Rabat, Morocco

We've reached Rabat, which is our last stop on this trip before returning to Casablanca to fly home. There's quite a lot to see in Rabat. We're planning to spend four days here, which is the longest we'll spend in one spot.

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Asilah was a nice place to relax. On Saturday we took a little trek along the coastline to get to Paradise Beach, about 4km south of Asilah. There were great views of the Atlantic Ocean as we walked. Paradise Beach was a wide, long beach with fine sand, which we had almost all to ourselves. There was another person off in the distance, and oddly, a cow. We looked around for a few minutes, and then headed back to town. The round trip trek took us about four hours, and we were glad we left in the cool early morning hours (9am).

Dinners were hit-and-miss in Asilah. The first night we were very disappointed with the fish we ordered (swordfish and calamari). The next night, (at a different restaurant), the fish was excellent! (merlan and loup)

From Asilah we took a quick (30 minutes) grand taxi ride to Larache. We had reservations at La Maison Haute, and it was a short walk to the hotel with our packs. Larache is not as touristy as other northern towns, and we were pretty much ignored as we walked through town.

We were initially really impressed with La Maison Haute. It's a restored Hispanic-Moorish house, with 15' ceilings and large common rooms. The view from the rooftop of the city and beach was one of the best we've had in a hotel. However, our room was musty (and hot without a/c), and the manager was very overbearing, and so we cut our stay short, for only one night. It was our least favourite hotel this trip.

In the morning before we took off from Larache, we had a quick trip to the roman ruins at Lixus. These aren't restored at all, and not worth more than the 30 minutes we spent at the ruins.

A very comfortable CTM bus ride brought us to Rabat. We're staying at the Hotel Royal, beside the French embassy. Our balcony overlooks Jardin Triangle de Vue, a large park in the Ville Nouvelle. Last night we ate at a fancy french restaurant (I had braised lamb shank, Heather had half rack of lamb), for less than $30 CDN!

This morning visited Le Tour Hassan, and the mausoleum of Mohammed V. The rest of the day we're just going to relax...

(GoogleMaps was giving me trouble so I haven't updated the map)