Grabbing some breakfast in the restaurant area of our hotel, where internet exists, we had decided the day before to leave a little later from the city. Giving us a chance to explore when it’s light out. I chose to stay behind to catch up on blogging, as there wasn’t much else to see that we didn’t the night before.
After a bunch of pictures on the terrace, we started our drive long drive out to Fes. With some stops in between.
Volubilis. Roman ruins. Unfortunately, our driver isn’t a guide. He has some brief information about the site, but not much else. Although, wikipedia and apps are our friends. As we walked into the site, we encountered some persistent tour guides. We just wanna roam around, explore, and take our time. No, thanks. Go away. They just hang around waiting for a tip. Peering over at various columns, rooms, mosaic tiles, it was a neat site. Of course, it becomes richer after reading about some significance of it.
As we leave the ruins, last second, we decide to go up to a city/mausoleum named Moulay Idriss Zerhoun. Entering the mountain-top city, the van starts having trouble. It’s stalling on the steeper roads. Then on the flat roads. Uh-oh. After a couple of failed starts, a random guy comes up to our window and they exchange some words, and starts to give us a push, backwards. The engine starts up…. and… no. They take a look under the hood, it’s some kind of electrical issue. Another push or two…. nope. The first random guy calls over a second random guy, and they both push – to no avail. Second random guy disappears. Somehow we end up in a parking lot, which is good, off the roads at least. We all get out of the van as they take a look. Random 1 walks with us and Abdul, saying that he’ll lead us to a vantage point to see the city, sounds good. The roads are relatively populated, kids running around, people walking up and down, two motorbikes approach and for some unknown reason, the second bike stops and talks to R1. Abdul says that we should stay with R1 and he’ll show us around as he deals with the van. Abdul gets on the bike and goes off to find a mechanic, leaving us with R1. Walking, walking, R1 says hi to random people, as we continue to climb the subtle hill through roads and alleys. Suddenly, we’re at the vantage point. Just by some houses, accompanied by chickens and stray cats. It was actually a decent spot, you could also get a whole view of Volubilis. R1 imparted some information about the city buildings, pointing out the mosques, the mausoleum, it looks like a nice quaint town from up here. Unfortunately, we are not allowed into either buildings, so we opted to not walk down to it. After bringing us to another vantage point, pitstopping at a random mosque with the guy selling random muffins he pulled out of nowhere, we started to head back to the van. He showed us the only round minaret in Morocco, a cool green colour with arabic along the outside. The tip displaying some numbers that apparently correspond to certain years in their religious calendar. Shortly after, leading us back to the path we took and to the van. Honestly, I was taking slow steps in case someone would jump out at us from a turn. No idea what to expect. But it turns out, he’s just a nice guy, and he picked up English and some other languages from random tourists. Back at the van, a mechanic is taking a look, doesn’t sound too good, he has to take it to the garage. We decide to go off to a random cafe that we saw as we drove in, WiFi! It was a fortunate thing that we broke down in a city, not some random roadside. Without wifi. Could you even imagine?! Haha…
After waiting an hour or so at the cafe, Abdul drives up! Yay. Turned out to be an issue with a fuse. R1 shows up, he gets a nice tip from Abdul. Thank you for not mugging us. Off we go to Meknes, one of the imperial cities. We made a quick stop by the central square within the medina, and we continued on our way.
Food. We had yet to grab lunch, Abdul had not eaten anything all day, it was more around 6. Sameer had been looking forward to kebabs for a couple of days when he had asked Abdul about them. They would be outside of Meknes, before Fes. However, the butcher might be on vacation. Ramadan was earlier this month and after that large demand for meat, this time would be the only chance for the butcher to take vacation for two weeks or so. Driving past the first and second options, which were just on the side of the road by gas stations, we saw that they were either closed or did not have any business whatsoever. So we kept going. Eventually, we did find a place. The meat was hanging out for display, like you typically see at Chinese grocery stores. Abdul bought the meat at the butcher on one side of the restaurant and brought it to the cook by the BBQ on the other side. Had some Moroccan salad and tea, Moroccan salad being tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olive oil, pepper..? I don’t know, but it’s not bad at all. The kebabs came, it was like a meat pie. One even had tomatoes and stuff on top and it was pretty good. Random local food.
Continuing on with our drive to Fes, it was starting to get dark. We arrive in a little area, it was very busy, so many people were out and about. Walking to our next Riad, close by, we got our rooms, settled in, and Karen realizes we got crappier rooms than we were supposed to. And it smells…. Sameer and Karen went down to go and talk to them and instead of the fourth floor, junior suites, Karen and Michelle got the honeymoon suite while Sameer and I got a senior suite on the second floor. No smell. We were still full from the kebabs so we opted to have our dinner the next night instead.
Walking around, it was actually very busy, kids all over the place, mothers sitting around, etc, and it was getting dark. You don’t see that much anymore in Toronto neighbourhoods. We walked around and into the market alleys. It was a lot of random food places, fruits and such. Apparently pomegranates are in season. After walking around a bit more and realizing it was very much a local spot, we went back out into the main area and found a place to chill and have some tea. There was a friendly game of soccer on TV, Morocco vs Kenya, afterwards the places started to empty out. We didn’t realize how much French is used in Morocco, should’ve brushed up on it before coming here.
Our Riad didn’t have a shower stall, more or a shower area in the washroom. That can get inconvenient. Getting everything wet.
Our first night in Fes. Didn’t really seem like there was much to see around us…
Volubilis, Volubilis, Moulay Idriss Zerhoun, Van go boom, Beef kebabs
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