Meknes and Fes

The day started with a 2 hours drive to Meknes to see the Bab Mansour Gate, the Glorious Gate, an homage to Sultan Moulay Ismail.

Across the street is El Hedim Square. Once a small casbah (community), the Sultan had the casbah torn down so that all could stand and admire the Glorious Gate. Used for executions at one time, it now is a public square and an entrance to the town’s medina. A quick tour of the medina revealed spices and the usual trinkets but also an aisle of butchers which stunk to high heaven. I purchased a covered pot decorated with cabuchons and metal scrolling.

Volubilis…what an amazing place. It is a partly excavated Berber and Roman city and commonly considered as the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Mauretania. The Berbers developed it in the 3rd Century BC and the Romans continued it in the 1st Century AD. Olives were there primary income and they built many fine large homes with tiled mosaics, a few of which are still visible. UNESCO World Heritage status was given to Volubilis as an exceptionally well preserved example of a Roman colonial town.

Fes

Fes is a really nice city: very clean and modern. There is a blocks long park in the middle of the main thoroughfare that has fountains and food sellers. There are also areas where children can “drive” the little electric kiddie cars and a handler follows the really young ones and steers with a remote control. FYI: Fez is the hat which shows that the wearer is a scholar from the university (more about that tomorrow), Fes is the name of the city.

Dinner was at the home of a Moroccan family arranged by the tour group. There were 40 of us in their living and dining rooms and we were not all that crunched. We had Vegetable soup, tangine vegetables, and a variety of pastillas: chicken, mushroom, and “I could never figure out the 3rd one”! Moroccans LOVE their sweets: they start and finish their meal with sweets so we had 2 rounds of phyllo dough filled with nuts and Halwa Chebakia, which is a sesame cookie fried then drizzled with honey. (the rate of diabetes in Moroccans is 1 in 5.)