Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran in Morocco

I wanted to see my friends and I wanted to see Morocco, so I decided to go there. I flew into Casablanca on March 8th and Eric met me at the airport. My checked bag, on the other hand, did not meet me. Fortunately I had packed all the essentials, like a Greek New Testament and the complete works of Shakespeare, in my carry-on, and only auxiliary items such as clothes and deodorant were somewhere en route. So instead of leaving Casablanca that day as planned, we were left with the other unlucky folks waiting for a visa to a Lisbon, waiting in Casablanca...

We walked around the city that day, which, despite being the largest city in Morocco, didn't seem to have much to see. There were lots of kids playing soccer,


and of course:

Rick's was proudly celebrating its fourth anniversary, making us wonder why no one had capitalized on this obvious idea for 62 years.

The next day we went to the huge Hassan II Mosque, which is on the ocean and supposedly has the world's tallest minaret, at 210 meters high.



We were allowed to tour it with a guide, but didn't get to witness its retractable roof in action; they only open it up on major holidays.

Below the main hall are rooms for washing. They didn't turn the water on for us either.




You can see up to the main room through some windows in the ceiling.

There are also hamams (bathhouses), which looked cool but had never actually been used. I hope to be back when they are opened to the public. Here's Eric and the pool.

That afternoon we went back to airport to retrieve my bag, having arrived after its leisurely journey from Minneapolis, and got on the train to Meknes, where Eric lives. At the Rabat stop Molly, Aaron, and Nicole got on. We hadn't seen them since June (and Nicole since May) but it felt just like yesterday that we were on a train to Moscow or Vladimir together. We had dinner at Eric's favorite pizza place in Meknes and then had a typical crazy party night playing Set.

The next morning we had breakfast at a cafe


and then went to Fes, which is less than an hour from Meknes. Fes is the oldest city in Morocco and has a huge medina (walled old city) that you could easily get lost in.

The streets in the medina were narrow and windy, lined with shops and filled with people leading donkeys around or holding immobilized chickens by the legs.














Here is a guy carving inscriptions on gravestones.


And a tannery.

There's a beautiful mosque inside the medina.



The traditional Moroccan garment is called a jalaba - it's a long robe with a hood - and we saw lots of people wearing them. The sweet thing about them is that they make guys look like Jedi knights.


We ate lunch at a rooftop cafe in the medina. We had bread with really good lentil dipping sauce and other traditional Moroccan food like couscous, tajine (slow-cooked vegetables and meat), grilled meat, and mint tea that's about half sugar.


The view from the cafe:


After lunch we walked around outside the medina and saw a graveyard and some ruins.







And here's one of the ubiquitous pictures of the king. It is against the law for Moroccans to criticize him.


We came back to Meknes in time for Eric to teach that evening and then hung out with some of his Moroccan friends and a couple who teaches at the same school.

Well, this is only a couple days into the trip but I better publish this post or something will crash and I'll lose everything. More to come soon.