian Jones’s face, igniting an all-out food fight. Far from royal etiquette, but pure Rolling Stones—chaotic, cheeky, and unforgettable.

Sounds like a good spot to stay to me! I’ve been to London several times before, but have never really had much of a chance to have a proper look around so we planned this trip for us to be able to do exactly that. We both needed to freshen up first and when I went into the bathroom this cool hotel seemed a little more like Fawlty Towers than the site of a legendary rock star food fight, especially the bathroom:

• The basin was the type that has two separate faucets, but the cold tap was installed so far back that it wasn’t possible to actually put your hands under it.
• To start the shower you needed to turn on the hot water tap first and then reach through the scolding water to turn on the cold tap, which also had a tendency to fall off.
• When inside the shower I didn’t fit under the ceiling and the shower head was fixed on an arm that couldn’t be moved and came up to about my shoulders. If I backed back too far it would go between the bones in my spine and when I needed to wash my armpits I had to kneel down and assume a position akin to Michael Flatley in Lord of the Dance.
• When it was time to get out of the shower, the hot water tap was scorching to the touch, making it extremely difficult to turn off before needing to screw the cold tap back on.
• Also, if you sat on the toilet and moved even a little bit, the seat felt like it was close to snapping off.

This would be a recurring theme during our stay at The Gore, but enough about that, after Anna did a bit of reminiscing, snapping a few photos in and around the place it was time to start moving, first wandering around her old neighbourhood, past Royal Albert Hall, and then cutting through a park to a busier area of the city to find a proper pub. We obviously had to grab some dinner along the way, but once our stomachs were lined we went for a bit of a pub crawl. I completely forgot how small some of these old buildings are, because there was one place where I couldn’t even fit under the ceiling properly and at one point in another I was asked by a girl, “Wait, are you famous?” while I ducked through a doorway as we left, much to Anna’s amusement.
The Gore, South Kensington, and our first night out:

Thursday, June 19, 2025
We spent most of the day shopping and as would be the case over the course of this trip it was hot, particularly by UK standards. That makes things a little difficult over here, because not only do a lot of buildings and shops not have air-conditioning, but they’re also built to retain heat so even though it was around 32°C (90°F) outside, it felt like it was over 40°C (104°F) inside almost every building we entered with no breeze coming through at all. Due to this, after a while we sort of split and went our separate ways, because if Anna was trying on clothes, it was more comfortable for me to wait outside rather than sweating in the shop and the same was the case for her when I was looking at something. One thing I didn’t expect to see in London was an NBA Store so I decided to take a look and there was a sale on some of the jerseys including of one of my favourite players from when I was young, Dražen Petrović. I was so happy when I saw his jersey hanging in the Barklays Centre when I went to see my Chicago Bulls play the Brooklyn Nets and now they had a bunch of his jersey from his days with the New Jersey Nets on sale, but as always seems to be the case they had every size but mine. Oh well, we continued on shopping and looking around, seeking out markets and secondhand stores until it was time for what we had planned for the evening.

Every night we were in London we had dinner plans and on this occasion it would be with our friends Tabby and Josh (left). We had caught them a few months earlier when they had a layover in Singapore and now we were in their ‘hood so they arranged for a babysitter for their recent new family member, Sid, and we spent a great couple of hours eating and chatting, but they couldn’t stay out too late with their new parental duties. That didn’t mean Anna and I couldn’t continue on so we found a couple of spots to hang out, checking out the nightlife in a different area of London on a Thursday night.

Friday, June 20, 2025
A place Anna had wanted to take me was around the Shoreditch area, birthplace of one of my heroes, Noel Fielding, so I piled on the sunscreen once more and we jumped on the Overground, however, when we arrived at the Aldgate East station and exited the building, things were far different to other areas we had been and there was one little issue; everyone had been warning us about the uptick in petty crime in London, pickpockets, snatch thieves, that type of thing and apparently this area of the city was one of the worst for it. Generally people’s phones are targetted so I put mine and my wallet in my front pockets and walked down to the Tower Hamlets borough, where our first stop would be exploring Brick Lane. This area had been gentrified from old industrial buildings into hipster cafes and some cool shops, as well as a giant indoor flea market that was a great way to kill the afternoon and come across some cool finds and street art. We also caught up for a coffee with Anna’s friend, Farah, and then had a look around High Street.

When we were finished we went back to the hotel to dump what we had purchased that afternoon, jump into the inconveniently archaic shower to wash off all of the sweat, slip into something a little more formal, and then head out to the Theatre District. One of the more interesting people we met on our recent Silk Road trip, Richard, knew we were coming to town so he purchased tickets for us to see the Roald Dahl play, Giant, starring John Lithgow, but first we needed some dinner. We ate at a nearby Thai restaurant which when the bill came we realised that we probably could’ve flown to Thailand cheaper, and then it was time for Giant. Initially I thought he’d chosen it due to it being based on Dahl’s children’s book The BFG as a friendly dig about my size, but that certainly wasn’t the plot, as this review shows:

It’s 1983, and we’re in the largely sedentary confines of Dahl’s new Buckinghamshire home, to which the legendary children’s book writer has moved with his second wife-to-be, Felicity Crosland (Rachael Stirling). The house is a work-in-progress in Bob Crowley’s design, as one verbal grenade after another gets detonated across the dining table.

While his New Zealand chef Hallie (Tessa Bonham Jones) buzzes agreeably about proffering sorbet, Dahl fields two guests to perform damage limitation. Dahl, it seems, has penned a book review in which he has protested the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, his argument widening out from anger at this military incursion to a larger broadside against all Jews.

Retract his assertions or watch book sales tank – or so Dahl is advised by two very different emissaries from the publishing world.

Dahl, for instance, has been reviled for antisemitism, and it is shocking to be reminded of his remarks to the New Statesman that “even a stinker like Hitler didn’t pick on [the Jews] for no reason”. But Giant simultaneously reveals the formidably tall and tetchy brainiac as “a broken boy in giant’s clothing” whose irascibility, and worse, was very possibly a belligerent defence against a life marked by illness and loss. “I know pain, I do,” Dahl says, which allows a career-best Lithgow to hint at the man beneath the rhetorically unforgiving monster.

Definitely nothing like we were suspecting, I wasn’t even aware of Dahl’s well-documented opinion on Israel, but this play was just brilliant and I also never would’ve guessed that the dad from 3rd Rock from the Sun would be such an incredible stage performer!
I only took a handful of photos around Brick Lane, but here they are, as well as coffee with Farah and a few from Giant with Richard:

Saturday, June 21, 2025
It was our last day in London before we would move on to Morocco and it was boiling hot once more, but for some reason I didn’t feel all that great, just bloated and lethargic. Still, we decided to walk around Knightsbridge for some slightly more upmarket shopping, but there would still be more markets and secondhand shops there too so I would be set if only I felt better. There was also the issue that we were out of sunscreen on this scorching day so we needed to purchase more and this is the last time I will ever let Anna select it. We walked around, Anna popping into shops while I just waited about, feeling like the contents of my stomach could erupt from either end at any time, but after a couple of hours it began to subside and could enjoy myself.
We were meeting Anna’s auntie and cousins that evening so we’d need to clean up once more before we left. We got back to the hotel to shower and when I took my white t-shirt off it was all discoloured around the front, sort of a light tan colour, as was the inside of the collar on a white shirt I had bought that day. I couldn’t figure out what it could possibly be until I looked in the bathroom mirror and discovered that Anna picked a matte-finish sunscreen. It looked like I was wearing foundation, possibly trying to emulate a member of a k-pop group, so when I had taken my sweaty t-shirt off over my head, the sunscreen had smeared over the front and I guess it was what I had applied to my neck that had left the tan ring around the collar when I had tried on the shirt, but fortunately we were eventually able to sort all of that out once we had returned to Singapore.

I was feeling completely back to normal when it was time to meet up with some of Anna’s family for dinner and we were uncharacteristically early by a substantial amount of time so a couple of afternoon libations in one of the many crowded drinking spots were on the cards that Saturday afternoon until it was time to eat. I really get on well with this group of Anna’s relatives, especially her cousin’s husband, Darren, because as I’ve mentioned before he’s essentially a younger version of me. Unfortunately his job has him working outdoors and he had developed a pretty bad case of heatstroke, something I don’t think anyone in this part of the world has ever experienced. Still, we all had a great time at dinner together while getting to meet baby Salem for the first time (right) and we were keen on spending a proper Saturday night out before we left London, but all of the cousins have children so Anna and I were left to our own devices, but we still managed to have a pretty awesome night to wrap up the first part of the trip.

Sunday, June 22, 2025
We checked out of Fawlty Towers, sorry, I mean The Gore late, got a car to the airport, and caught our flight to Northern Africa for Anna’s conference in Marrakesh, Morocco:

Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to the east, and the disputed territory of Western Sahara to the south, occupied by Morocco since 1975. Morocco also claims the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta, Melilla and Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, and several small Spanish-controlled islands off its coast. It has a population of approximately 37 million. Islam is both the official and predominant religion, while Arabic and Berber are the official languages. Additionally, French and the Moroccan dialect of Arabic are widely spoken. The culture of Morocco is a mix of Arab, Berber, African and European cultures. Its capital is Rabat, while its largest city is Casablanca.

The region constituting Morocco has been inhabited since the Paleolithic era over 300,000 years ago.

The conference was being held at the Four Seasons Resort Marrakech and we definitely wouldn’t mind spending a few nights here:

Monday, June 23, 2025
Today would be the only time we would have a full free day and night here so we’d better get out and explore Marrakesh:

Marrakesh or Marrakech is the fourth-largest city in Morocco. It is one of the four imperial cities of Morocco and is the capital of the Marrakesh–Safi region. The city lies west of the foothills of the Atlas Mountains.

The city was founded circa 1070 by Abu Bakr ibn Umar as the capital of the Almoravid dynasty. The Almoravids established the first major structures in the city and shaped its layout for centuries to come. The red walls of the city, built by Ali ibn Yusuf in 1122–1123, and various buildings constructed in red sandstone afterwards, have given the city the nickname of the “Red City” or “Ochre City”.

Marrakesh comprises an old fortified city packed with vendors and their stalls. This medina quarter is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and contains the Jemaa el-Fnaa square, a large number of souks (markets), the Kutubiyya Mosque, the Kasbah, and many other historic and cultural sites.

That market sounds like the perfect place to start so after a long sleep in and a coffee, we slapped on some sunscreen, non-tinted this time, and walked down into the older area of the city in the 47°C (116.6°F) dry desert heat, but when we got to the square it wasn’t quite as bustling as we had expected. Fortunately for us a man that worked at our hotel recognised us and offered to show us around. Well at least that’s what he claimed, however, he just wanted to take us to his auntie’s argan oil store, but we didn’t mind, because Anna was planning to buy some while we were in town anyway. He was touting it as both a condiment for bread as well as curing everything from acne to baldness if you used it for cosmetic purposes, but he didn’t really need to go for the hard sell. His auntie was in the stall supposedly extracting the oil with a kind of grinder herself so Anna got to have a go as well. We spent about an hour wandering around inside that market, but it was quite stifling under that roof after a while so we headed back outside, had a look at the outdoor sections and other parts of the square in general, but eventually we needed somewhere with a fan, cold beer, and a maybe a dessert, leading us to La Pergola.
The day so far:

We had had a beer and a pastry so now it was time to evaluate our dinner options, and eventually we ended up at Le Salama, a restaurant that specialises in ‘Moroccan Soul Food’ which sounds pretty good to us, as well as some colleagues that would be joining us. We sort of had an idea of what to expect with Morocco being on the Mediterranean and it definitely wasn’t Mark’s Moroccan pasta consisting of the leftovers from his fridge in Peep Show (above, right). Our instincts were correct, the food was great, but one thing we weren’t anticipating while Anna and her friends were enjoying a pot of local tea was the restaurant’s music to go up a notch and a troop of belly dancers to appear, making their way around the room, some with trays of candles on their heads.

Dinner was soon done so it was back downstairs, but what we were greeted with couldn’t have been further from what we were anticipating, the town square was so packed it was almost impossible to move. Not only were there still the market stalls selling fruit and other local goods, but there were also performers, men walking around with exotic animals such as peacocks and monkeys, and women drawing traditional henna hand tattoos. Many of the people wanted money if you were taking photos of them, but it was still possible to snap a few for free.
Dinner and the chaos of the square on a Monday night:

Tuesday, June 24, 2025
Anna attended the conference in the morning and after lunch we decided to explore the newer area of the city. There weren’t a whole lot of shops that particularly catered to us, but we did spend a fair bit of the afternoon in several gardens, namely The Jardin Majorelle and its Oasis to get some reprieve from the sun, but we couldn’t stay out all day, because the conference dinner was that night. These dinners are usually themed and a key to choosing your costume is to read the entire description, however, despite this year’s having a local theme, Anna seemed to gloss over all that and locked in on the words “gold” and “silver”, which led to her terrible purchase for my costume.
The event began at 7:00pm and although I don’t usually blend in with a crowd, I was a lot more conspicuous on this occasion, because while everyone else was wearing what would pass for relatively local attire with a smattering of bling or even dressed as genies, Anna had gone on SHEIN and had bought me a gold-sequinned tuxedo jacket that made me look more like Liberace, an observation that was mentioned more than once. To make matters worse it was still around 40°C (104°F) and this thing was 100% polyester on the inside so I was sweating profusely, but if I were to take it off, the attendees who didn’t know me would probably just assume I was serving the drinks, my white shirt and bow tie matching the servers’ uniforms. Despite my hideous jacket that was bound to give me a sweat rash, it was still a fun evening with more belly dancers, more great food, and a lot of dancing among the others while I chatted off to the side with some of the other guests who also hate doing so.
The gardens, oasis, and the dinner featuring my terrible, terrible jacket:

Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Anna was at the conference once more in the morning and when she was done we felt like we had seen most of the city already and because of that, combined with the sweltering heat, we figured it best to kick back, relax, and just have a lazy day at the hotel until that night when we did what is expected of us; went out for dinner and a drink before walking home in anticipation of what was to come over the following days.

Thursday, June 26, 2025
It was time for us to move on, which was a good thing because it was going to hit the highest temperature yet on our adventure, 48°C (118.5°F) in Marrakesh, whereas our next stop would be in a place where the heat wasn’t quite as extreme, just outside the village of Asni at the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. To make things even better, we’d be staying in Kasbah Tamadot for Anna’s birthday:

Kasbah Tamadot is Sir Richard Branson’s award-winning magical retreat in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. Meaning ‘soft breeze’ in Berber, this hotel sits at the top of a valley with views of majestic Mount Toubkal. From the uniquely designed bedrooms, Berber Tents and brand-new Riads to the warm hospitality of our local team, Kasbah Tamadot surprises and delights at every turn.

I honestly don’t know how she finds these places. We drove for about 90 minutes to reach the resort and although some of her conference friends would be staying there, the resort was very private and exclusive.
Kasbah Tamadot was absolutely incredible, however, naturally one of the first things on the cards for us after we had checked in was to have a bite to eat, prepared in the resort’s traditional Moroccan kitchen, possibly the only place hotter than it was outside:

We had seen a portion of the resort, but now it was time to have a look around this place properly and it was absolutely enormous! At every turn there was another statue or decorative piece, multiple dining rooms, tennis courts, and even more swimming pools, both inside and out. Relaxation was almost enforced, because at the main pool phone calls were prohibited and phones themselves were required to be on silent. Our room wasn’t anything to turn your nose up at either with its wooden furniture and the artwork that adorned the walls.

We decided to make the most of the involuntary leisure by pulling up a poolside covered bed, Anna taking a brief dip, but one occurrence that would occur in the middle of the afternoon each day was a bout of heavy rain and the large drops were freezing despite the outside temperature, much like the temperature in the pool. Obviously the only option was to head to one of the covered, outdoor bars for the afternoon and into the evening for several beverages and dinner in the company of a friendly, furry cat that insisted on joining us.
A look around our gigantic home in Asni for a couple of nights, but be forewarned, there’s a lot of photos of this place!:

Friday, June 27, 2025
Today was Anna’s birthday so what better way to spend it than hiking through the Atlas Mountains on a day that would eventually reach at least 41°C (106°F). Our guide arrived at around 11:30 am and we began our trek. It was tough going at first, us both sweating profusely as we looked at the sheer size of Kasbah Tamadot off to the side.
We had been hiking for around two hours by the time we reached the small village Asni, where 90% of the buildings had been destroyed during the 2023 Al Haouz earthquake. Asni is the village that is visible from our resort, but we hadn’t initially realised that what we could see was only the small remaining portion. We made our way through the damaged buildings and arrived at a family home where our guide had organised for us to have another traditional regional meal. We could still see the obvious damage to the house, the earthquake in which the woman feeding us had lost her son still seemed fresh in their minds, but she and her daughter had prepared a two course meal with a lot of bread, dips, and olives, as well as plenty of local tea for the three of us, however, we were mostly glad just to get out of the heat and off our feet. We spent about 30 minutes eating and conversing with the woman and daughter, our guide translating for us, mostly about the village and life before and after the earthquake there, something that really brought us back to reality in contrast to where we were staying not far away.
Once we had finished eating and chatting it took us less than an hour of walking downhill and we were back at Kasbah Tamadot:

Our legs were dead and we were more than a bit sweaty so we immediately had a shower each and then headed straight down to the main pool for a much deserved rest. The only problem with that plan was the daily freezing rain that hit once more, but that wasn’t an issue with the sheer amount of sheltered options in this place so naturally we gravitated to an area with a bar for some pre-birthday dinner drinks. Dinner was at 7:00pm and we were still sweating in the heat so we had to shower again, Anna put on a hot pink dress and I donned my weird Beatles Yellow Submarine t-shirt that I had bought from a thrift store in London and we were taken upstairs to a private dining area with beautiful views of the mountains. No belly dancers this time, just the staff surprising Anna with a birthday cake, the perfect close to another epic getaway.
Anna’s birthday dinner:

So we had wrapped up our trip and would be taking a ride all the way back to the airport and be on our way the following day. A big thanks to everyone who took the time to catch up with us, especially Richard for the Giant tickets, it was a fantastic week away, and a big happy birthday to Anna!