Meknes, Morocco

We've spent the last three days in Meknes, which is the longest we've been in one spot so far this trip.

We arrived very early in the morning in Meknes (5:30am!). Fortunately our hotel let us check in early as well, without charging us for the extra day. After showering, we headed out to the medina and souq. The souq wasn't that impressive. However, lunch was great. We had brochettes at an open-air restaurant in the main plaza, Place el-Hedim, watching the scene.

The next day we had a day trip, visiting both the Roman ruins at Volubilis, and the pilgrimage village of Moulay Idriss. We hired a driver for the half-day (Dh300), who of course drove a Mercedes.

I love visiting ruins and Volubilis did not disappoint. It was cool to see the expanse of ruins, spread over 40 hectares!! There were a few houses with cool mosaics still preserved.

Next we headed to Moulay Indriss. We were fortunate to be there on a Saturday, market day. It was nice to wander around the market without being hassled (there were very few tourists). Had lunch from a market stall, a brochette sandwich. Meat (usually beef) is barbecued, and stuffed into a pita-type bread, along with tomatoes, olives, some spices, and sometimes french fries. The breads are amazing here, as well as the olives and tomatoes and ..., generally all the ingredients are amazing. (We'll be on a bread and olive hunt when we get back to Toronto).

After lunch we hopped into our Mercedes and asked our driver to take us home. (Okay, so the Mercedes was circa 1975).

Today we had a day trip to Fes, about an hour east of Meknes. Most people head to Fes on a trip to Morocco; but we decided to stay in the less touristy Meknes, and see Fes on a day trip.

The souq in Fes is one of the better ones we've visited, topped only by Essaouira. We were trying to find the tanneries (where leather is cured and dyed), and were able to wind our way through the souq all on our ownsome! The occasional maps on the wall (similar to the PATH maps in the Toronto downtown underground) helped.

The leather shops have figured out that tourists want to see the tanneries, and so the only access to view them is from the roofs of leather shops. After, you may purchase an item or two if you so wish...

The smell was a bit intense (the leather is cured with pigeon dung and cow urine). However, it was a photographer's dream. You cannot take a bad picture here. Thank goodness for digital photography, because I took about 50 pictures.

After, Heather bought a purse from the co-operative. She had wanted to buy one from Fes, so the whole leather-shop-with-a-view-deal worked out.

While in Fes we had some b'sara. This is a local specialty, a soup made with chick peas and garlic, and other spices, served from little carts in the middle of the souq. It was really really tasty.

We made our way back to Meknes. The previous day we had seen a small butcher that made sandwiches that was extremely busy. So we checked it out for lunch. It was one of the best brochette sandwiches I've had. The place was a California Sandwiches of Meknes (California Sandwiches is an italian sandwich shop in Toronto that has huge line-ups of locals for the food).

This afternoon we saw a bit more of the medina in Meknes, including the masoleum of Moulay Ismail, and Heri es-Souani.

The masoleum was very beautiful. Its calmness was broken by numerous busloads of tourists following their guides. We waited about fifteen minutes to get a tourist-less picture of the fountain in the masoleum. Unfortnately the picture didn't look as good as I hoped.

Heri es-Souani is a huge granary that once held grain for 12,000 horses. It fell into disrepair, and is now being restored. It is massive. We wandered about, mostly on our own (very few other tourists made it here).

Tomorrow we're on a train/bus journey to Chefchaouen.