I’m still kind of shocked at myself for not posting anything on either this or my work blog about my trip to Morocco (it was in November!) and I really realized this was ridiculous when I had the pleasure of sitting next to a new Moroccan friend on my bus trip up to New York. As he and I discussed our love for Essaouria, I wanted to go back and look through all of my pictures again and relive my trip. And today I was listening to the audio clips I took in Djemmaa el Fna, Marrakech’s main square, wanting to drop everything and head back.

Perhaps it was the simple need for a bit of privacy, as I was starting to feel like every step I took became a blog post. But I realize that means I’m keeping a lot of really great stuff all to myself. So I swear I’ll get some of the posts and videos I’ve started up at Intelligent Travel soon, and in the meantime, here are some photos of lovely Essaouria.

Blue is the color of this city. All of the boats and doors are in varying shades.

Beneath our fish lunch, one of the country’s many stray cats enjoyed his own.

There are entire books of photos devoted to the doors of this city,  I’m sure.

This little guy was bawling when we saw him in the street.

One of the woodworkers who carved the thulia wood, traditional to the region.

The wall that surrounds the city can be a bit desolate in places.

A scene from our cooking class at l’Altier Madada.

I went to the press preview for the William Eggleston exhibit at the Corcoran gallery last week (gorgeous — read Krista’s fab review of it here) and tucked into the press materials was a short intro to this new exhibit, “Neighborhood Watch,” by Corcoran art professor Claudia Smigrod. Smigrod raised her children in Alexandria in the early eighties, and, being a photographer, spent her time shooting portraits of her children and their neighborhood friends. Twenty years later, she decided to revisit these pictures and photograph the children again — this time, grown up. The result is a stirring series of portraits that are both introspective and captivating. Many of the images ran in the Washington Post Magazine this past weekend, and all of them are fascinating. Each person speaks of what they believed in then, and where their head is now. It’s a simple but brilliant exercise, and I can’t help we’d all be a bit better off if someone took the time to stop, take our picture, and ask us where we came from.

The exhibit will be on view in the Corcoran Corridor, Corcoran Gallery of Art, from July 1 to Aug. 9. Take advantage of the free Saturdays and check it out.

I just mailed out a half dozen Valentines this week in my attempt to keep the post office afloat, but then I found these lovely Valentine’s Day postcards on the Kate Spade website. Send one to your sweetie… or the favorite ’stach in your life.

In my effort to make the most of D.C.’s cultural offerings, I’ve started trying to catch more museums while they’re open after hours, and as it so happens, have been taking in a lot of portraits in the process, and remembering how much I love them. Jenna and I raced through the Portrait Gallery a few weeks ago (one of my favorite museums in Washington), and I loved, loved, the fantastic collection of amazing women featured in “Women of our Time.” Click through the gallery, it’s fantastic.

Also at the Portrait Gallery was the gorgeous testament to how magazines really succeed – when the pictures appearing alongside the text fill in the back story while simultaneously allowing you to envision yourself in its context. “Feature Photography” includes many images I recognized from my favorite magazines, including the scary portraits by Martin Schoeller (I once opened up a New Yorker on the treadmill which had this huge up-close shot of Dan Rather, and I nearly fell off and slammed my face into the machine).

Tonight, I took in the Richard Avedon “Portraits of Power” exhibit at the Corcoran gallery (my first visit, admittedly) where I got to see that fantastic shot of Kay Graham again (white background above) alongside the huge body of work that Avedon took throughout his lifetime. Succinctly: they were stunning. A master of allowing photographs to contextualize a story without even needing any words beyond captions, the gallery juxtaposes images of racists alongside freedom riders, activists alongside generals, and most harrowing, a Napalm victim alongside the most decorated soldier to serve in Vietnam. There’s also the two amazing series: “The Family” for Rolling Stone in 1973, and “Democracy” for the New Yorker 2004, which Avedon was shooting when he died. Looking at the latter only days after the inauguration, the portrait of Barack Obama seems almost out of place alongside images of Karl Rove, John Kerry, and Billionaries for Bush. How far we’ve come.

But the most entertaining element was the huge projection screen photo booth set up, Avedon-style, in the center hall of the museum. Called the Corcoran Portrait Project, it creates an online gallery of images that are taken there by visitors each day. Some of the shots – self-portraits mind you – are really quite beautiful. (See if you can find anyone you recognize in the image below.)