We'll Always Have Rabat

[This is the third and final post about my Moroccan trip. If you haven't read any and you want to do things right, start at the beginning. I decided to add this map of Morocco to my blog, since I would have had no idea where these cities are had I not visited them. Now you can all follow along.]

Early Thursday morning Eric and I went to Rabat, which is the capital of Morocco, to see Molly, Aaron and Nicole. We met up with them on the beach.

Molly is a member of the local surf club, and she invited us to come surfing with her. I had never gone surfing before, but where is a better place to learn than Morocco? We put on wet suits

and headed out to the beach. We were glad to see that we were passing by this very rocky area and to a calmer spot past a breaker. The waves were still big, though.

For awhile we went out and just rode in on our stomachs on the surfboards, then the instructor got us lined up on the beach and drilled us in how to stand up on the board. He made us do the move about 20 times before letting us go back into the water. Getting up was a pretty hard, but there were a few times when I got up long enough to think, "Sweet, I'm really surfing!" before slipping off into the water. None of us looked like experts, but we came in exhilarated, happy, and hungry.



We went to Molly's apartment, which is very close to the beach. The neighborhood is called Oudaya, and a lot of the streets look like this (this one is Molly's street):

Molly and her roommate live on the second floor of an apartment. The central room has no ceiling

and a big hole in the floor so the sun can shine all the way to the first level.

I asked her what they do when it rains, and she said, "We squeegee."

From the roof you can see the ocean and other parts of the city.

We ate lunch at a crepe place near this central street

and did some shopping in the medina. I couldn't resist buying a jalaba; I hope to bring the fashion to America. I bought a tajine (the pot used to cook the dish of the same name) in this little shop.

In the afternoon Eric and Molly left to teach. Aaron, Nicole, and I went to a place in the city called Chellah. This site has ancient Roman ruins as well as remains of a mosque and tombs built by a Merinid sultan in the 14th century. The combination of overgrown Roman and Islamic ruins, storks and their nests covering the trees, stray cats wandering all around, and the heavy scent of flowers and plants gave the place a mysterious and surreal feel.





Soon after this excursion Nicole and I got on the train back to Meknes. We both tried on my new jalaba. If someone gives me like $25 I'll wear this out to a place of your choice.


In the morning we took a taxi to Azrou, a Berber town about 50 kilometers from Meknes. The city is named after this rock:

From there we took another taxi to an even smaller town in the mountains called Ain Leuh. The taxi drivers everywhere we went seemed to have a complicated system for who drives where. Here they are doing their calculations.

This is the taxi stand in Ain Leuh.

For travel within cities there are Petit Taxis, smallish cars that could easily fit four passengers but only allow three, no exceptions. To go from city to city you take a Grand Taxi, always an old white Mercedes Benz as far as I saw. These require six passengers (double that of the Petit Taxis, and certainly not double the space), which means two squeezed in the front and four in the back. This system didn't seem to make too much sense, but the good thing is that the Petit Taxis are metered and the Grand Taxis have fixed prices, so you never had to haggle or feel like you were getting ripped off.

There was pretty much one main road in Ain Leuh and we walked along it, following a guy on a donkey going about the same pace.

We couldn't decipher the meaning of this abstract mural,

but we liked that the internet cafe was reaching out especially to us.

As we reached the outskirts of town we veered off the road and up into the woods. We found this serene grove of flowering trees

and a place we could look out over the town.

We climbed higher, hoping to spot some Barbary Apes which live in the region. Despite our monkey calls, we didn't attract any of them. We walked for awhile until we were looking out over this landscape.

Then we turned around and followed a road back into town. Good thing we were walking and not in a car.

We went back to Azrou and ate lunch at a cafe. Since Friday is the day Moroccans traditionally eat couscous, we ordered that. Here it is, piled high with chicken and vegetables.

On Saturday Nicole went back to Rabat and Eric and I spent the afternoon at the sports club for students sponsored by his school for students\. We played soccer, basketball, and football. The kids wore me out pretty good.
In the evening the school was holding their first public speaking contest. I was really impressed by how well the students spoke English and by the topics they chose - things like illegal immigration, pollution, and self-esteem.

On Sunday we had to go back to Casablanca to be there for my flight early Monday morning. It was hard to even find an open and non-sketchy place to eat in the evening, much less to hang out, so we ended up at Rick's. Everybody comes to Rick's.

It was actually a pretty charming place, designed like the one in the movie, with live jazz playing. And in the area we were sitting the movie was showing nonstop, with subtitles on so you could listen to the live music. We were lucky enough to arrive just as it was starting over, and stayed for the whole thing. Here's looking at you, kid.

Having a Moroccan Good Time (gotta give Lanette credit for that one)

[This is post #2 about my Morocco trip, so if you want to start at the beginning, read the next post first.]


On Tuesday morning we all set out for Volubilis, the ruins of a Roman city first inhabited in the first century AD. Volubilis is set among green fields and mountains, near the town of Moulay Idriss. It is well-preserved (for ruins) and you can clearly see the layout of the city.






It's hard to believe this arch has survived for hundreds of years.


I climbed it.

This is an aqueduct.

Here are the baths. Supposedly the lucky people sat in front and got washed by their servants.


The triumphal arch was built in the third century.


This mosaic shows a guy riding a horse backwards. Pretty awesome.


We ate our bread and cheese lunch on the steps of the basilica.


The pillars behind us were topped with nests, inhabited by storks.



Molly had to teach that evening, so she, Aaron and Nicole headed back to Rabat. Eric and I walked up the road to the little town of Moulay Idriss.



We walked around outside a mosque, peeked inside a bakery, and drank orange juice in the main square before going back to Meknes.



That afternoon and the next day I hung out in Meknes. Meknes is a medium-sized city that was once the capital of Morocco. It's a pretty quite and conservative place, and Eric seemed to know most of the shop owners, cafe waiters, and neighborhood kids. Here is one of the main streets at twilight.


Eric's apartment is near this street, and he has a great view from his balcony.



In the afternoons there were always boys outside playing soccer and girls sitting along the ledge.


You can see that some women and girls cover their heads and some don't. I was told that it's a personal choice and people won't be judged for what they choose.

One evening I saw some younger girls out on this ledge playing school; more specifically, "French lesson". One of the older girls was standing in front of them with a stick, making them repeat "bonjour" and the alphabet. Sometimes she would write something on the sign with chalk and point to it with her stick. Her pupils came up one by one to recite things in front of the class, and eagerly raised their hands when she asked questions. A couple of little boys even joined the class later on, after growing tired of fighting over a soccer ball and spitting at each other. They held the class for at least an hour.

There were orange trees lining the streets. Aaron tried one of these but it wasn't ripe yet.

An Arabic stop sign:

Moroccans speak a Moroccan dialect of Arabic, only partially decipherable with standard Arabic. Most of the news and written material is in standard Arabic, and everyone also speaks French.

It was nice to sit in cafes, drinking coffee with milk, eating croissants with chocolate, and playing chess (chess isn't commonly played in Morocco, and girls don't usually sit in cafes, so we got some looks).


This is Eric's favorite rotisserie chicken place. The name says it all.


On Wednesday we walked to Meknes's medina and main square. On the way we stopped inside a mausoleum where someone important (the founder of Meknes? I can't remember for sure) is buried.


We drank orange juice in the main square. Orange juice in Morocco is always fresh squeezed, even when you order it in a cafe.




Eric had to leave to teach class, and I wandered around in the medina. Almost everyone was selling everyday goods rather than souvenirs for tourists. A lot of guys shouted things to me that I couldn't understand beyond "Bonjour, mademoiselle!" On the way back to the apartment I saw these fields. I don't know what they're growing there in the middle of the city.


And this is across the street:


I couldn't resist, and stopped for an ice cream cone. The weather was really hot. I gotta give the Moroccan McDonald's credit because they serve their ice cream cones in sugar cones rather than cake cones, making them at least three times more tasty than American McDonald's ice cream cones.

That's all for now. Look for more posts in the near future.

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.