I had the great good fortune to add two new places to my list of countries visited last month – Morocco and Romania. It is not usual for me to travel early in the new year, not least because I am usually running around taking kids to university, as well as recovering from the cost of Christmas! But I happened to see an opportunity for a very cheap (and quite short) break in Marrakech and we were invited to a christening in Bucharest. It did mean that this usually rather bleak month passed satisfyingly quickly, and I got through a fair bit of reading whilst travelling. Here are some photos of my trips.
Top row – El Badi Palace
Bottom row (L-R) – restaurant overlooking Jemaa el-Fnaa; Madrasa Ben Youssef; wandering through the souks; Koutoubia mosque at daybreak
Marrakech is a stunning place to visit, with all the senses assaulted at once. January was a great time to go, it was 16-18 degrees and not too crowded. I will definitely return, so much still to see.
Top row – Carturesti Carusel bookshop; Church of Saint Vissarion
Middle row (L-R) – National Museum of the Romanian Peasant; example of domestic art and craft; The Little Paris Museum
Bottom row – Palace of Parliament
Bucharest on the other hand was FREEZING! It’s an interesting place that is still coming out of a very dark period in its history. The Palace of Parliament was built by the former dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and appears to be mostly a vanity project he conceived following a visit to North Korea. It is enormous and is said to be the heaviest administrative building in the world. I don’t know how this could be verified but it apparently contains 2.5 million tonnes of marble.
I am always interested to find out about literary connections to places I visit. I’m afraid to say I am not familiar with any Moroccan authors, although I have heard of French Moroccan author Leila Slimani – I think I may have read her novel Adèle (published in English in 2019, the original French is called Dans le jardin de l’ogre and was published in 2014). Mohamed Choukri (1935-2003) is another internationally renowned Moroccan author whose autobiography, For Bread Alone, recounts his early life surrounded by violence and poverty and then his self-education and flowering as a writer. Something else to add to the TBR list!
I was even less familiar with Romanian literature, although I was delighted to visit the beautiful Carturesti Carusel bookshop in Bucharest (coincidentally, this also featured on the January page of my 2026 bookshops of the world calendar!) I bought a copy of Mircea Cartarescu’s 1989 novel Nostalgia, which is said to be a surrealist cult masterpiece. Romanian-French playwright Eugene Ionescu is perhaps the most famous writer to emerge from that country, another surrealist and considered part of the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’ school.
I recommend both of these cities for a visit if you have the opportunity. January is the perfect time to visit Marrakech, in my view, but perhaps Bucharest might be better in the spring!
Julia's books 