Next up was Rabat Palace and Mouseleum and now this place is starting to look more like the Morocco we were expecting. The architecture is white & blue cities within ochre fortifed walls and there are mosaics and decorative copper and carpets everywhere.
The driving is also quite something to behold. There is every type of vehicle you can imagine on the roads, with barely more than a centre line to direct it all. But from tour buses to laden little donkies it all just works; even the sheep & goats being herded by their shephards seem to know to keep to the shoulder of the road. They do however have lots of police in very spiffy uniforms, with speed guns and just like at home, the locals recognise this as nothing more than revenue raising and not just for the state either! Our driver had a very friendly chat and a hand shake with one policeman and a 10 dirham (AUD$1.10) "exchange" was all that was required to make the 180 Euro (AUD$300 - a huge amount of money here) fine go away.
Still very much the tourists today we did a flying pass past Meknes taking in the Square and the three fortification walls, they also had a mega impressive granary from the 1600's. Yeah sounds boring I know but this King really did think of everything!
Finally arrived at Volebulis (believe it or not, it sounds like Volleyball-us just spken quickly) This place has serious Roman Ruins, 2000 years old and far more accessible than any in Rome. You have to hand it to the Romans. First of all they picked an amazing location. This is part of Africa is not sandy desert. It is lush green countryside, gently rolling hills with some impressive looking mountains (the Atlas) in the background. The land is very fertile, they grow and mine everything so Morocco is a reasonably wealthy country. So you have this lovely scenery reminiscent of Tuscany with the ruins of a city that once held around 35,000 in absolute luxury. These guys had running hot and cold water, heated floors, central heating, saunas & jaccuzzi, shopping malls (yes really - a mall with over 180 stores) with every type of store you could want, olive oil presses and not to mention plenty of black slaves from Southern Africa to give them oil massages!
Spending the next couple of days here in Fes so walked the streets last night for dinner. We love to people watch wherever we go and it was very interesting watching in Fes. It's such a mix of Middle Eastern, African & European (in the minority) and that comes across in everything from people to the food and architecture. The hotel is gorgeous, with it,s own internal courtyard with mosaic tiling everywhere, walls & floors and carved timber roofs, fountain, plunge pool, lemon tree and tea rooms, it's a really quiet and peaceful place away from the madness of the streets outside. One sound it couldn't keep out was the call to prayer at 4am this morning! It was bad enough when one mosque got it's sound system cranked up but when once a few of them got started it was quite a cacophony! The other thing that's a bit rioutous is our room decoration! Check out the photo!
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