Chefchaouen – Shopping and the Kasbah

If you’re over the crazy blue walls and doors of Chefchaouen, then I suggest you close this now and come back tomorrow… this place has me entranced and this post is all:  blue, blue, and bluer!  🙂

We had a free day today to potter around this gorgeous little town and decided we would have a lazy start to the day today.  Attempted to sleep in – unsuccessfully which is no real surprise (my back is just not happy, especially seeing I’ve had to leave some medications at home) and we eventually went out to the terrace restaurant for breakfast around 9ish.

This is the view that greeted us from the terrace restaurant at the hotel over breakfast. Our room is the bottom one here – we were given the top floor, but gave it to Tess and Karl when I decided I didn’t really feel like walking up six flights of stairs every time we came and went from our room. After breakfast, we ran into Jake and Tyson, who were chilling out using the wifi in a little fabric lined antechamber off the hotel lobby.  They’re from California, both in college and travelling with their lovely grandparents, Chris and Allan.  They’re really nice guys, though sometimes listening to how they talk to each other makes me laugh.  They’re sure making themselves comfortable… Christian may be the only person we beat to breakfast, he’s from Quebec, and here he is looking out over the view from the terrace restaurant.

Anyway, there were only a few things on the very loose agenda today:  1) Get my phone to a Maroc Telecom and figure out why my SIM card is only ever getting 3G reception, 2) potter around the medina and have a good poke around the handicraft shops, 3) check out the Kasbah this afternoon and 4) buy a djouba (or two)

So we set off trying a different way to get around town through some less touristy worn streets to find the Maroc Telecom.  It was a 15 min walk or so and mostly downhill.  I have to say, Morocco needs to smarten its act up a bit on their stairs – we haven’t really seen a flight of stairs that are ‘regular height’ so it’s quite hard on the knees and ankles when going downhill, especially if you miscalculate the height of the step.

On our way to the telco, we wandered through some more residential type areas, which were just as blue as the main touristy streets. We met a lovely lady at the Maroc Telecom who was able to assist me with my 4G problem, in spite of my halting French.  She told me that my SIM wasn’t properly activated and promptly fixed it.  Service with a smile from a telco – who knew such things even existed?  After we left there, we decided to take a taxi around to the top of the springs where we pretty much started yesterday’s walk – it wasn’t much farther than we had just come, but it was all uphill through the very winding streets, and today was supposed to be a chill day – so we shelled out the exorbitant AUD$3 for a Petit Taxi.  Got to the top and there were men selling photos with their birds… I managed to sneak a picture of the guy’s peacock – but the guy standing beside an ostrich taller than he was, eluded me. And so we wandered through the narrow pedestrian walkways of the medina checking out the wares lining the streets… so many beautiful handmade things, so many beautiful blue alleys and so many very fancy doorways.
If felt like there were fewer people around this morning than yesterday evening – not sure if that was the case or if it was because we were trying to wander through the backstreets a bit more, but every time we stumbled back onto the main thoroughfares, it was not particularly crowded. Very fancy and intricate painting on these doors… my image shrinker has lost a lot of the detail, unfortunately. Souvenir hand-embroidered cloths. Me – standing in a very short, very blue, doorway. There were so many very funky hand-knitted beanies everywhere, and I had to stop myself from buying some – but, I think I’ve finally learned my lesson.  That lesson being – *You live in Brisbane and it’s rarely cold, you do not need twenty bloody woollen beanies collected from every weird place you go to!*. Well, at least the lesson seems to have held up for today, we will see if it makes it intact through the entire trip. This fountain is fed from the beautiful fresh and clean spring that we went to yesterday, though I have no idea what they have been washing here to make it look so unappealing.  Don’t care how clean the water is supposed to be, there’s no way I would fill my bottle from this fountain! Gorgeous altogether! In the back streets looking for interesting alleys and vistas and spied this very steep set of stairs… did a double-take and noticed this little guy: Sitting around like he owned the place.

We stopped for lunch down in the main square.  Coffee thick as mud, chicken shish, and kofka tagine.  Doesn’t take long to decide you could sure get used to this – a long black, a lemon soft drink, two lovingly cooked and very tasty main meals served with free bread, and we were up for a hefty AUD$15.00.

After lunch we went for a walk around the Kasbah and heard some the call to prayer happeining, as it does at regulour intervals during the day.  In this town, it seems to set the local dogs off.  And we heard these two, barking along – from above!  Took a momen to spot them and I have no idea how they got up there! Gorgeous facade on a local school: We then made our way into the Kasbah to have a look around.  The Kasbah in Chefchaouen was built in the 15thC and in contast to the blue city, it is terracotta-brown in appearance.  The Chefchaouen Kasbah contains a lovely Andalusian-style garden and a former prison. This prision reminds me of the one Kevin Costner finds himself detained in when captured by the Moors while on Crusade in the terribly historically inaccurate, but somewhat lovealbe film, (thanks Alan Rickman) Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (c.1990 something). Looking out from the prison to the Andaluscian gardens. Amazingly there are at least half a dozen huge and very established gum trees in the garden.  They might seem like a good idea, but I have a feeling if one of them comes down, they are giong to create one helluva mess of the ancient walls.  The Center for Research and Andalusian Studies is also here and currently undergoing renovations, so we could only see the lower levels at the moment.

After leaving the Kasbah, we went hunting for djubbas.  We saw some lovely wool ones, and for some reason the Sales Dude brought out this short pom pom’d thing for Mr K to try.  Swing and a miss, Mr Sales Dude. After that it was back through the mall by which time the buskers, touts, and generally annoying people trying to get your money had all started to turn out, and we decided it was time to head back to the hotel for a bit of rest before dinner with whoever turned out to be around at the time. 

We had a lovely, fairly chill day.  I love this town, it is visually stunning and there is lots of fun little alleys and back streets to explore.  I would definitely come back here and would happily stay at the Dar Echaouen again.  All round a wonderful place.

Tomorrow, however, is going to be somewhat hectic.  We have a bus ride to Tangier, followed by a city tour, a meal with a local family and then an overnight train to Marrakech… am doubting the sanity of this – but hoping it won’t be too bad.

Transit to Chefchaouen

This morning we left Fez behind and set off in a private bus (thank fuck for that – the original itinerary said we’d be on public transport!) for Chefchaouen. The private bus was so we could stop here and there and check out a few things on the way, have a picnic lunch somewhere and take our time… it’s not my preference to turn a 4 hour drive into a 6 hour one, but if it saves us from squishing in with 50 or more, and a driver who’s likely on his phone and smoking while whipping around the mountains on the local bus, then I’m down with that.

We had a few photo stops on the way, this is one of the water reservoir dams that feeds Fez.  You can see the waterline is way down on ‘what it is supposed to be at this time of year’. We also made a stop at an orange orchard so we could buy a few fresh oranges for our picnic.  The oranges here are lovely, you can get large, cheap glasses of fresh orange juice in restaurants everywhere and the juice tastes slightly more like mandarins than the oranges at home. Everytime we get into the countryside, I can’t believe how green everything is…. the grass is lush and green, the trees are green, the stock looks fat and healthy… the drought at home is quickly brought into stark contrast. Another stop we made was at an olive press co-op.  Some of the smaller local farmers don’t have the expensive machinery required to press olives, so they bring their harvest here and their bags are numbered.  They then wait their turn and put their olives through the press.  The air felt thick and kinda slimy… the ground is literally dripping in olive oil.I actually disllike olives, which is weird for me as I usually love savoury and salty foods.  The smell here was getting to me quite a bit.  Bags of olives belonging to different farmers. A couple of the men who worked here – their clothes are soaked through with olive oil, their hands and faces black with oily gunk.  This must be one of the few largely automated processes we have seen in Morocco so far… until now, it seemed like nearly everything is done by hand.
The first press olive oil is thick and green. Everyone was offered a bit of bread to try it, along side other oils that had been processed for the second time and third time. I quite like my extra virgin olive oil, but not being a fan of things that actually taste like olives, I gave it a miss (good thing that turned out to be – at least two in our group said they paid for it as it went right through them and they were running for the bathroom a few hours later). Anyway, back on the bus and a few kilometers down the road we stopped for a picnic lunch. Before leaving Fez, we went to an enormous supermarket and all picked up some tidbits for lunch.  We had some very tasty sandwiches and wraps with meats, cheeses, nuts, dates, figs etc. We even managed to buy some drinks so many had picked up some beers to have with lunch. Hay stacks for the winter.  Everywhere, you could see enormous rows of prickly pear.  They use it for a few different purposes – hedgerows are grown to make fencing to keep their animals in.  The plant itself is eaten in some dishes, and the flowers are used for a natural dye.  At home it’s a noxious weed. About another hour or so down the road and we arrived at Chefchaouen.  Chefchaouen is nestled between two mountain peaks – the word itself actually means ‘two mountian horns’ – and is located at 560m above sealevel, about 70kms from the Mediterranean to the north and 130kms from the Atlantic to the west. From this lookout we could see some glimpses of the blue walls this city is so famous for. We arrived at our hotel Darechaouen and were greeted with cups of Moroccan mint tea and date cookies while they sorted the rooms out.

We found ourselves being escorted to a lovely suite room with a large living room attached and a huge ensuite.  Very nice!

After everyone had settled in, we went for a bit of an orientation walk around the town.  Firstly up to see the mountain spring that feeds the town with fresh water.
After the winter snow melts, this spring will have twice as much water pouring from it. Directly to the left of these four ladies was a bench with four men, presumably their husbands… “What you talking about?” – “Shopping” … “What you talking about?” – “Football”

Chefchaouen was founded in 1471 as a small kasbah (fortress) to fight the Portuguese invasions of northern Morocco.  Many local tribal people, Berbers and Ghomara peoples, as well as Moriscos and Jews, settled here after the Spanish Reconquista in the medieval period.  In the early 20thC (c1920) the Spanish seized the city to form part of Spanish morocco.  Spanish troops imprisoned local leaders in the kasbah for several years and there is a decidedly Spanish influence to a lot of the local architecture and food etc.
The blue walls are what draws the tourists to town – it makes a stunning backdrop for photographs and is reminiscent of the blue-trimmed whitewashed walls of Santorini or Mykonos.  No one is entirely sure why the walls are painted blue – there are several theories though.  One popular theory is that the blue keeps the mosquitos away, another is that the Jews introduced the blue when they took refuge here from Hitler’s regime in the 1930s.  Another is that the blue paint was brought down as leftover paint from what was used to paint fishing boats to the north.  And yet another theory is that the blue symbolizes the sky and the heaven to serve as a reminder to lead a spiritual life.  However, some locals apparently say that the town mandated walls were to be primarily painted blue simply to attract tourists at some point int he 1970s… which while far less whimsical, is probably far more likely.
And it works.  Chefchaouen is a very popular tourist destination, partly due to its proximity to Tangier.  There are over two hundred riad and hotels to cater for the influx of tourists – once largely catering to the European tourists (lots of Spanish arrive here at Easter and Christmas holidays), but now more commonly the Chinese tourists are here for their photos too.  

The region is also known for its native handicrafts that are not seen anywhere else in Morocco, particularly Berber style woollen garments, rugs and woven blankets. Want to see my scoot?! The surrounding countryside is well known as a prolific source of ‘kief’ – marijuana, and as we walked the town you would semiregularly get a strong whiff of pot as you rounded a corner or walked past a shop. There are public fountains dotting the town that are gravity fed directly from the mountain spring – hundreds of years old, they have seen a lot of use. There are quaint little alleyways in every direction, most of them steep and because of the fountains located around the place, most of the walkways were slightly wet and rather slippery. Chefchaouen is also knowns for it’s remarkably varied and popular blue doors… so many gates and doors everywhere – some simple, some elaborately painted, some enormous and some so small I have to duck to go in. This (below) is one of the most famous photo spots in the city… Samirr warned us that if there were Chinese tourists here, we would ‘have to come back next year’ rather than wait for them to finish taking their photos.  The locals are completely over the habit of Chinese tourists to stand in front of any famous object and take fifty photos of themselves in a myriad of very posed positions (tbh, so am I – Iceland last year was a real test of patience on that front).

When we arrived here of course there were a handful of Chinese tourists hogging ‘the spot’ for their selfies and posing away for their friends with the camera… as soon as one moves out of the way, another will quickly jump in.  Samirr’s shoulders slumped and he said, ‘I guess we have to come back next year’.  Instead, as one (totally overdressed Chinese lady) was moving out of shot and another was about to move in, I very loudly and firmly said to their group ‘Thank you! Thank you!  No people for a moment please!’ and unexpectedly, it worked! They all held back while our group took a few photographs of the street with no people.  Samirr was impressed at my crowd management skills, our small tour group was pleased to have their chance at photos sans Chinese tourists, and I was simply stunned at the amazing beautiful blue colours of the steps on this tiny little street that attracts people from all over the world.

As we walked away from the area, everyone was thanking me for clearing the street, but after last year in Iceland where we would stand around patiently waiting for 10 to 15 minutes or longer, waiting for self-absorbed arseholes to get out of the way – I give up.  You obviously need to speak up or you just end up wasting time or missing out…  patented Mommy Voice for the win.

A little futher we came to an area of town selling pigments for the local craftsmen. I know it looks like the town is nearly empty in most of these photos – but this is just my judicious sense of timing.  Pick a spot and wait for the person to move right out of frame and *click* before someone moves into the left of frame.  But trust me, there were plenty of people around and the medina only became busier as the sun went down and the locals came to town for the restaurants and clubs.

The original 15thC kasbah which we may go visit tomorrow… The town’s main square, which is pretty much at the bottom of the steep medina.  Still.. there were further little alleyways winding further down the mountain and we were diving back into them to find a Berber carpet shop.  As tradition dictates, one must go carpet/rug shopping when in Turkey or Pakistan or India or Morocco and well, nearly everywhere from North Africa to the Subcontinent!
Abdullah, our host offered us all sweet Moroccan mint tea… very sweet this time and quite refreshing.  This is also part of the tradition, coming right before the selling!  In Turkey, I think they have much more success with the selling part, as they often ply customers with beer and raki instead.  Here, have a buzz, buy a rug! The group waiting for the rugs to start falling. And so they did… Abdullah*, threw down about fifty rugs in total, all of them locally made by Berber tribes, and in a wide variety of colours and sizes.  These rugs are unlike any I’ve seen before, predominantly kilim style and most of them asymmetrical in design – which makes me twitch like all giddyup.  So I was pretty safe from any unplanned rug purchases.

(*We were fairly confident that Abdullah was stoned off his gourd which was vaguely amusing.) Anyway after our rug shopping experience, where no one found anything they liked, we went to a restaurnt called, Restaurant Bab Ssour, for a lovely rooftop dining and some delicious local tagine dishes. The view across the medina from the rooftop terrace. Goat cheese is a speciality local dish, served with balsamic.  It was really good and had a smooth creamy texture.
Goat tagine with plums!  The meat was just falling off the bone and absolutely delicious. After our long day of driving followed by what was supposed to be a short orientation walk (6kms), we head back to the hotel for a vodka tonic and crashed in our big luxurious bed.

Volubilis and Meknes

Slept so crap last night.. was asleep around 2230 and unfortunately was awake at 0330ish and even though I was thoroughly exhausted, I just could not get back to sleep… probably due to sharing a bed, the same being rock hard, or just that I was in shite tonnes of pain (or a combination thereof), but I slept like crap.  Tossed and turned for what felt like a few hours and eventually dozed back off, only to be woken by the call to prayer going out over Moulay Idriss at 0621.  So much for that 0700 alarm.  We got our act together, packed our bags and went down to have some breakfast before heading to off to see the anicient Roman ruins of Volubilis which was about ten minutes away. Volubilis is a partly excavated Roman city not far from Meknes – it is commonly referred to as the anicient capital of the kingdom of Mauretania.  It was apparently settled around 200BC and built using slave labor obtained from the local Berber population. The town grew rapidly under Roman rule – they really know how to build – from about the  1stC  AD onwards and became a town of about 10,000 people that covered about 100 acres contained in roughly 2.5kms of city walls. The city had quite a few large public buildings by 200AD, including a basilica, a temple complete with animal sacrifice altars and triumphal arch. The town owed much of its wealth and prosperity to their olive industry which enabled an upper class of patrons to indulge in building fancy town-houses with fabulously large and ornate mosaic floors-many of which have been quite well preserved. A terrace that would have been an open courtyard for dining with lovely dolphins in the mosaic floors.

Orpheus’ House – contained an enormous mosaic depicting Orpheus surrounded by exotic animals from Africa. The city eventually fell along when the entire Roman Empire did around 285AD.  It was never reclaimed by Rome due to remote location and the Empire’s inability to defend their south-west borders.  The Berbers who built the town as slaves came to inhabit the town for the following 700 years – initially as a Latin/Christian community, before it became an early Islamic settlement.  Roughtly by 1000AD, Volubilis was abandoned as the state power was relocated to nearby Fes. Quite a lot of the local Berber population moved to Moulay Idriss Zerhoun where we stayed last night.

No visit to acient Roman ruins would be complete without a guide obligingly telling you where the latrines were and how the water systems worked: Being made of natural stone rather than ceramic, the mosaics are in incredible condition given their age and the disruptions to the civilization here. A reconstructed olive press that shows how the town made much of its wealth: We arrived at the site very early and were the first visitors, so we had the place predominantly to ourselves… there was a very moody early morning fog that lifted about half an hour after we arrived.
(above) Sacrificial altar out front of the Capitiline Temple looking towards the Basilica.
(below) A view of the Basilica from behind the main facade
The tops of ancient columns seem to be a favoured place for swallows and storks to build their nests… Front facade of the Basilica The town, while overrun with wilderness and dissued, remained substantially intact until they a devastating earthquake in the 1700s that tore through Lisborn down into North Africa.  It was not long after this that the site was plunders by various local Moroccan rulers for stone to use in the building of nearby Meknes. It was then another century before the site was definitively identified as the ancient city of Volubilis.
Interior of the Basilica Captioline Temple When the French were exercising colonial rule over Morocco, roughly half the town was excavated, which is when the amazing mosaics were discovered, along with several of the public buildings and obviously wealthy homes. Today it is another one of those cool UNESCO World Heritage Sites, having been listed as “an exceptionally well-preserved example of a large Roman colonial town on the fringes of the Empire”. Arch of Caracalla (Triumphal Arch) – one of the coolest thigns about this arch is that it faces directly towards Rome.  They also know quite a bit about what it would have originally looked like, thanks to the inscription on the stone itself… six large bronze horses used to adorn this archt

The inscription reads (after the abbreviations have been expanded):

IMPERATORI CAESARI MARCO AVRELLIO ANTONINO PIO FELICI AVGVSTO PARTHICO MAXIMO BRITTANICO MAXIMO GERMANICO MAXIMO  PONTIFICI MAXIMO TRIBVNITIA POTESTATE XX IMPERATORI IIII CONSVLI IIII PATRI PATRIAE PROCONSVLI ET IVLIAE AVGVSTAE PIAE FELICI MATRI  AVGVSTI ET CASTRORVM ET SENATVS ET PATRIAE RESPVBLICA VOLVBILITANORVM OB SINGVLAREM EIVS ERGA VNIVERSOS ET NOVAM SVPRA OMNES RETRO PRINCIPES INDVLGENTIAM ARCVM  CVM SEIVGIBVS ET ORNAMENTIS OMNIBVS INCOHANTE ET DEDICANTE MARCO AVRELLIO

SEBASTENO PROCVRATORE AVGVSTI DEVOTISSIMO NVMINI EIVS A SOLO FACIENDVM CVRAVIT

or, in translation:

For the emperor Caesar, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus [Caracalla], the pious, fortunate Augustus, greatest victor in Parthia, greatest victor in Britain, greatest victor in Germany, Pontifex Maximus, holding tribunician power for the twentieth time, Emperor for the fourth time, Consul for the fourth time, Father of the Country, Proconsul, and for Julia Augusta, the pious, fortunate mother of the camp and the Senate and the country, because of his exceptional and new kindness towards all, which is greater than that of the principes that came before, the Republic of the Volubilitans took care to have this arch made from the ground up, including a chariot drawn by six horses and all the ornaments, with Marcus Aurelius Sebastenus, procurator, who is most deeply devoted to the divinity of Augustus, initiating and dedicating it.

A somewhat damaged mosaic depicting the Goddess DIana… Diana herself has been removed from the mosaic, most likely by the French who took many artefacts from the site and sent them back to France. This wonderful, large terrace space depicts the Twelve Trials of Hercules.
Shooting lions, wrestling pheasants, that sort of thing…A spa area which had a fountain in the middle and visitors could sit in the semicircular cut out spaces and enjoy the fresh waters from the fountains.So many gorgeously preserved mosaics – I don’t think I’ve seen anything this impressive since Ephesus.
The Four Seasons depicted in the floors of the House of Hercules. The Decumanus Maximus, looking south-west Attached to the site is a relatively new interpretive centre with some artefacts that were found on the site.  Unfortunately, much of the site’s treasures have landed in the various museums of Europe, but there were some interesting objects housed here, including these steles from the Mauritanian to the Roman period.  A stele was a small monument which depicts a character in relief or engraved often showing offerings in their hands.

We had an amazing and very impressive visit to Volubulis, even if our guide was playing it pretty fast and loose with the classical history to keep the group entertained, and to have a site like that all to yourself for a couple of hours is simply wonderful… there were about three full-sized (50 peoples) tour buses pulling up as we were leaving.

After our visit to the ruins, we piled into some local transport and head for Meknes. Meknes was originally built as a military settlement and is a large walled city known for its imperial past. In the 17thC Sultan Moulay Ismail designed it as his capital and turned it into quite an impressive city.  The city is predominantly Spanish-Moorish (?) in design and it has an unusual blend of Islamic and European architecture including enormous courtyards and its famed, elaborately decorated gates.

The Dar El Makhzen Royal Palace The Royal Palace still belongs to the current royal family and is not open to visitors.  Inside we believe there are lavish buildings and a golf course for the King and his visitors.
Outside, rows of palms and Seville orange trees… A modern monument celebrating the water bearers who wear the funny outfits.
The Sahrij Swani – enormous granaries and stables that were built to support the military – the stables used to house some 3000 horses at the height of the Alaouite dynasty. The Bab El Khemis Gate Built in 1693, near the Riad and Mellah quarters – we saw a heavily overloaded truck speed through this gate. It barely scraped through, we all did a sharp intake of breath as it screamed towards it.  Whoever packed up that truck was obviously very familiar with the size of the gate!  The very famous Bab El-Mansour gate, covered in mosaics, tile work and koranic inscriptions – built in 1732. The history of the gate tells us that on completion of the gate when the Sultan inspected it, he asked the architect El-Mansour if he could do better, El-Mansour felt compelled to say ‘yes’, probably anticipating another commission.  Instead, the Sultan was infuriated and had El-Mansour immediately executed. While I love the weird integration of Islamic and Roman elements in the design – it was less than impressive to learn that the columns were pilfered from Volubilis.  Across the road from the gate is an enormous town square – currently occupied by snake charmers (yes, actual snake charmers, though I don’t think they were very good – their snakes were mostly just laying around in the sun), and men with little monkeys on chains dressed in soccer team shirts that they were literally throwing onto hapless tourists to take photos with, so they could then demand money from the unsuspecting visitors. Most of our group is very well travelled and didn’t fall for this nonsense. Poor little monkeys.  🙁 Surrounding the square was an endless row of restaurants and people selling tiles and ceramics and all sorts. The green-roofed doorway to right of this picture was the entrance to the undercover food market, which was full of shops selling spices, dates, figs, olives, pickles and down the smelly end – unrefrigerated meat. Olives, olives and more olives. Across the other side of the square, away from the food markets was a maze of little alleyways that were more focused on the textile industries – stores full of silk, braids, garments, and garish fabric.  You could hear the busy clatter of old embroidery machines around every corner.

We wound our way through the alleys to our designated lunch spot to try a camel burger… honestly, the camel was tasty, but the way it was prepared it could have been lamb (or horse or donkey) for all we knew!  It was made into squashed meatballs that had been simmered in some sort of tomato/onion something or other.  Very tasty but not particularly distinctive.

After lunch, we made our way back to the train station to catch a train to Fez.  Catching trains here has been a bit fun.  Samirr has been buying us tickets with allocated seating, but each time we get on the trains (juggling our luggage as we go) we have found ourselves fronting up to our seats and there are locals sitting in them.  It seems the habit here is to buy a 3rd class ticket – no seating – and then go find yourself a seat in the 2nd class carriages and hope for the best.  Some move immediately with good grace as soon as you turn up and say ‘excuse me, that is my seat’ and brandish your ticket, and others like today will just flatly refuse to ‘understand’ you.  After a long day walking around and with an hour stuck on the train to Fez, none of us wanted to end up standing in the aisle.  C’est la vie.  We eventually made it to Fez with only one crotchety old dude sitting in among our group who refused to budge from the seat he hadn’t paid for.

We made it to our hotel – the tautological, Hotel Fez Inn.  Which is quite a lovely and well-appointed place and it has… *drumroll please*… a BAR!  Needless to say almost as soon as people had squared away their stuff and had a quick shower, we were all down in the bar settled with a drink.
Whereupon, it became rapidly apparent that the group was… err, apprehensive about the restaurant we were headed to that night.  Intrepid runs several different styles of trip – Comfort – Basic – Physical and Family trips.  And our fearless leader seemed to be leading us to what we could call, ‘TOURIST RESTAURANTS’.  After such a lovely and authentic meal at the guesthouse last night, the last thing everyone wanted was to find themselves at another overpriced tourist restaurant with bland ordinary food.  So… the peasants (that’s us) decided to revolt.  I popped upstairs to change my shoes and grab my handbag and pretty much expected when I came back down that the group’s desire for a more authentic Moroccan dining experience would have been communicated to Samirr.

Instead, Mr K and I came back down to the bar and everyone was sitting around making niceties, Samirr was in the seat I had vacated, and I walked in and said, ‘What’s the plan?’  Three people answered, ‘Oh, we were waiting for you.’   Le sigh… So I got to be the grown-up in the room and explain to Samirr that we had really loved the guesthouse but we weren’t keen on another tourist restaurant for dinner.  Samirr was somewhat perturbed (I think his kickback just went out the window) but we really didn’t want to go another place where you pay 100DH for a bland and spiceless tagine dish, 80DH for a salad and 24DH for a Coke Zero, when a local restaurant would offer you something super tasty and spicy for 30DH, 20DH and 8DH respectively.

Ever the professional, Samirr rapidly adjusted the schedule and took us to a ‘meat place’.  Where we all stuffed ourselves on delicious eggplant, spinach dishes, and really tasty grilled chicken, koftas and drumsticks… the restaurant was full of locals – always a good sign – and the owner shoved us in the very back of the restaurant (I think so the visuals of a bunch of tourists eating in his place wouldn’t keep the locals away!).

All up, a very tasty meal with some unsual offerings, which, including drinks and tips, it came to a grand total of 55DH per person compared to the 120DH per person at the first tourist restaurant… but someone else can have the next conversation with Samirr when the group wants to change the plan!

*nothing to do with anything, but on our way back from the restaurant, there was a god awful stench, and I happened to look down into a basement under an apartment building and see a chicken farm… urgh! People were living right upstairs from this, but at least they could buy fresh eggs right on the spot.  😐 !

 

Rabat to Moulay Idriss

Got up bright and early – well actually it wasn’t actually bright, it doesn’t really get bright here until about 0830 at the moment so it was ‘got up dark and early’ – this morning to pack our bags, grab a quick breakfast and hit the road.  We had a short ride in a private minibus to the Casablanca train station where we were heading to Rabat.  The plan was to spend the day in Rabat before grabbing a late lunch and then back to the train station to move on towards Mendes this afternoon.

Oddly enough, things went smoothly.  Mr K and I had bets on which group members would be the lollygaggers holding everyone up and we were both wrong!  Everyone was prompt and on time and it felt like our leader, Samirr was the one holding us up.  

We made it to Rabat around 10:00 and stashed all our luggage in a storage room in a nearby restaurant so we could all head off and explore the city.  Armed with a seriously dodgy map – you know the kind they make for tourists with little pictures on it and no scale so you have no idea how far away things are – we set out with a little too little information and a little too much optimism. 

For no sooner had we gotten about a km from all our things, it began to lightly drizzle.  Ho hum, so much for checking the weather report before we left!  I thanked past me for NOT throwing out those purple leather sneakers in Berlin (like I promised myself I would) and we just kept on wandering down through the marketplaces towards the Rabat Casbah… aka the Kasbah of the Udayas. 

The Casbah/Kasbah (it’s a tomayto/tomarto thing) is located at the mouth of the Bou Regreg river opposite Salé. The Kasbah is an 11th century fort with an incredibly long history that I won’t bore you with (go Google it if you are interested), but it remains an incredibly popular place to go check out the local history, as well as to get good views of the Bou Regreg, the Sale and the Atlantic Ocean.  It is also known for its beautiful blue and white walled winding streets, and the Andalusian Gardens.

It was a very cute part of Rabat to go wandering through – it has approximately 3000 residents currently, and possibly about 500 cats judging by what we saw today.  They’re everywhere, and all very well fed and happy looking critters.

t was a very cute part of Rabat to go wandering through – it has approximately 3000 residents currently, and possibly about 500 cats judging by what we saw today.  They’re everywhere, and all very well fed and happy looking critters. Andalusian Gardens

 

After the Kasbah, we went for a walk first through some markets and then along the river to find the Mausoleum of Mohammed V which is located directly opposite the Hassan Tower.  The mausoleum contains the tombs of King Hassan II and two of his sons.  The building is an example of the modern Alauouite dynasty architecture, having been built in 1971.  The late Hassan II was interred there after his death in 1999.

The Hasssan Tower which is directly opposite the mausoleum is actually the unfinished minaret of a mosque that was intended to be built in Rabat during the third Caliphate of Almohad in 1195.  The tower was planned to be the tallest/largest minaret in the world, along with an enormous mosque which was supposed to contemporarily be the largest mosque in the world, (what is it with the male preoccupation with size, Mr Ismay? Are you familiar with the works of Mr Freud?), however, when Abu Yusuf al-Mansur died barely four years later in 1199, construction on the mosque ceased. The tower, which was supposed to be some 86m tall only made it to 44m before the construction was abandoned.  All that remains today are the tower and the beginnings of some walls, and some 348 columns that were part way through being constructed.

By this point of our day, I was getting a little WTF?  As mentioned earlier, our dodgy tourist map hadn’t really laid out for us how far apart things were, and I had inadvertently been walking about 9kms on shitty uneven cobblestones for nearly three hours and my hips and lower back were getting decidedly unhappy with me.  So we decided to take a local tram to find St Peter’s Cathedral which is located at Golan Square right in downtown Rabat.  It was only built in 1919 and is in a rather bland Art Deco style… I know – I am decidedly hard to impress when it comes to churches and architecture, and this one left very little impression on me. It was designed by someone called Adrien Laforgue… and quite frankly Adrien, I feel you let us all down. When you have the sort of dish that the Catholic Church is prepared to throw at a thing like a new cathedral, you really should have been able to come up with something a bit more … well, just a bit more?!

After the briefest of visits to the church, we head back down to the cafe where our bags were stashed to find the rest of our tour group had pretty much beaten us back.  It seems they made it to the Kasbah (we kept running into several of them there) none of them bothered to go check out the mausoleum, the Hassan Tower or the St. Peter’s Cathedral… :/   when did we become the eager beaver, see all the things, tourists???  Oh well, will have to moderate our sightseeing in future because my fucking feet and hips were seriously not happy, Jan.

Anyway, we had a bit of lunch, which cleverly we had all ordered before we left for our walk, and made our way back to the train station.  There we caught a train to Mendes – about 2hrs 45mins from Rabat.  The train was clean and comfy, though the locals had a really shitty and fluid relationship to seat numbers, and we had to boot someone out of some of our allocated seats.  Whipping through the countryside was amazing… I have always associated Morocco with a desert landscape, and it is (in parts), but after having travelled quite a bit these last few months domestically in Australia through some of the most crunchy-looking, dusty, dry and dirty brown landscapes, I was not prepared for how lush and green the Moroccan countryside is.  It’s positively gorgeous.  Which makes me very sad for home right now, knowing that half the eastern seaboard is on fire.  :’(

Anyway, we arrived Mendes and here, we picked up some local taxis to take us to the town of Moulay Idriss Zerhoun.  The town is spread over two hills at the base of Mount Zerhoun (elevation is about 500m), and is considered a holy town by the Moroccan people.  The town was started here in 789 by Moulay Idriss I who Brough Islam wit him and started a dynasty.  He also was the founder of the town of Fez (that will be tomorrow’s trick).

The town is quite small and compact, having about 1000 residents living in its winding narrow streets.  The entire town itself feels like a Medina (old medieval part of a modern town), and has sections of it that are considered sacred to Muslims such that non-Muslims may not enter.  We are staying in a guesthouse here for just one night, and the walk up to the place was incredibly hard considering I had already completely overdone it for one day.

Once we were here, I had to pull the pin on going for a walk around the town to see the buildings, the bakery, the mosque etc… instead Mr K took a pile of photos of me – primarily of the town at sunset – so that I wouldn’t get the total FOMOs.   I had to kick off my shoes and rest my lower back, which totally sucks!  Thankfully this seem to be one of the longest and most intense days on our itinerary, so it should get a bit easier from here.

After the walking tour of town and the sunset had been seen – our hosts made us the most delicious traditional Moroccan feast made of all local dishes and it was amazing!  There was locally made flat-ish bread, a meatball and egg Tagline dish, some curried chicken, a vegetable couscous dish, plus fresh single pressed olive oil from nearby fields, and homemade chilli past to spice it all up.  So much yum, and all so healthy with no preservatives and no sugary crap hiding in your food!  Makes me feel like a dreadful failure for neglecting my Emile Henry Tagine all these years… will have to rectify that when I get home!

After such a bloody long day, I am enjoying this heat pack as I write this up a little too much and can feel myself yawning like mad even though it’s not yet 22:00.  We don’t have a particularly early start tomorrow, but I have a feeling it’s going to be early to bed tonight as I am ready to crash!

Tomorrow a short tour of Mendes, and then onward to Fez… where I will have to try my hardest to STOP Mr K from deciding he needs to buy a fez in Fez.  *insert rolling of eyes here*