Ham..UM… is this even sanitary?
Word of warning: This may get weird…
Today was our Hammam day.
We slept in. Had breakfast late. I know, it's a hard life.
But we had to wait. Because the men get the morning, and the night. Women get access in the day time. Like, after lunch.
We weren't completely sure what to expect. We'd heard rumours. Tales of fellow travellers having gone to various places.
The one we went to was said to be the most traditional and oldest hammam in town. Called Hammam Blad, which is pronounced Hammam "Blood", which kind of freaked me out.
Our main concern was, is this going to be a sanitary experience? We'd soon find out.
We walked into the main room where they told us to strip down to our underwear. OK… I expected that much.
We were given sandals that were wet and didn't really look clean. Ok.. I can deal with this.
Then we were led into an all concrete, no, all marble, NO, all ceramic steam room. I don't actually know what the room was made of but it was all stone. With stone benches and stone stalls with no shower heads. And buckets, lots of buckets.
The woman, still clothed, gave us both a plastic mat to sit on. We really don't know how clean it was, but it was better than the floor.
She used a small bucket to scoop hot water out of the bigger buckets and splashed us with it.
She then said she'd be back. SO we sat there wet, mostly naked, in a big steamy room with sunlight streaming through the roughly made holes in the stone ceiling. Not exactly what I had imagined...
She returned just as naked as we were. She poured more water on us, then used black soap and ran her hands pretty much all over our bodies.
She had us lay down and proceeded to scrub at our skin with an exfoliation glove. She did it to Haley first, and I watched as greyish strands of dead skin formed across her back, and everywhere the woman scrubbed.
It was interesting, but pretty gross. Not because of the amount of dead skin, that was expected, it was more so because I wasn't sure how old the glove was. Or how thoroughly it is washed. It was used all over Haley. Head to toe. Feet to face.
Then she rinsed her off, rinsed off the glove, and moved on to me. Yep. Same glove. Head to feet. Feet to face. And yes… both our butts.
She rinsed me off, and applied a deep-red earthy clay to my face, then left me to wait while she massage Haley in a different room.
The wait was long. The room had started to fill with other women, and the room started to smell musty. It wasn't very appealing. I tried to stay positive, and keep my face from twisting at the stink in the room.
Eventually she came to get me. Haley and I swapped.
She poured water on me again, soaped me up, again, and massaged me with the soap. It was alright. I feel like I'm not the right person to give my critique because I'm such a stickler when it comes to massage, but she wasn't bad. I just didn't like the way she massaged my stomach. Oh, and there was no head, neck, shoulders. My favourite part. Too bad.
But otherwise, like I said, it wasn't the worst massage I'd ever had.
She then had me sit up, she sat behind me, and poured water on my head. She shampooed my hair maybe 5 times. Taking a brush to it every time, thoroughly brushing through it right to the scalp. I kind of felt like a kid.
She rinsed me off again, and had me switch with Haley. Once Haley's hair was done, she poured water on us again, and sent us on our way.
We felt clean, in a dirty way. But I felt cleansed.
That was it. That was the traditional Moroccan spa experience.
Lying on the barely sanitary ground while a mostly naked person soaps you up, scrubs you down, massages you, and brushes half your hair out.
I probably wouldn't do it again, but at least I can say: been there, done that.
After the spa, we went for a walk through the medina. That's what all these pictures are from. I couldn't get any pictures of/in the hammam, obviously. So I broke up the wordy monotony with these instead.
Hope you liked em!
That's it for today.
AML
G